PC fan speed servo

Many the P4s have TDP >100W and chip power densities comparable with the tip of a soldering iron. If you want something that runs quieter you need a more modern chip. My i3770 idling in winter will sometimes give a CPU fan at zero revs warning the large heatsink being enough.

Several PC tools should be able to get this info.

Accept that you are going to shorten the CPU lifetime and slow the fan maximum speed down. You might be able to do this from the BIOS or with tuning tools that came with the motherboard.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown

Theres a little program called speedfan that shows the temperatures and fan speeds. It can also controll the fan speeds.

Cheers

Usually the heatsink is clogged and the fanblades gunked in crud.

Max temp varies widely depending on cpu, look it up. If all you want is undemanding function you could always heavily underclock it. 1.2GHz would do that job easily.

NT

1+

I had a portable with exactly that symptom on my hands once. The fan and heatsink didn't even really look dirty. Since I'd taken the thing apart that far anyway, I wiped them clean nevertheless. Guess what, problem solved!

Jeroen Belleman

I have several passive cooled machines; but none have a DVD reader and memory card reader contained within! Even one of the larger (think: viewing screen) laptops will only typically accommodate a small subset of memory cards. Giving her a "solution" that consists of a (small-ish) "CPU", external DVD player *and* a flimsy little external memory card reader (plus all cables, power bricks, etc.) just ain't gonna fly! :<

I'm sure I can just let it sit in its BIOS and show me the temps, there. I.e., doing the same amount of "nothing" that appears to get it heated up when running an OS.

(sigh) I'll have a look at what the temperature *claims* to be and how quickly it plateaus (as well as "where"). It's possible something is configured for "performance"/safety rather than "convenience".

Not in *this* shop! :> A common gripe is that I keep my equipment (inside and out) cleaner than the office itself!

"Gotta have priororities!"

If it's already clean-clean, then I'd hack extra fans into the case. If you feel motivated to mess with it, yank the heat sink and replace the goo on the off chance that it was never right from day one.

Of course, that'll take enough time for you to just buy a laptop.

Are you sure there's no spots in the case for more fans?

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www.wescottdesign.com

You'd be hard-pressed to get another fan in the box!

They're cute little boxes. A friend gifted several to me that I had intended to use as little NAS boxes many years ago. But, they only comfortably support a single hard disk (unless you pull the optical drive and repurpose that slot). By the time you try to cobble a second drive in and add a drive for the OS (you can cram a laptop drive in the

3-1/2" bay that the card reader occupies beneath the DVD), it's too much of a kludge.

So, instead, I keep *one* as a small "spare" PC as it takes up less space than a desktop machine and is more versatile than any laptop!

[Actually, I have some machines that are even *smaller* -- probably 1/3 the volume of this little "shoebox". But, they use laptop drives and laptop CD (I've never checked to see if a DVD would be compatible) and also suffer from the high fan noise issue -- no place for a decent sized fan!]

Fan/heatsink/cooler ass'y:

(Note hard disk, DVD drive and associated mounting brackets appear to be missing in this view!)

I've got 5 or 6 laptops. But, they don't have support for a variety of memory cards. And, require an external power "brick" (one more thing that has to sit on/under a table). Also, mine are only 17" screens (I put a 24" monitor on the little Shuttle box as it allows photos to be viewed at approximately the same size as the paintings for which they are used as "inspiration")

You're welcome to explore! ;-)

Sometimes there are options in the BIOS setup to control how aggressively the fan ramps up and down.

If the existing fan has 3 wires, the third wire is probably a tachometer signal from the fan. If that signal is missing or low voltage, a reasonable thing for the fan controller to do is to apply full voltage to the fan all the time.

As has been mentioned, speedfan

may be able to show you this data, from Windows. It depends on whether speedfan knows how to talk to the sensor chip on your motherboard. On Linux, the lm-sensors package does the same job, and comes with most distributions.

