[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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