I have a number of PCs I built myself many years ago with Asus A7V400/A7V600 motherboards and other quality equipment like Antec 480w power supplies, Corsair ram etc but they all seem to suffer heat strokes probably because I put them in unsuitable cases.

I (and the machines) live in 40C + in summer with no air conditioning. The PCs reboot unexpectedly or simply refuse to boot till they're cool enough. I also live in a mining town (very dusty) and I wonder if I should have a case with filters.

What I think I should do is replace these machines with new equipment paying special attention to the case and possibly a cooling system although I think I should be able to save the power supplies (480w and 330w Antec) which are probably enough for what I want to do.

What I need to do with the machines is Internet work, text entry or similar activity, no gaming or the like, but I need networking (LAN), USB backups and I use Debian Lenny.

What I had in mind is a quality board with (onboard or software) Raid 1 of 2 sata drives, 1 x DVD writer, LAN and a couple of USB connections and fitted with maximum RAM.

I would rather go for equipment that is tested and offer good value for money rather than the latest or newest and more expensive one.

Can anyone suggest a suitable quality motherboard and, unless easy to work out, other associated equipment like case, CPU, RAM and eventually how to keep it clean inside and cool if ambient temperature is too high.

Thank you for your help.

You didn't say where you computers are located: at home on at work.

If at home, do you have a root below ground level you could put the computer? That should be cooler that an above ground location.

I have an Antec case with two 120 mm cooling fans rather than the 80 mm fans, an Asus K8n-DL motherboard with dual AMD Operons, running in a very dusty environment (a rural location surrounded by farms), an a living, breathing, shedding machine (husky-malamut mix), but decidedly cooler summers (temps seldom go over 37 C.

If you can afford to do it, you might consider adding addition insulation to the room in which you keep your computer, and installing a heat exchanger system to lower the temperature in that room.

Beyond that, there are techniques used by pre-industrial societies to cool building interiors using water evaporation wicked from containers to cool incoming air, You might find it useful to use google to research such methods.

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Definitely get filters around all your air intakes, and change/clean them regularly.

As far as the environment goes...buy a window-unit air conditioner, which will solve the dust and temperature problems for both you and your PC's.

You can use water-cooling rigs to get better cooling, but they rely on the airflow around the radiator...hot air around it=no cooling. No matter the case, fans, or cooling, you've got to dissipate the heat SOMEWHERE. If the ambient air is hot, it's got nowhere to go. As a rule, I tend to have more fans blowing air INTO the case, than out...keeps the pressure and air density higher, so more heat gets exhausted. However, even water cooling is not going to really work...your GPU, CPU, etc, might be ok, but your RAM, hard drives, etc., will still run hot, and might lead to 'interesting' results.

As an afterthought...you COULD just buy a BIG fridge, put the PC in the bottom of it (drill a small hole for the keyboard/mouse/video/power cables, and caulk it up good after). Not only will the PC remain dust-free and cool...but you'll have somewhere to keep your beer too.

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For keeping it cool, you should maintain airflow through the case, but you should keep in mind that leaving the case open does not mean that air is flowing. The best thing to do is put an output fan in the rear of the case and make sure to have a vent in the front, that way air gets pulled from there to the back. If you want, you can add intake fans if the airflow is not high enough, but I personally use only output fans because the suction also cools the air.

The case should also be of reasonable size, not too big or too small, too big will produce low airflow, too small will produce more airflow, but it will be loud and the heat may be higher because there is less volume of air to dissipate it.

For RAM I usually recommend Corsair, because it's usually of good quality (if it wasn't broken during shipment).

For CPU if you want to keep power consumption low, look at the wattage. You can get a cheap newer processor like a 45nm Intel, and have it use less power than older 65nm ones. I would also check a comparison of processors:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17023/14
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Featur...rformance.aspx

I would check the HCL for a good board without issues.

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I disagree to add filters for the fans because you still will have to clean the inside the case and replace the filters. It is best to just buy an air purifier for the room, so you and your computers can breath in cleaner air. An in-window air conditioner could be installed to lower the temperature. If you like to use the window, it is best to look for air conditioner units that sits outside that does need the whole house to have its own duct. Air conditioners does not filter the air unless you spend the money on very good filters and replace them every few weeks to a few months depending the filter that you bought.

