I need a PCI slot fan, any suggestions?

[Diosoth]

Exhaust would be my first try. But only through trail and error will you know, but make sure the ambient stays the same.

I'm talking about physical orientation of the fan, not intake/exhaust. This fan is an exhaust blower only.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Fan intake towards the PSU !

 

[Diosoth]

I took the fan off, turned it over so the intake faces down, and also took off the PCI plate and moved it up one row on the grate so it'll have more room under it to draw in air. I'll have to leave the PC running for a bit more to be sure but this looks like it might be running cooler already- been on for about 15 minutes now and it's at 34 degrees compared to the 40 of before. That puts it right around where my W7 Gateway runs at.

I suppose I could get more air circulation if I left the outdated floppy drive out, but the BIOS whines at me about that if I don't have it in. I think my old Compaq XP computer did that years ago whenever I started it up without the floppy drive. Be nice if I could find a way to disable the floppy drive check in BIOS under boot options.

As far as the old dead Samsung HDD, I finally got it apart and it looked as if one of the reader heads was not sitting right. Either old age did it or it got shaken too much when the PC was shipped to me.


edit- topped at 38 Celsius. So a 2 degree temp drop turning it over. Not much but still something.

 

[smarteyeball]

I think SmartEyeball's answer was the best and simplest.

Usually is guys.

 

[madcratebuilder]

I suppose I could get more air circulation if I left the outdated floppy drive out, but the BIOS whines at me about that if I don't have it in. I think my old Compaq XP computer did that years ago whenever I started it up without the floppy drive. Be nice if I could find a way to disable the floppy drive check in BIOS under boot options.


edit- topped at 38 Celsius. So a 2 degree temp drop turning it over. Not much but still something.

Dump the floppy drive and add a 3.5" bay fan to draw cool ambient air in to the case. Circulating warm air inside the case does not cool as well.

My case air runs about 2*C above ambient and the HHD's run about 1-2*C about case air temps.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I suppose I could get more air circulation if I left the outdated floppy drive out, but the BIOS whines at me about that if I don't have it in. I think my old Compaq XP computer did that years ago whenever I started it up without the floppy drive. Be nice if I could find a way to disable the floppy drive check in BIOS under boot options.


edit- topped at 38 Celsius. So a 2 degree temp drop turning it over. Not much but still something.

Dump the floppy drive and add a 3.5" bay fan to draw cool ambient air in to the case. Circulating warm air inside the case does not cool as well...

A problem I could see with blowing air into the case may cause slight pressure build up that might slow down air over the CPU cooler since the fan that feeds it is drawing air from the outside. What's really needed is an exhaust that will allow more air to be drawn through the intake.

 

[Diosoth]

Evercool makes a 3.5 bay exhaust fan that I could swap out the floppy drive with, but with the HDD right below and DVD drive right above I don't know how much air it'll effectively draw in.

I did determine the temperature sensor is installed as a part of the CPU intake fan, not near the HDD. The temp HD Tune is picking up then is near the CPU, so at the very least the exhaust fan and thermal paste are doing a good job in that regard but I also have no idea what temp the HD itself is at- but I'd assume most of the heat is coming from the CPU anyway.

 

[madcratebuilder]

but I also have no idea what temp the HD itself is at- but I'd assume most of the heat is coming from the CPU anyway.

The CPU and GPU are normally the main heat source inside your PC's case.

From what I see on my desktop systems the HDD runs 2-3*C above internal case air temp.

Download HWINFO

, that should give your your HDD temps.

What's really needed is an exhaust that will allow more air to be drawn through the intake.

I agree with LF, moving air through the case, either with positive or negative pressure is paramount.

 

[Diosoth]

I can disable the floppy drive in the system BIOS so at least I can do away with the annoying "press F1" message on boot. I may invest in the Evercool 3.5 bay exhaust fan later on though there is the issue of how much stuff I can slap onto that Molex plug without straining the PSU- as well as cord length. The Mad Dog exhaust fan does have a pass-through plug so in theory I can add the Evercool- unless I can find a 4-pin floppy to Molex power plug adapter?

