[mythtv-users] Fans, or cooling video cards
Mike Perkins
mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk
Mon Jan 12 11:57:29 UTC 2009
Yan Seiner wrote:
> 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....
>
Sounds to me like a 'single point of failure' waiting to happen.
--
Mike Perkins
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