None of the brands that I know of can handle high heat, so not even Corsair will be able to handle the temperatures. All RAM comes from the same manufacture, so at this time they can not.

ARM systems are able to handle high temperatures and still be stable and reliable. The following could be used.

http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/...roduct=TS-7800


The size of a computer case has nothing to do with cooling since it all about moving the heat out of the case. Could use positive or negative type of setups to cool computers. To cool a room, smaller is better when using an heat exchanger or heat pump, but it is more complex for cooling a computer case. Another method to cool a room or computer case is using the concepts that heat rises. Though the best method to cool a computer case is make sure there is nothing blocking the air the flow or the efficiency to cool will decrease.

The fabrication size has nothing to do with power consumption if the chip is not designed properly. Smaller the fabrication the faster the electronics can be clocked, but it has nothing to do with efficiency. The TDP for both Intel and AMD processors have different definitions. Intels is average TDP under a load for period of time and AMD is based on the TDP electrical limits which can changed if a heat sink is used, so they can not be used in comparison with each other. Basically, TDP is just a poor factor for power consumption. The power consumption for processor just varies. If you care a lot about power consumption, look at the voltage of the processor and the frequency. If the processor is clocked high its power consumption will be more.

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Simple would be to use the water coolers. They really work.

We used to test computers for 24 hours both hot and cold. They all passed or didn't ship. The problem is your (anyone's) computers. They are just poorly made.

Where I am now is in industrial very dusty and while not that hot they can be in cabinets behind motors and get quite hot. We use cases with a bunch of fans on the front and clean the filter every day. It only takes one or two fans to go out and they shut down via bios temps.

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No one is thinking about decreasing power consumption instead of ways to transfer heat??? This problem should be solved at the source, not at the end.

My recommendation would be to use Intel Atom based boards. Intel Atom now comes with 1.6 GHz dual cores, and dissipated about 10% of the insane and unneeded power consumption of 3+ GHz AMD/Intel heat guns.

These boards can be mounted in a standard ATX case if you need room for multiple HDD and a DVD drives. Best is to skip the conventional fan cooled ATX power supple but use a brick type closed supply.

If you use a standard case, you do not need air circulation thru the case. The case can be fully closed. If there is a small fan mounted on the board this is most likely sufficient to move the air inside the case along the steel sides to provide sufficient cooling. If not, a slow turning, 80 mm fan somewhere inside the case will certainly move enough air along the sides for cooling.

Make also sure to select you hard disks for minimum power dissipation. Hard disk manufacturers do produce low energy disks with only a slight speed penalty as compared to the fastest high power disks.

If you choose to reduce your case size you still might get away with the closed circulation approach but there is a limit when the surface of the case becomes to small. Make sure the cases are metal, and no, it doesn't matter much whether the case is steel or aluminum.

jlinkels

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Thank you all for all the good tips.
(bigrigdriver) The machines are used at home.

I am tempted to use a fridge mainly because the A7V600 board had a Zelman copper radiator cooling the CPU and even that did not work all the time as well as getting full of dust and difficult to clean.

A fridge is not going to be able to cool 400W of power. It's just not built for pumping that amount of energy.
Get an air-conditioner.

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That's nuthin! You should try computing in Death Valley!

My computer and I sit in a non-AC room (not in Death Valley!) with only wire mesh in the windows and slightly dusty air with summer temperatures nudging along just under 40 C, occasionally a little over. I adjust the fan speed control settings in winter/summer to keep the CPU casing temperature at 10 degrees over ambient; I've never seen the fans go over 600 RPM so that's not a hard target for them to achieve.

Chances are your biggest problem is dust preventing the cooling airflow from being effective. I'd definitely go with intake filters (kitchen vent cloth is cheap and effective). You might also have more intake fan capacity than exhaust to ensure the case is slightly pressurised thus preventing dust being drawn in through hard-to-seal small openings.