Okay, I see those on eBay but those run a Molex to a floppy- I'd need the reverse.



Bashing that PCI fan into the case actually wasn't too hard and I got lucky in that it fit with enough room.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

It looks good and I would just run this and then start a ground up new build fund. We'll help with planning and budgeting. If you like compact builds this case has me really interested.

BitFenix.com » Products » Chassis » Prodigy

 

[Diosoth]

I'm not looking to build a new rig now. This Dell was bought used to run Windows XP on and it needed some work to get it up to working condition. My main PC is a Gateway running Windows 7 but if I need a new PC I will go with a custom build. It will run W8 IF I HAVE TO BUT NOT UNLESS and hopefully I can set it up for multi-booting with W7 but that will be at least 2 more years before I do anything like that.

I am curious why this Dell has a floppy drive. The inside QC check stamp says it was made in 2007 but that had to have been a dead format by then. even if I could still buy floppy discs they'd be useless with flash drives so common.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Glad you got the cooling fan going and it's working.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I am curious why this Dell has a floppy drive. The inside QC check stamp says it was made in 2007 but that had to have been a dead format by then. even if I could still buy floppy discs they'd be useless with flash drives so common.

The main reasons to keep floppies around was BIOS mainteneance (upgrading and fixing) at the time, and loading drivers (usually SATA) during XP install. Once most of the world's board manufacturers made the switch to usb flash drives (or simply non-upgradeable bios for some OEMs) the floppy headers and holes in the front of the case started disappearing for good.
It was done kinda late though, so you still had floppies in the XP age where they were largely useless (as anyone serious about it simply slipstreamed drivers in a modded XP installation disk).

If the bios of that machine still asks for a floppy to do BIOS recovery or whatnot, keep the hardware around somewhere.

Btw, Sony stopped making floppies in 2011, and was the last still manufacturing them at the times. So they are officially dead since 2011.

 

[Diosoth]

That makes sense, though the BIOS of this machine already seemed to have SATA support so it was likely done at the factory- there's 1 IDE port for the floppy drive and 2 SATA ports for HDD and DVD. There are solder points for up to 5 SATA ports but since the case can't hold more than 2 devices, they didn't bother.

I was halfway afraid the PC wouldn't work with this WD drive I had but it had zero issues detecting it or installing XP.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

The SATA issue is a Windows XP issue, not a BIOS issue. Original XP installation disks don't contain sata drivers, so at installation it won't see the hard drives even if the BIOS does.

Some BIOSes allow that to work by switching SATA to "IDE mode" which runs them slower as an IDE (half SATA II speed) but allows them to install and work until you install the sata drivers and then you can switch back to normal in the Bios options. In theory anyway. Never managed to make the switch afterwards. Always made the installation on SATA with drivers on disk or on an external device.

Or your installation CD was not original and someone slipstreamed (added) the drivers to it. Most professionals did it because floppies were annoying.

Btw, the "floppy port" is a floppy-only port. Not an IDE port.

 

[Diosoth]

That's likely the case- my old Windows XP disc is SP2 from 2006, and I got a more recent version disc from someone local I know who does PC repair because I didn't want to have to manually download and install 7 years worth of Windows Updates. It's probably good I did because I had no clue of the SATA drivers.

Just got the PC online this morning- had to buy another Ethernet cable, then reinstall the broadband drivers. Dell lists 2 different Gigabit controller drivers and doesn't specify which is which and I apparently installed the wrong set prior. Finally got my updates installed after verifying with a WGA check, Microsoft Security Essentials(while I can use Malwarebytes and SAS, MSE is the only one that provides active live protection for free) and all that. Not sure about Firefox since it's become such a RAM hog these days and this PC only has 2 GB RAM, but I'm not going to be using that PC online much to begin with.