[mythtv-users] Underclocking...?

Robert Denier denier at umr.edu
Sun Jan 16 18:44:47 EST 2005


Larry Silverman wrote:

Disclaimer:  If anyone fries something following what I write, I'm not 
responsible.

>Check out http://www.silentpcreview.com/ for advice.
>
>The fan on the motherboard is cooling the motherboard chipset (prob
>northbridge) and removing it is not a good idea unless you have
>confirmation or advice from others that you can do so.  It's probably
>there for a reason, right?  On the other hand, you could possibly
>successfully replace it with a heatsink.
>
>  
>
You probably are better off not removing the fan without replacing it 
with something.  A better heat sink may be enough.  If you can get a 
larger fan and have it blow air over the same area you will probably be 
ok.  There are some very quiet standard case fans that can be run at a 
lower voltage to be almost inaudible.

Similarly with the cpu.  If  you can find a good heat sink with a larger 
fan that can be set to run slowly by using some kind of control or 
perhaps just connected the fan between the +5 and + 12 volt connections 
on a power cable so you run the fan on 7 volts you can get things quieter.

You might be able to have a single fan blow air over the cpu and chip 
set heat sink, if your really lucky.  The original poster was using an 
athlon 1.1Ghz, which unless it was relatively new was a fairly hot 
chip.  Also take a look at cpufreq in the 2.6 series kernel for 
adjusting the running speed of the cpu.  Its also available as a module 
if you look around.

>I had a Radeon 7200 video card on which I read that others had
>successfully unplugged the fan, so I did it as well.  I wasn't playing
>any games or using any demanding video applications.  I never had a
>problem with it.  Maybe my case had sufficient airflow, whereas
>another case would not, and the card might have overheated.  Every
>case is different.
>
>I've also noticed that a lot of video cards by different manufacturers
>sometimes use the exact same chipset, but one manufacturer adds a fan
>while another adds a heatsink.  You'd have to ask the engineers why.
>  
>
It depends partly on the clock speeds the chips are run at and the 
voltages, although I'm not sure if the standard core voltage for video 
card chip sets varies or not.

Finally if your really desperate you could consider water cooling.  Note 
that water cooling is sometimes a pain.  My current setup consists of a 
35 gallon trash can I bought new for $7 dollars, a small submersible 
pump and a low cost simple water filter I had lying around.  I added a 
little pool chemical to prevent anything living in the water.

I also fried a perfectly good all in wonder video card awhile since that 
water path became blocked with calcium buildup not too long ago and the 
chip set cooked slowly.  (I had a small parallel path of water to the 
video card and motherboard chip set since I didn't want to reduce the 
flow to the cpu's too much.  This was probably a mistake.)  Note that if 
I would have investigated the small video errors a month earlier than I 
did, I might have saved the card,  but I assumed it was the slightly 
buggy motherboard.

At any rate there are much better closed solutions than mine.  Mine was 
just cheap and simple and didn't require any kind of external fan since 
I had such a large body of water.  (Right now my wall is 74F and my tank 
is 84.5F.)  All in all since you don't require that much power for your 
system due to using the 350 card I suspect just using quieter fans is 
the easiest and/or moving to a motherboard/cpu that uses much less 
power.  You can also sometimes cover the inside of your case with 
dynamat to reduce noise.  Of course dynamat is basically an insulator, 
so if the inside of your case is warm before, it will be warmer after 
applying that.  There are also special cases to put your hard drive in 
to reduce its noise.  Be careful or your hard drive will cook in them of 
course.

Good Luck,
-Robert



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