Most cases are not very rational about cooling air flow. Dual-chamber designs such as the Antec P182 (more coming soon?) are easier to work with including uprating the intake filters.

If you had a temperature monitoring system (example lmsensors + GKrellM) you could clean the filters whenever the difference between ambient and CPU casing exceeded ~15 degrees which is still well within manufacturers' specifications even with an ambient of 45.

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It obvious to think about power management, so I did not state it. I did state to use a computer based on a ARM processor to handle high temperatures. nVidia's Tegra 2 has lower power consumption than Intel's Atom processor and has more performance. Though that processor has not yet been to the public, so alternative product such as the following product could be used instead

http://www.marvell.com/platforms/smartbooks.html

It has the ability to do video playback up to 1080p. Also it has the ability to handle Adobe Flash which Atom can not do with out the help of nVidia graphics and Windows. These two features are needed to browse the Internet with out any sacrifices. Programs like Firefox, Chrome (web browswer), Thunderbird, and OpenOffice can be or has been ported to ARM processors. rblampain could use it but the price will be a problem. I think it is about $600 to $1000.

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The computer ought to work at 40C. It should have been tested. Bet the owners manual states that is the upper limit of it's designed use.

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Just to mention a few obvious things that haven't so far been said

1. Paint all heatsinks matt black, as they dissipate more heat that way.
2. I would try to specify low power consumption devices (e.g. turion instead of opteron).
3. There's a V x Fe2 in the dissipation formula telling you frequency is a big factor in power consumption where cmos devices are concerned, as they are capacitive. If you get high spec stuff and run it slower than max, it will consume less power.
4 DERATE. This means, if you want 400W of power, don't buy a 400W power supply, buy a 600W or even 800W
6 Fridges are only 150W and your box is 400W So it might work, because the efficiency of fridges is higher. Most will do 3:1, so you would have 450W of cooling. It's certainly an option if you're not running 24/7.
7. I would look at separating the drives if possible. Use SATA and take the lead outside the standard box, trying to avoid passing heat back to the cpu area. Maybe heatsinks & fans here too?
8 Filters go like this: If you put filters on standard fans, they clog and slow airflow. Centrifugal fans work much better than ones with blades. If you don't put filters, the dirt collects in heatsink fins and ruins cooling. Baybe a sack in a frame over the box?

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Hi,

I disagree, to paint the heat sink will defeat transfer. 'anodize' the metal if you are wanting to depend on the color to gain transfer( very minute).

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Hi

I think that you need to tackle your stated problem in two distinct parts:

A) Environmental (room in which the equipment is operating)

You need to reduce the dust contamination in the room.
Suggestions:
.If possible consider installing two doors in a linear airlock configuration to enter the room to reduce the flow of dusty air straight into the room.
.fill any cracks or gaps around the windows, walls, and ceiling through which dust can make its way into the room.

You need to reduce the temperature in the room.
Suggestions:
.line the ceiling and walls with insulation.
.Install a split system air conditioner in the room (a unit with a good manually cleanable filter system)(not an evaporation type); a companion humidifier unit may be required to prevent the buildup of excessive moisture in the room (which would be an electrical hazard)
.reduce the number of electrical devices operating in the room (which are also producing heat).

B) Electronic equipment

.By improving the environmental conditions in which the equipment is operating as a first step will allow you more flexibility in selecting suitable replacement equipment.

.Selecting small highly integrated single board systems is an option. Similarly using machines with low power CPUs and good power management features is a consideration.
Similarly, using fully featured motherboards, single hard disk drive, round cables (rather than flat), removing all unnecessary expansion cards and devices, are also a consideration.

.Modifying the case to provide high pressure in-flow and exhaust fans to increase case airflow is also a consideration. (Best to remove the dust sources in the environment first).

.You may want to consider some Google searching for PCs that are US Military Specification rated. The US DOD have requirements for PC type equipment that will operate in a very broad range of temperatures and humidity (low to high); locating a list of manufactures that are seeking to /currently supply such organizations may be a place to start.

Hope that is of some assistance

Chris

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