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I'm sorry sir, your computer is running too....cold?

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  • I'm sorry sir, your computer is running too....cold?

    The saga continues. I love being a tech. You know how most people have trouble keeping their computer cool enough? Last night I was working on a computer that was running too cold... My friend has a Step Thermodynamics cooled CPU (a very well engineered Peltier cooler design) on a nice little set up. He started having troubles so immediately went to investigate. After a long time and a lot of very bad things happening I found out that because he was running his computer in a cold (I love Air Conditioning) basement in humid Kansas City the Step chip ran a little too well and was freezing the heat plate where the peltiers (or Electro Thermal Chip if you prefer) connected to it. This caused frost to form and then condensation. When too much condensation formed water would start dripping down and well... water and electronics don't like each other.

    To fix the problem I was forced to do the following:

    1) Add a Radio Shack Turbine fan to the bottom of the case. This fan shot air into the case fan which...

    2) Reverse the case fan so it was blowing air out of the case. That's right folks, to stop the condensation I have all fans on exhaust mode.

    3) Put the case cover on to limit the amount of cold air coming into the case. Since his case has vents on the side, enough cool air gets in to prevent overheating.

    So far my little idea has worked. Even with all fans blowing air out of the case the heating plate is still very cool, but enough to cause troubles. Man that was the weirdest fix I have ever needed to do to a computer. Sheesh.

    Jammrock

    ------------------
    PIII 540 (120 MHz x 4.5 - 540), 256 MB PC133 SDRAM, ASUS P3B-F, Winblows 98 SuckyEdition, 18 GB WD Expert HDD, Encore 6x DVD w/ Dxr3 decoder, (TEMPORARY!!!) Voodoo 3 2000 @ 175 MHz which will be replaced by a Matrox G400 MAX, Sound Blaster Live! full retail, MAG DX715T 17
    “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
    –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

  • #2
    Bizzare , never come accross that before!

    BTW, how the Asus P3B-F going?

    Chris.

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    • #3
      The P3B-F is working like a champ. I re-installed Win98 SE last might, but I am getting windows protection errors at bootup. Looks like it's time for yet another format c: > Oh well. I will be tweaking my system and a my friends BE6 system over the weekend. I'll take notes on system performance and write a quick little review on this forum for everyone who cares.

      Jammrock

      ------------------
      PIII 540 (120 MHz x 4.5 - 540), 256 MB PC133 SDRAM, ASUS P3B-F, Winblows 98 SuckyEdition, 18 GB WD Expert HDD, Encore 6x DVD w/ Dxr3 decoder, (TEMPORARY!!!) Voodoo 3 2000 @ 175 MHz which will be replaced by a Matrox G400 MAX, Sound Blaster Live! full retail, MAG DX715T 17
      “Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out”
      –The Light Fantastic, Terry Pratchett

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      • #4
        Nice one Jamrock, I'll keep a eye out for your comments.

        Format C: =


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        • #5
          I remember a story awhile ago.

          Someone had a Peltier for his overclocked P5 'cause it kept dying on him while in DOS/Windows. Some time later he was trying out Linux.

          Well, the poor guy left his Peltiered P5 running Linux over a long weekend at school. He came back to find that the machine was locked. He popped the reset switch and the machine didn't come back up. He opened the machine and found to his horror that once he removed the Peltier cooler the metal of the top of the CPU was a horrific non-gold-like color <grin>. I won't describe what happened to the contact surfaces.

          He forgot, or didn't know, that Linux has the feature of issuing the HALT instruction on the processor to keep power usage low during idle time, to be awakened on the next quantum... <sigh>

          Comment


          • #6
            That's why I'm all for thermistors. Actually, I take the easy way out: no Peltier, just a nice big heatsink/fan.

            Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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