[mythtv-users] Latest thoughts on small silent frontends

[Stephen P. Villano]

On 3/11/14, 1:13 PM, Jeff Siddall wrote:
> On 03/11/2014 01:08 PM, Stephen P. Villano wrote:
>>
>> On 3/11/14, 12:56 PM, Tyler T wrote:
>>>> For me, the best silent frontend is a big, ugly (but inexpensive)
>>>> frontend
>>>> system with fans
>>> Dunno if my house is just dusty or what, but I sure get sick of
>>> blowing out the heatsinks and fans every few months. Fanless isn't
>>> just about noise, it's also about being lazy. ;)
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
>> Depends on your region and house.
>> Wall to wall carpeting tends to help accumulate dust, in my experience.
>> Meanwhile, when I was in the Middle East, we had to clean out servers
>> monthly and there was no carpeting in our datacenter.  Just desert dust
>> blown in, despite the environmental control systems.
>>
>> But, I've had heatsinks get lousy with dust, both house dust and desert
>> dust. I still had to clean them out periodically.
>
> Also, regardless of keeping them clean, all fans eventually get louder
> and fail, sooner than later in my experience.
>
> _______________________________________________
We had a few Dell blade servers that used pancake motors for the chassis
cooling fans. The desert dust killed those motors quite quickly. Every
three to four months we had to replace one of the fans.