# On Fans



## Thou Dog (May 9, 2011)

Howdy y'all.

I am of the belief that if you have (for some reason) an inability to use more than two fans in a computer, at least have a case fan and a CPU fan. As opposed to, say, disconnecting the CPU fan to run two case fans, one intake and one exhaust. Am I right here? It's not like your response is going to cost anyone money or affect a business decision, though, so no worries there.

And on a related note, why would you design a computer that contains three fans, and put into it a motherboard that has only two fan connectors?


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## LizardKing (May 9, 2011)

Fans don't have to plug into the motherboard to function :V

Why back in my day, all the non-CPU fans just plugged into the PSU with a molex connector. That's if the CPU _had_ a fan.

Also fuck molex connectors. Fiddly little bastards.


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 9, 2011)

Your reasoning is correct, Thou Dog. However, what Lizardking said is true. There are MOLEX to 3-pin-fan-header adaptors available for purchase. I'll bet that they can be had for exactly 99 US cents on Ebay.


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## ArielMT (May 9, 2011)

FF_CCSa1F said:


> Your reasoning is correct, Thou Dog. However, what Lizardking said is true. There are MOLEX to 3-pin-fan-header adaptors available for purchase. I'll bet that they can be had for exactly 99 US cents on Ebay.


 
Or that less shipping at a computer parts store.


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## AshleyAshes (May 9, 2011)

Thou Dog said:


> disconnecting the CPU fan


 
Let's just make this clear: You shouldn't be disconnecting the CPU fan for any reason at all.  It is the most critical fan in the entire system and it would be quite stupid to disconnect it.


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 9, 2011)

One could argue that the GPU fan, if such a fan is present, is even more critical than the CPU fan, since graphics cards usually don't have as well-implemented overheating protection as CPUs, if any at all. That is completely beside the point, though.


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## ArielMT (May 9, 2011)

The point is heat dissipation.  You want air sucked in from the cooler side of the PC, passing over the hottest chips and through their heat sinks, and blown out as far from the intake as practical.  That should be far and away the number one thing dictating the number, size, position, and orientation of the fans.  If your motherboard doesn't have enough system fan headers, then look for and get some fans with Molex connectors and Molex Y-splitters if you need them.


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## AshleyAshes (May 9, 2011)

FF_CCSa1F said:


> One could argue that the GPU fan, if such a fan is present, is even more critical than the CPU fan, since graphics cards usually don't have as well-implemented overheating protection as CPUs, if any at all. That is completely beside the point, though.



GPUs never need to compete with the motherboard for headers, they supply their own header, so that comment is just useless.


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## Runefox (May 9, 2011)

It's worth noting that the ATX case design originally called for the exhaust to be handled by the power supply, hence its usual position at the top rear of the case. For lower end desktop machines, this works fine. For higher end machines, the power supply should be if not replaced, then supplemented by exhaust fan(s).

As has been said, it's really not difficult to get fans that take a molex plug rather than a fan header, and usually they also use pass-through plugs. My case (Antec Nine Hundred (I don't recommend this case for any reason as it's terrible for wiring, dust and noise)) has two 120mm intake fans at the front, a 200mm intake fan at the top (which I get the feeling would have been better as exhaust, but who am I to question Antec's wisdom), and a 120mm exhaust fan at the rear, all with pass-through molex plugs, which I have nicely daisy-chained and stuffed behind the rear panel. None of them are connected to a fan header, and in fact, the only fan that IS happens to be the CPU fan. This has the side effect of the motherboard being unable to control fan speed on the fly, but they do come with a three-way selector switch for that (which I have on low, because frankly, high makes it louder than two or three X-Box 360's).

EDIT: If you want to get technical the ATX spec ORIGINALLY originally called for the power supply to draw IN air over the processor, which... Well, that really wouldn't do anything in today's world.


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 10, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> GPUs never need to compete with the motherboard for headers, they supply their own header, so that comment is just useless.


 
I know. I just wanted to comment on the "the most critical fan in the system" part. Call me obsessive-compulsive.


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## Thou Dog (May 10, 2011)

> splitters, adapters, etc.


Well, I think it's time to get some, for the next person who comes in with a stupidly-built machine.

