Uncreative Labs

Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 23 Location: Poland

I've read article about adding a fan to a 5150 somewhere on this site.
As I've all solts fully loaded I tought about cooling beacause the cover is getting really warm after a while.

The article described mounting a fan on the back of chassis where PSU grill is, while PSU already have a fan on it's top, so is there any sense of adding it?

My idea is to put fan on the front of chassis in front of cards, where these dots are cut, so it would be invisible when I put on the cover and cards would be cooled.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

if yourun the xp for a while and then put your hand ( carefully please) in parts, you will notice it is the hard driver that can fry eggd.
there is littyle or nothing on the mb that will get more than barely warm
slide the drives back as far as possibnle and place a fan in front of them. this will make a huge difference
thin and sma;; fans are available now were not availabl;e then.

a fan mounted bu the side if the hd bay will help and will make a difference. despute the lack of holes for the air to go thru.

early pc's has a series of holes at the bottom front

all my pc/xt's are at 10 deg f. with snow on top

later pc's has black tape bliocking part , i think the rh side to improve cooling.

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

An XT CPU does'nt need any cooling....

However, the hard disks, yeah, those old MFM/RLL/SCSI 5.25" hh/fh buggers get PLENTY hot. What I do with them is usually set them on top of the floppy drives or by themselves nearest to the PSU fan, so the heat rises off the drive and is taken away by the PSU Fan.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

no i recall from 1988 of so, kust putting a fan so it blows on the mfm drives will make a huge difference
from frying eggs to just somewhat warm.
even if the fan is on the side and seems not to have a clear shot at the drives. will help.
I had stacked st-251's on an xt and it did the trick

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

Probably a stupid question but, do you think the old MFM drives run hotter these days because of years of wear. (Included, but not limited to, "glumping" up of cylinder grease)?

...or did they always run waay too hot?

Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 169 Location: behind you!

You could add a fan but I'd think the psu's fan alone would handle the heat from an xt. although I have yet to have an xt on for more than an hour so perhaps they put out more heat than I'm aware of.
As for mfm drives running hotter today I don't think thats the case. If anything I'd blame dust buildup. If a part is generating heat from increasing friction it's likely to fail and soon (like the northbridge fan did on my asus board about a year ago. It got fire hot and a few days later failed, killing the board (leaving me out $200)).

If you don't mind cutting your drives you could add vent slots in the front plastic of the drive (although most already have these). You could even get a higher output fan and replace the original in the psu (and keep the original so you can return the system to stock later if you wish).

Anyway, that said, any mfm drive still working today has been doing so for 20+ years and I don't see heat as being a problem for these drives (as they have been happy with the heat for this long already). I'd just enjoy the system knowing it will fail some day. I'd also get a can of air and blow out everything, That alone should drop temps a bit.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

i agree the mfm drives were hot back then .
but since heat is an enemy of electronics,
adding a fan to even just blow on the sides of the
drive bays would help.
Removing the drive's front plates and putting a fan on a plate in the front of the case would help big time, but is somewhat overkill.