[luau] Underclocking / Aluminum cases

[MonMotha]

It is difficult to do without ANY case fans (just the PSU alone will 
cause trouble usually).  However, you can do soemthing like what the 
imac does.  The CRT from the monitor produces lots of heat and is placed 
above the motherboard, PSU, etc.  This creates a convection current 
which sucks the heat up the CRT where it rises out the top. 
Unfortunately, designs like this require quite a bit of engineering and 
are probably beyond the capacity of msot people without a decent amount 
of experience in thermodynamics (I know I probably couldn't pull it off...)

The VIA C3 seems like an option, or you can see if you can find 
Transmeta Crusoes in a desktop package.  I'm pretty sure the C3 can be 
run fanless assuming the ambient temp is kept cool enough (is the room 
well air conditioned?), and Transmetas are designed with heat production 
(and power draw as a result) as one of their core design principles.

--MonMotha

Joe Linux wrote:
> But the issue is still how to do it without a fan motor.  In the example 
> of the Dell, they are substituting a case fan for a fan on the processor 
> and it would have to have the case on to work properly.  It's well known 
> that ducting and cowlings on fans improve efficiency.  The fact that you 
> do a lot of little things to improve air flow shows you are both 
> thoughtful and clever.
> 
> MonMotha wrote:
> 
>> I guess you've never used a Dell Dimension XPS Dxxx series tower 
>> system.  The processor has a big heatsink but no fan on it.  Directly 
>> behind the processor is the case fan.  Take the case off an run the 
>> CPU at 100% for long, proc overheats and halts.  With the case on, run 
>> at 100% CPU for days, the heatsink is barely warm to touch.
...