Heat in Mame Cabs (Newbie Q)

[tuta]

All,

Just beginning my research actually -- but one of the key things I have been stressing over is the heat and airflow part of this.

What do you do to avoid overheating a CPU?  Do you remove the MB and the rest of the guts and mount ON wood inside the cab?  How do you get any airflow?  Is it really important?

thanks!

[REBIRTH]

Everyone has their own opinion.  Here is mine:

1)  You do have to worry about heat.  The monitor (whatever type you go with) will produce a lot of heat along with the PC (as well as subwoofer if you have one, marquee lights possibly)

2)  I do not beleive in removing the motherboard, and PC guts, from the PC cabinet.  One reason is that the PC cabinet actually helps keep the PC cooler by creating the contained airflow that the PC cooling fan supplies.  Sort of like blowing a fan on you during the summer while you are in an open field and then blowing the same fan on you while you are in a closet - you'll get more of the fan effect in the smaller space.

3)  Probably the best thing to do, if your cabinet will be enclosed, is to install 1 or 2 ventillation fans.  You can do a search on here and see a bunch of posts on it.  Opinions differ here too - some people put in fans that suck the hot air out (fans blowing outside the cab), others put in fans that suck cooler air into the cabinet (fans blowing into the cab).  I am partial to sucking the hot air out myself (I figure it helps with dust too, I figure there will be less collected if I am sucking out as opposed to blowing in).  Note that some fans are much quieter than others, as well some fans give off a magnetic or electrical type charge (not an expert here), so you may not want the fan too close to anything that will be affected by that.

4)  Some people do not enclose the back of the cab, which if you do that then the heat issue isn't that big of a deal.

[Minwah]

Everyone has their own opinion.  Here is mine:

1)  You do have to worry about heat.  The monitor (whatever type you go with) will produce a lot of heat along with the PC (as well as subwoofer if you have one, marquee lights possibly)

2)  I do not beleive in removing the motherboard, and PC guts, from the PC cabinet.  One reason is that the PC cabinet actually helps keep the PC cooler by creating the contained airflow that the PC cooling fan supplies.  Sort of like blowing a fan on you during the summer while you are in an open field and then blowing the same fan on you while you are in a closet - you'll get more of the fan effect in the smaller space.

3)  Probably the best thing to do, if your cabinet will be enclosed, is to install 1 or 2 ventillation fans.  You can do a search on here and see a bunch of posts on it.  Opinions differ here too - some people put in fans that suck the hot air out (fans blowing outside the cab), others put in fans that suck cooler air into the cabinet (fans blowing into the cab).  I am partial to sucking the hot air out myself (I figure it helps with dust too, I figure there will be less collected if I am sucking out as opposed to blowing in).  Note that some fans are much quieter than others, as well some fans give off a magnetic or electrical type charge (not an expert here), so you may not want the fan too close to anything that will be affected by that.

4)  Some people do not enclose the back of the cab, which if you do that then the heat issue isn't that big of a deal.

Yes everyone has an opinion (I think there was a long thread about this lately)...

I agree with what Rebirth says for the most part, tho I have my PC mounted on a removable board (ie not in a PC case).  To use Rebirths example: the closet would be hotter in the first place, so naturally requires more cooling (kindof a bad example for me as there wouldn't neccessarily be a heat source anywhere near the closet, but hey )

I would somewhat disagree with 1) you don't need to worry about heat, especially if you use a quick AMD I would take a lot of care over it.  Use some system diagnostics software to monitor your temperatures until you are comfortable with your setup.  I am still playing with mine (!) to some extend, adjusting the CPU fan speed to be exact...

[OSCAR]

When I built my upright MAME cab, www.oscarcontrols.com/unnamed, I was a bit concerned about heat issues in my design due to:

1. dual power supplies
2. fairly small enclosure volume because of 2-piece cabinet design
3. car amp
4. caseless computer

It looked like the perfect recipe for disaster, so I kept the motherboard monitor program that came with the mobo running in the background so I could keep an eye on the temperature of the system.  As it turns out, my cpu never even gets close to leaving the "normal" temperature range, it almost runs on the cool side.  I tend to agree with Minwah, airflow is important when everything is bundled together in a small case; but when you spread the components around inside a cab, the heat doesn't have the opportunity to build up in the first place.

[SirPeale]

Just remember your general rules of physics: heat rises.  Make sure there are vents @ the bottom of the cabinet, and damn sure there are vents on near the top, whether they be on the top back or top...top.

[patrickl]

It depends very much on the components. I have several PC's with an unventilated CPU and hard disks that will melt if not cooled by a fan. Components like that  both depend on the forced airflow through the case to remain cooled.

Not to nitpick over examples, but indeed the "closet" example could be misinterpreted. It's more like cooling a cup of soup by leaving it standing in a room or blowing air over it. (Or maybe having 4 cups of soup and one fan where a confined space would help) Anyway, it always depends if the soup is too hot to begin with. With PC components as with soup, you better make damn sure it's never too hot.

[big_garryb]

Is there a program or something i can use to monitor the heat of the system? i use windows XP and thought it was a standard program thingy...........  but cant find it

gb

[big_garryb]

just had a look on cnet and found this: http://download.com.com/3000-2086-10164029.html?tag=lst-0-3

it is a temp monitor....and free.. aint tried it yet!

also read somewhere that it i buy a decent fan, that give the facility to check the temp..... is this right?

gb

[big_garryb]

Just read the user opinions on cnet for the above program.............. most of them are bad, so please disregard the link above. program looks crap - i aont even gonna bother trying it!

gb

[DaveJ-UK]

Look on the disk that came with your mobo.

If you don't have the disk, go to the manufacturers website and check the downloads section for your model.

There are a few third party ones like I guess you found. I think Intel make a pretty good temp monitor but I've never used any.

[Muttley]

Just remember your general rules of physics: heat rises.  Make sure there are vents @ the bottom of the cabinet, and damn sure there are vents on near the top, whether they be on the top back or top...top.

Yep, this is the way to do it.  And is in fact the way almost all real arcade machines do it.

Muttley

[seibu]

I use Motherboard Monitor for windows.

But does anyone know of a motherboard/cpu temperature readout program that will run from the Linux console?

I'm building a cocktail cab, so space is going to be tight - and I'm getting pretty worried about the heat problem. Can anyone reccommend the best places to put my fans? Should I copy the old Pacman design on this?