cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46256923
why don’t they just do this? are they stupid?
Also, as a bonus, put a cheap 4-inch AC filter on that box fan.
Now you have:
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Zero dust in your PC
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Noise dampening
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A high CFM air purifier, right in your room.
Get a 20x20x4" filter, and the fan will suck it right to itself. Don’t even need mounting materials.
I do that with my tower fan and it’s incredible. Just zip tied the filter on and let er blast.
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It can and has been done, but this doesn’t work as well as people think in most cases. You need high static pressure fans for some of the good, dense fin heat sinks. There used to be some decent large, more open heat sinks that this worked well with.
I had to do this with a PC once. I upgraded the GPU in an old HP, and then it would overheat playing Modern Warfare 2. Finally just took off the side of the case and pointed a box fan at it. Never overheated again.
Damn, came to comment the same thing, and it also was an HP.
But people actually do do this, if for some reason a PC is overheating or the built-in fans are making too much noise. A big fan running slowly moves more air more quietly than a bunch of little fans. I even wired an external DC fan into the PC’s power supply once so that I wouldn’t have to plug them in separately.
My experience is that this also builds up a pretty spectacular amount of dust inside the case, so regular vacuum cleaning is called for.
that’s why you use a custom water cooling loop connected to a car radiator outside.
Or better, connected straight into your pool!
Wait.
Whole home hepa hvac filter on the intake side?
Yes, something like that!
Point the fan outwards and pull heat out instead of pushing cool air in. Problem solved.
Problem not solved. You’ll still collect dust wherever there’s intake.
The filter is probably the best solution IME.
I did that once in one build.
It was a shitty PC that I kept upgrading, but for some reason kept the case. so when it kept overheating,I just put a box fan just like that
How well did it work?
100%
of course it did.
it looked like shit, but it worked.
Did you put an air filter or did you clean all the dust every month or two like I did?
lol, were do you live? it got a wee dusty after a year but not even close to that,
Lol, I just found the pic online. I basically just used canned air every 2 months and gave it a quick pass on the heat sinks and any possible dust bunnies. Nothing near as bad as the pic.
I did this before discovering one could change the CPU’s thermal paste.
Hook an industrial chiller to that mf
I’ll stick with my $700 pc fan, thanks.
For $700, that little fan better be able to blow, if you know what I mean…
And then there’s me with a 9800x3d with a low profile cooler in a fractal ridge. It only throttles under synthetic tests so I just say fuck it and let it run at whatever temp it wants to run at.
Laughs in Mac Studio
Apples cooling solution has always been to let the device overheat and avoid trying to cool it. All their laptops before the arm series had major thermal issues.
I can’t say I haven’t ever used a desk fan blowing into an open case, but it was during a heatwave and I was being overly cautious with the internal temperatures. It would probably have been fine without it. Probably.
As a bonus I was able to get some of the blowback from the case, which wasn’t too warm and meant that I didn’t completely sacrifice my own cooling.
This doesnt work with dense fin stacks though, because there is not enough pressure to push the air in between the fins. This would only work with very low power systems or heatsinks specifically designed for this kind of fan.
I have to disagree, i have worked around overheating pc components in gaming machines with taking off the case wall and pointing a room fan at it more times than i went to admit. This works fine, even if it’s an ugly solution and literally a “hotfix”
Oh yeah for sure it improves things over a closed case, but its not gonna replace your CPU fan is what i meant. The big fan just removes the hot ambient air and allows the cpu/gpu fans to get access to cooler air.
This isn’t meant to replace internal fans, just case fans like in the picture
Not really clear as you cant see inside case but fair enough.
I have done this. Heat in Australian summer and high end games requires more cooling then the stock Intel fan.
