Hi Russell, At the company I work for, we have a top of the line cooling fan (it's not big master size, but very cool, I mean really cool), the heatsink has a special white part which is function like a tiny refrigerator, leave the fan running a while (without attached CPU), you can make "a cup of ice tea with it". I think this is the future of cooling solution. Any way, full tower case (with lot of space), never plug any card next to each other, never place two harddisk close together, extra case fan and harddisk fan is required to today's hot shot, I also think someone need to desing a special fan to cool down CD/CDR/CDRW/DVD drive (especialy CDR/RW). Jun Qian ----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell Smith" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 3:17 AM Subject: [PCBUILD] K6 heating comments > I replaced the old clone I had built for my son (and rebuilt 3 times) > with a new midtower case and an Asus motherboard with a 550 Mhz K6 > processor. I put back in 192 MB of DIMMS, a 6.4 MB WD drive, a Creative Labs > DX2 Encore DVD drive with decoder card, 16 MB Creative Labs PCI TNT Riva > card, a Linksys network card, and a Creative Labs 128 PCI sound card. > > About a week after I had it running it began singing a loud whine after a > few minutes (sometimes hours) of operation. When I removed both sides of the > computer case it cools enough to where it won't whine while running. > > I decided to order a dual 80MM fan ($16) from http://www.millisec.com and > a digital thermometer with a flat thermistor ($14). > > Before the fan arrived I drilled 40 small holes in one door side to see > if that would allow enough cooling (it did not). > > When the fan arrived I attached it facing the CPU and also ran the > thermometer probe within one inch of the heat sink. First I replaced the > case covers and left the new fan unpowered and the thermometer running to > check what actually was the case temperature when the problem occurs. The > case temperature starts at 23.5 Centigrade and within ten minutes rises to > 36.5 C at which point the whining sound begins. I then attached a spare > Molex connector to the new double fan assembly and ran it again. It again > rose quickly to mid 30s, but stopped at the 35.5 reading where it remains > and the whining has stopped. > > I am slightly disappointed that I only gained 1 degree, but happy the > sound has stopped. My daughter reports that at times it seems like it is > going to start the sound again, but stops after a second. If I get a > recurrence of the problem I am going to reseat the CPU cooler fan and make > sure the thermal grease doesn't have any gaps with a smooth reapplication. > If that fails I am going to replace the CPU cooler fan with a premium model. > > It's probably unknown by many users about inside heat problems and I'd be > willing to bet a substantial amount of Windows' problems are heat-related. > I'm sure we will all see more discussion about heat problems in the near > future as more manufacturers and more people add hotter components to their > systems. > > PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download visit our download web page at: http://nospin.com/pc/files.html