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Any horror stories from not properly ventilating a MAME cabinet
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eds1275:

--- Quote from: Donkbaca on June 30, 2011, 12:42:51 am ---Any horror stories of someone over ventilating their name cab?

--- End quote ---

I like to think my cab is pretty cool as it is!
Paul Olson:
I had a core2duo in mine, and my overclock was definitely affected by being in the cab. Outside of the cab, I was a little over 4GHz, but could only keep it stable at 3.6GHz inside the cab. I don't know if a fan would have helped though. It stayed at a pretty constant temp though. the computer was on for months at a time (turned off the arcade monitor when not in use though), and never had any issues.
bkenobi:
Some fans blow some suck.  The fans at the back of your system (PSU and system fans) are typically designed as exhaust fans.  They suck air OUT of the case out into the room.  Fans on the front of a case (hard drive coolers for instance) are typically going to blow air past the HDD  INTO the case.  As far as heat transfer goes. both methods work equally.  This is convection and the primary drivers in that form of heat transfer are flow speed and delta temperature.  The equation is:

q=h*A*dT

where,
h = film coefficient (driven by flow speed, geometry, etc)
A = surface area
dT = difference in temperature between air and surface temperatures

The direction of the flow makes little difference (it's factored in with h, but a forced convection flow is really independent of what direction the flow moves).  The area is pretty important, obviously, but it's set by the hardware in the system.  The delta temperature is also critical as you get no heat transfer if the air inside the case is the same as the component being cooled.  Increasing the velocity is good, but can make for more noise which is potentially bad.

Anyway, my point is that whether the fan blows air in or sucks air out, it really doesn't make as much difference as you would think.  Now, if I were designing the flow, I'd use exhaust fans or else add fans pointing at components to make sure there was forced flow in those areas.

That'll be $50,000.  Who should I send the bill to?   :laugh2:
Vigo:

--- Quote from: bkenobi on June 30, 2011, 11:15:05 am ---Some fans blow some suck.

--- End quote ---

Not to be nitpicky, but don't all fans suck and blow at the same time? I get that some fans are designed to blow, and some were born to suck, but to get things flowing, a fan has to always suck from one end and blow on the other end. It's just kinda basic physics.

OK, this post is sounding very, very wrong. I better stop right now.  :angel:
Donkbaca:
Who needs physics when you have consultants? I let them handle all the sucking and blowing and just sit back and enjoy their work...
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