The reason someone unplugged the CPU fan in order to run both case fans is that the CPU fan - while it was cooling things quite well - was also unbalanced, because it had lost a blade. The noise level was comparable to standing next to a lawnmower. One of my fellow technicians, presumably getting deafened by it, decided to use the case fans to cool the system instead. Note that this was a customer's system, not his own. :<


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## BRN (May 10, 2011)

I'll agree with anyone who says anything about 'fans are good' because my GPU set on fire last night.

Get software that gives you a live feed of temperature. If it's high, sort it.


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## ArielMT (May 10, 2011)

Thou Dog said:


> The reason someone unplugged the CPU fan in order to run both case fans is that the CPU fan - while it was cooling things quite well - was also unbalanced, because it had lost a blade. The noise level was comparable to standing next to a lawnmower. One of my fellow technicians, presumably getting deafened by it, decided to use the case fans to cool the system instead. Note that this was a customer's system, not his own. :<



I am in disbelief.  I would've told the customer it really needs to be replaced before we could proceed with the rest of the repair, clean-up, upgrade, or what-have-you.  Both options, a severely unbalanced fan and no fan on the CPU heat sink, are bad options.  Does the heat sink still have a good thermal bond to the CPU after all that vibration?


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## Sarcastic Coffeecup (May 10, 2011)

My Pc has a total of 8 fans


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## Runefox (May 10, 2011)

Thou Dog said:


> One of my fellow technicians, presumably getting deafened by it, decided to use the case fans to cool the system instead. Note that this was a customer's system, not his own. :<


 He needs to be fired.

You NEVER do that. Case airflow won't do nearly enough to draw heat away from a CPU, and doing that to a CUSTOMER'S computer is disastrously bad for everyone. It isn't like replacing the CPU fan would be difficult OR expensive. If I disconnected my CPU fan and let my VERY ample case cooling do all the work, my CPU would easily overheat within minutes and at the very best slow to a crawl to preserve itself.

I mean, seriously. How does this person have a job?


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## ArielMT (May 10, 2011)

Runefox said:


> I mean, seriously. How does this person have a job?


 
Please tell me it's Geek Squad.


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## AshleyAshes (May 10, 2011)

Thou Dog said:


> One of my fellow technicians


 
Wait... That implies that you are a technician as well.  What sort of tech needs to come to a furry forum to get a second opinion on weather the CPU fan should be plugged in or not?

Just where in the heck do you work?  Frankly, you don't sound much better qualified than your co-worker right now.


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 10, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> Wait... That implies that you are a technician as well.  What sort of tech needs to come to a furry forum to get a second opinion on weather the CPU fan should be plugged in or not?
> 
> Just where in the heck do you work?  Frankly, you don't sound much better qualified than your co-worker right now.


 
In fear of sounding inconsiderate, I have to admit that this was my first thought as well.


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## LizardKing (May 10, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> What sort of tech needs to come to a furry forum to get a second opinion on weather the CPU fan should be plugged in or not?


 
I think it's more of a badly worded excuse to call his co-worker an idiot.


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 10, 2011)

_Very_ poorly worded, if such is the case.

I prefer thinking about the other possibility, it makes the job market sound much less saturated than it is.


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## Thou Dog (May 11, 2011)

As I said elsewhere: I'm a third-rate technician. I am relying at times less on knowledge than on intuition (which I generally back up with Google). The guys who trained me, and whom I relied on previously for advice in meatspace, were a PhD physicist who'd lost funding for his lab and a USAF reservist who was a technician both on and off duty. I can contact one of them, but since I'm already an furfag browsing the FA message board, I figured I might avail myself of other people's cognitive resources here.

As for Geek Squad, yes, I worked for them once, until they laid off everyone they could (read: everyone who wouldn't sue for unlawful discrimination) to "balance their store's budget", or put more accurately, "ensure they could appoint their favorites to positions for which they were not qualified".


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 11, 2011)

Thou Dog said:


> The guys who trained me, and whom I relied on previously for advice in meatspace [...] USAF reservist


 
One of the teachers on the IT programme I've been doing the last three years was a former Danish air force technician. He insisted that Windows 2000 was the best operating system ever made for any purpose, and that Ethernet hubs were a perfectly viable alternative to switches.

