BEGONE, FOUL HEAT!
ANYONE NEED TO MELT STEEL?
FANS ARE YOUR FRIENDS
Warm Raptors are angry Raptors—and as we learned from
Jurassic Park , angry raptors are bad news.Alas, the only real solution we have for our Quad FX’s insanely hot
voltage regulators is to strap on the generic, tiny fans that come
with the motherboard. While one would think that a more powerful
CPU fan would be a better choice, our tests showed there was no
difference between the devices. Besides, the stock fans covering
our Quad FX’s processors are insanely loud and, thus, insanely fast;
an aftermarket CPU cooler would offer little improvement, if any.
That said, we did see quite a benefi t from using the tiny fans.
Not a single temperature reading near the voltage regulator area
pushed past 100 C, and we shaved off nearly 20 degrees in some
areas. While the voltage regulators are still stupid-hot for our tastes,
even baby steps are better than fried electronics. When someone
designs a water-cooling setup that nicely covers this area, we’ll be
the fi rst ones in line to get it.Even the fastest machines with the loudest of fans can fall short
in the cooling department if said fans are improperly placed. How
air fl ows through your rig is just as important as the amount of air
you push through your rig. Remember that the next time you put an
intake fan near the exhaust of something extraordinarily hot.
But as we’ve seen, even the tiniest modifi cation can offer mas-
sive improvements. Simply creating some additional space between
hot components can make a world of difference. Similarly, any
airfl ow you can direct on a hot spot is going to offer some improve-
ment. Even the tiny wussy fans that you think are worthless can
become awesome, if used in the right context. And we’d much
rather fuss with those than try to fi nd a louder, messier solution, like
adding a ton of fans to the exterior of the case. And as fun as it can
be to watch a rig’s internals go nuclear, we’ll pass this time around.
Considering this is a heat-generating machine, it’s a wonder we
were able to affect the temperatures in any capacity.Our Quad FX machine is interestingly designed in that a 12cm fan
pulls hot air from the CPU area and pushes it out of the case some-
what close to the power supply’s fan. This gives us the effect of two
hot-air channels emitting from the back of the case, while at the
same time, a third fan covering the hard drive area sucks that warm
air right back in. Strange.
To cool the drives, we start by reversing this odd airfl ow to let
our underpowered fan also suck warm air out of the case; no sense
in redistributing 30–50 C air over already warm drives. We also gave
the Raptors a bit of breathing room by providing them a drive’s worth
of space between their toasty exteriors. And the result of our efforts
was fabulous; we cooled the drives by approximately 15–20 C each,
and we didn’t even have to use any aftermarket parts.If you hear a loud booming noise, that’s just the voltage regula-
tors on our machine exploding in a horrific fury. Pay it no mind.24 MAXIMUMPC july 2007
COOLING
Master’s
Guide to