[mythtv-users] Fans, or cooling video cards

[Yan Seiner]

Ben Coleman wrote:
> If indeed it is heat related ... you need to get the airflow moving across 
> your cards, pulling outside air in from one end of the case, past the 
> heatsinks, then back out the case.
>
> If you've got a cruddy case, buy a new case that is designed to do this 
> properly.
>   
The case is actually pretty good.... It's a server-class rackmount 
enclosure.  It's packed full and the video cards are passively cooled.

> silentpcreview.com is a great place to learn about airflow in your case and 
> recommend good cases to use.
>
> I'm curious about why you have 3 'video' cards in a PVR... or are you 
> talking about Tuners?
>   
Yup, 3 video cards.  One tuner.  I run multi-head; 5 heads on a single 
box.  Basically, this gives me 'instant on' myth and other workstations 
as the server is never shut off.  It also gives me better performance, 
as I can have 1 honking big machine instead of a pile of smaller ones, 
and my 'FE' is completely silent, as it consists of a USB hub and a 
gender bender at the end of a DVI cable.  :-)

Not a setup I would recommend for the faint of heart, but it works for me.

> Lastly, when I upgraded my motherboard recently... I actualy picked a board 
> that would allow me to separate my two dual tuner cards (which get very hot) 
> sufficiently to let air move around them. Obviously not something you can 
> think about now, but worth it when you are in the position.
>   
I picked my board to handle gobs of bandwidth.  Alas the slots are 
packed together pretty tight, and with 6 SATA drives, 2 15K SCSI drives, 
3 video cards, a tuner, an esata controller and a scsi controller, the 
box gets hot....

--Yan