I do not have much faith in the air force teaching IT.


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## LizardKing (May 11, 2011)

FF_CCSa1F said:


> and that Ethernet hubs were a perfectly viable alternative to switches.



In certain situations, sure. Of course if he means, "under any circumstances", then clearly that is silly.


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 11, 2011)

LizardKing said:


> In certain situations, sure. Of course if he means, "under any circumstances", then clearly that is silly.


 
I'm afraid the latter is true. It showed whenever he tried to upgrade or repair our network.


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## ArielMT (May 11, 2011)

Thou Dog said:


> As I said elsewhere: I'm a third-rate technician. I am relying at times less on knowledge than on intuition (which I generally back up with Google). The guys who trained me, and whom I relied on previously for advice in meatspace, were a PhD physicist who'd lost funding for his lab and a USAF reservist who was a technician both on and off duty. I can contact one of them, but since I'm already an furfag browsing the FA message board, I figured I might avail myself of other people's cognitive resources here.



If it's obvious to furries, then it should be common sense. :V



Thou Dog said:


> As for Geek Squad, yes, I worked for them once, until they laid off everyone they could (read: everyone who wouldn't sue for unlawful discrimination) to "balance their store's budget", or put more accurately, "ensure they could appoint their favorites to positions for which they were not qualified".



Ever since Best Buy bought Geek Squad, they've been showing a severe disinterest in hiring and keeping actual computer technicians (especially those with a code of ethics as high as the PC repair industry so desperately needs), favoring instead upselling salesmen of dubious competence disguised as computer technicians.



FF_CCSa1F said:


> One of the teachers on the IT programme I've been doing the last three years was a former Danish air force technician. He insisted that Windows 2000 was the best operating system ever made for any purpose, and that Ethernet hubs were a perfectly viable alternative to switches.



If he thinks Windows 2000 is the best OS ever for any purpose at all, ask him why he doesn't cut straight to the heart and run a Windows Millennium Edition emulator running on a VAX/VMS minicomputer.


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## Runefox (May 11, 2011)

To be fair, Windows 2000 *was* an excellent OS, but its successors outclass it. As for ethernet hubs... Yeahno.


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## Aden (May 11, 2011)

ArielMT said:


> Ever since Best Buy bought Geek Squad, they've been showing a severe disinterest in hiring and keeping actual computer technicians (especially those with a code of ethics as high as the PC repair industry so desperately needs), favoring instead upselling salesmen of dubious competence disguised as computer technicians.


 
I keep trying to tell this to my damn family
"BUT I BOUGHT MY COMPUTER THERE SO THEY KNOW WHAT TO DO"
aaaaaa


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## ArielMT (May 11, 2011)

Runefox said:


> To be fair, Windows 2000 *was* an excellent OS, but its successors outclass it. As for ethernet hubs... Yeahno.


 
*This* -> ArielMT, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:


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## Runefox (May 11, 2011)

Aden said:


> I keep trying to tell this to my damn family


 I actually am getting a position with them. One of the things they told me was "We used to have about a 70/30 split between computer repair and counter service. Now it's the opposite."


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## Thou Dog (May 15, 2011)

ArielMT said:


> If it's obvious to furries, then it should be common sense. :V


Yes. I'm not an EE but I know enough about the physics and chemistry of semiconductors to know that heat is bad for chips. I've also seen what happens if heat stress on a whole system is not addressed - components levering themselves out of sockets, boards fracturing, or in extreme situations, components melting, bursting or catching fire. (Granted, the last set only happened once in my experience, and it was less heat, more because the gent had bought a cheap Chinese knock-off PSU to replace his old one, which had just plain died of heat stress. But there was a small explosion and things did melt.)

I just thought: I'm pretty damn sure removing a CPU fan is a bad idea, so why would someone repeatedly do it, even after I told them not to?

I would have loved to replace the fan, but our company does not sell 70mm fans at all. AFAIK our parts supplier could not supply us with just a generic 70mm fan and some screws. We had to tell them it was a CPU fan from this model or that one, and it had to be a model made by one of the big brands. Maybe that's why we no longer use that supplier, as of very recent times. The new supplier is still pretty stupid about things - why would I buy RAM from you if it's on my company's website for thirty dollars less? - but never mind.



