[mythtv-users] Successful Myth Install - 2 Questions

[Bill Witherspoon]

* Dewey Smolka <dsmolka at gmail.com> [2006-10-04 22:36:12 -0500]:

> >
> > Thanks for the reply. I was curious myself if I could just disable the
> > rear fans as well. The video card and PSU are fanless so presumably
> > would be fine. The only other thing generating heat is the CPU (Pentium
> > D805) which has an enormous heatsink/fan combo.
> >
> > Do you have any experience with any fan controllers? I thought I might
> > buy one of those and enable all the fans but at significantly lower
> > speeds. Most of the reviews I read for various models seem to imply that
> > they are only able to throttle the fans down a limited amount, which
> > seems kind of silly to me.
> >
> > I hope I don't have to abandon the case. It's very pretty and don't
> > think I'll get a refund!
> 
> You need to be very careful about temperature. Yes, capture cards and
> video cards can be passively cooled but you still need to get the heat
> they generate out of the box. HDDs generate a lot of heat, and if
> there's no airflow the disc will fail rather quickly. Same with the
> CPU heatsink/fan assembley -- it needs to be moving cooler air or the
> CPU will overheat leading to underclocking, random reboots, and
> ultimately catastrophic failure.
> 
> Fan speed is generally controlled by BIOS through on-board temperature
> sensors. I haven't really looked at 60mm fans, but I have an 80mm
> Antec fan with a manual speed switch on it -- it's the only fan other
> than PSU and CPU that's in my system (mid-tower with PVR, video card,
> and 3 HDDs) and keeps the system cool enough while running at low
> speed. There may be similar models in 60mm.
> 
> Either way, you'll want to carefully monitor system temperatures as
> you're trying to set this up. I can't remember the name offhand, but
> there's a nifty little gnome applet for monitoring CPU and MB
> temperature data, and hddtemp works great for monitoring disc
> temperatures.
> 
> If you can keep your system within tolerance limits while under a full
> load and fans at a low and quiet speed, then go for it. But if you go
> too far sacrificing adequate temperature control for quiet operation,
> you can expect some serious HW problems.
> 
> Good luck

Thanks for the advice. I dabled a bit and turned off all the fans except
the CPU fan and naturally the BIOS spun it twice as fast which made the
noise even worse! So I'm back to all fans running for the time being.

Does the nifty gnome app rely on anything being compiled into the
kernel?

Bill.