Intel will have the specific value in the datasheet for the chip. They also have some general app notes on how to cool their stuff off, and how to measure the processor temperature externally.

Matt Roberds

about 70C I think.

it wasn't until "Core2" that intel started making low power consumption desktop processors: your P4 is going to be hot and noisy. The Core2 also boasts integrated MPEG and video which will help for your application. perhaps you can drop a slightly newer board into that box,

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umop apisdn

So, all the cooling air goes out the PS port, and comes in the adjacent case fan? Check airflow direction to be sure they aren't fighting each other.

Since years have passed, maybe a single hard drive is enough now. I've seen IDE (PATA) flash disks not much bigger than the ribbon cable connector, that are big enough for booting. Price/performance is pretty good for small (60 or 120GB) flash drives, and some variants just plug into PCIe like any other card.

No. Both fans exhaust air that is drawn into the case from holes along both sides of the case (and the underside of the front panel).

As a NAS, no. The box is just too big to service a single drive; bad use of space/power. I had thought of putting a removable drive carrier in the slot occupied by the DVD. But, the case isn't deep enough (front to back) to support that.

The box currently has a 500G drive in it (beneath the "floppy" slot -- which is presently used for the memory card reader) which is more than enough for her present uses.

[Recall, the box was just built as a "spare" machine that I could quickly deploy for some experimental need.]

Also draws air through the big and small drives if fitted, until the drives are fully clogged with lint and dust.

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umop apisdn

Looks like you could bolt a couple HDDs to the cover.

NT

Yes. A single "hi temp" setting. Currently 60C. Watching the temperatures reported suggests nothing is ever getting above ~45C -- yet the fan speed (noise) increases shortly after power up!

I can't vouch for the actual number being reported... but, note that the value drops to zero when I jam a toothpick in the fan blades! :>

I looked at temperatures as reported in the BIOS. THen, tried your suggested tool. The values are essentially the same (along with reported fan speed).

As the observations seem to be inconsistent (i.e., fan speed being REPORTED as reasonably constant despite the obvious audible change in pitch; temperatures far below the setpoint for the fan's speed-up; etc.), I'm starting to wonder if I'm looking in the wrong place.

I'm going to pull the power supply so that I can better acoustically isolate the "fan noise". Perhaps the power supply's fan is the one that is changing speed based on internal heating in that supply? *Not* the processor/system?

(Of course, if this proves to be the case, there's not much I can do as it's a little tiny supply -- form factor -- which severely limits my replacement choices!)

From some recent observations, I suspect it is not the CPU (and CPU cooler!) that is the problem. Rather, the fan in the power supply may be the cause of all the "noise"

A possibility. But, I'm not keen on heading down that path until I know how/if the box will *actually* be used. I've set up dedicated boxes in the past that ended up seeing only temporary interest. Not keen on doing that, again.

"Stick these earbuds in your ears and listen to some music (instead of fan noise) while you are using this computer..." :>

Silicone rubber fixings to acoustically isolate the noisy fans from the case may make a large difference in perceived noise.

Noise cancelling headphones? Strikes me as a bad choice for a media server if its PSU and CPU fans both drone on incessantly.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown

No, it's just the size of the fan (maybe 30mm?) and it's "speed". Unlike the CPU's cooler (which has controls), I'm sure this is just driven by a thermistor tied to some component *in* the power supply acting to control the voltage to the fan.

CPU fan is apparently not a problem. CPU isn't seeing anything more than about 48C with the fan on "low". Power supply won't be easy to change. Unfortunately, all of my passive cooled boxes are much (physically) smaller and don't have room for even a "laptop" optical drive *or* a memory card reader. Making all of those external would just be a big mess.

If this finds its intended use, I'll go hunt down something more appropriate.

Function generator, LED, "stop" the blade, do a little math.

Could be. The Antec ATX power supply in this machine controls its own fan speed that way. The tach signal is brought out on its own connector, so you can *monitor* it with one of the motherboard fan connectors, but not *change* the power supply fan speed.

Matt Roberds