> Ever since Best Buy bought Geek Squad, they've been showing a severe disinterest in hiring and keeping actual computer technicians (especially those with a code of ethics as high as the PC repair industry so desperately needs), favoring instead upselling salesmen of dubious competence disguised as computer technicians.


This is very true.

Look, I am not a terribly good technician. I don't have enough experience, either with diagnostics or with various tools that can be used to fix things. I know enough to do backups where the machine won't boot to an installed OS, for example, although I have to break the rules about non-approved third-party software to do this. And fortunately, hardware installations are virtually idiot-proof.

But back at the Geek Squad precinct I worked for, the tech lead appointed over me was more of a manager than a technician. He only ever did really dumb things (like reformatting without asking the client about backup) if he felt the client was being unreasonably nasty, but otherwise he had some idea how to run MRI tools and how not to make anything that was broken, broken worse. Fine. He transferred to a store where they needed someone who was more about organization than technical know-how; and the replacement tech lead was (as you say) a dubiously-competent salesman who _ordered_ the technicians to reformat and reinstall Windows whenever a virus was detected on a client's machine. Most of them ignored it; I hope it was all, but I just don't know.

Ironic, but then again, my employer charges less to do System Recovery ($100) than to remove viruses ($200), so that idea makes financial sense for the customer, if he's backed up. But Geek Squad charges $200 either way. Never mind that all retail computer services are vastly overpriced. Forty dollars to install RAM or a hard drive? It takes about five minutes from first putting screwdriver to screw until fastening them all back in place. Two hundred to check hardware and run antivirus software? What a joke! Free products are all over the place; plus you can get commercial AV packages for reasonable prices, or you can pirate them for free if that's your thing.

I'm a salesman as well as a technician, but it depresses me that I'm expected to push our service plans, in-home setup, and expensive AV software that the average customer doesn't need. Why should I charge someone to do something he can do for himself with minimal pain? Why should I tell him to buy X because it has all these bells and whistles, when Y is half the price and will do everything he needs it to do? What a screwed-up business model. I guess it makes money - and they pay me, which means I can eat - but it doesn't seem exactly, you know, morally or ethically appropriate...

Speaking of which, why is it that when you ship a computer out to a service depot, the techs there will almost always (in my experience) erase the drive, or refuse to touch a computer with obvious motherboard failures if it doesn't have a hard drive? That seems frankly stupid; they must have things like LiveCDs that bypass the HDD entirely.

/derailment


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## FF_CCSa1F (May 16, 2011)

I did not see that long a post coming.


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## Nineteen-TwentySeven (May 23, 2011)

Runefox said:


> To be fair, Windows 2000 *was* an excellent OS, but its successors outclass it. As for ethernet hubs... Yeahno.


 
To be honest, Windows 2000 still is an excellent OS...if that's the maximum your computer can run. It works well enough for an older (talking sub 1Ghz here) system to keep playing with all the other internet-browsing, word-processing machines. It does have some irritating software limitations, though.

In regard to fans, it is very important that 1) the case has a defined intake and exhaust fan (or at least an exhaust fan), and 2) that if any heatsinks were designed to be actively cooled (with a fan) that they are. Most heatsinks I've seen in stock machines are not designed to be run without a fan. They're also typically made of aluminum and occasionally with a copper insert. Heatsinks designed to be cooled passively (from the air moving through the case) are typically much larger, have wider spaces between the fins, and are typically made of a high concentration of copper, if not 100% copper. If you _really_ want/need to unplug the CPU fan to plug in a case fan, you will need to get a good passive CPU cooler to substitute it.

IMO a well-designed case has two large, 120mm+, low RPM fans (for sound level reasons), with the intake at the front bottom-to move air up over the hard drives-and exhaust up at the top back (where hot air wants to go), and the power supply on the bottom with its own dedicated air intake. Unfortunately, that would be too costly for every OEM manufacturer to implement, so we're stuck, for the most part, with little hot-boxes that burn up after a few years.


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## grimtotem (May 23, 2011)

back to the subject of cooling and fans i find the coolmaster Storm scout to be quit cool and quite once u fit all the fans it has holes for... which is only 5 including the 2 it came with.  and only cost me 100$ aus


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