B&W cooling mod

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Hokusai's picture
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B&W cooling mod

Well, here it goes. I actually did it a while back but forgot about it. I took it out today to take some pictures, though.
[image:3581 size=thumbnail]
Here the you can see the small cpu fan that I put in there. I happened to have one that was the perfect size.
B&W fan holder pict2
Here is where you can see how I had to cut into the speaker holder to get the fan to sit in there right.

Now that I have the fan out, my case temperature does seem to be a little hotter than when it was in there.

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hmm

seams kinda pointless, ive never heard of any mac(EVEN the fanless imacs) overheating. if anything they over desing them! but good idea anyway maybe its like those people who were putting large(120mm) very quite fans in there slot loading imacs i'm sure it will extend the life of it from lasting about 2000 years to maybe 4000(macs never break unless you do something stupid) i did sorta the same thing wit an old pentium cpu fan on my powermac 5400 so unless the noise anoys you i would say put the fan back

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the crt imacs die quite often

the crt imacs die quite often...

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QUOTE: "seams kinda pointless

QUOTE: "seams kinda pointless, ive never heard of any mac(EVEN the fanless imacs) overheating. if anything they over desing them! but good idea anyway maybe its like those people who were putting large(120mm) very quite fans in there slot loading imacs i’m sure it will extend the life of it from lasting about 2000 years to maybe 4000(macs never break unless you do something stupid) i did sorta the same thing wit an old pentium cpu fan on my powermac 5400 so unless the noise anoys you i would say put the fan back"

Haha, you never had a mac die on you, have ya. Don't worry, your time will come. My friend's tangerine slotload imac had the video analog board die, he did nothing but use it. My indigo imac 400 died for no reason at all one day. My indigo ibook had the logic board die. The only "stupid" thing we did was buy the machine. No machine is perfect. trust me, i bet your time will come. I have a 128k mac that still works, but a 2 year old imac died, not cuz im stupid, cuz something was built wrong.

BTW, anyone know how come i can't do Quotes anymore?

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it just has

the power suply in my power mac 9500/150 just blew, i'm posting this from an old HP that happened to be lying around, so my first mac has died. anyone know where i can get a new 9500 power suply?

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Re: hmm

if anything they over desing them!

Whats over desing?

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something stupid like tempting fate for example?

Posted by  kurami on July 3, 2004 - 1:37am.

(macs never break unless you do something stupid)

Posted by  kurami on July 3, 2004 - 9:41am.

the power suply in my power mac 9500/150 just blew,

BWAHAHAHAHA

Never toy with the computer gods, mortal.

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[quote]the power suply in my

the power suply in my power mac 9500/150 just blew, i’m posting this from an old HP that happened to be lying around, so my first mac has died. anyone know where i can get a new 9500 power suply?

Ebay

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What planet are you from?

I have been working on Macs for 15 years and I am RELIGIOUS about them, but the very existence of this site and sites like this one speak to the FACT that they, like everything else, break down. The law of entropy says that things naturally move from an ordered state to a disordered state--Macs are no exception. I make my living repairing Macs and I assure you, not all Macs are made perfectly. The slot-laoding iMacs, for instance, love to eat PAV boards, costing $300 a pop to repair because of a basic design flaw that Apple will not admit to.

The Powerbook G3 Wallstreets had terrible screen problems and the 233 "Mainstreet" model is so slow, it is considered unusable.

To call putting a fan in a slot-loading iMac "pointless" is like saying that antifreeze is an unnecessary expense for your car because it runs better and hotter with no fluid in the cooling system. The iMacs usued a revolutionary "convective" convection cooling system that was very new to computers at the time (it had never been done). It worked okay, but certainly was not reliable enough to leave you iMac on for long periods. The components just cook in there. I have rehabbed and repaired hundreds of these computers and I always tell the owners to use it for a few hours at a time, turn it OFF for a half hour, then run it again.

I have never heard of over-designing (desing?) a computer! You have not been around macs for long if you've never heard of an iMac overheating. Perhaps you do not know the symptoms of overheating? They are sudden application quits, slow performance, freezes, etc. They don't SMOKE like a car, they start acting up. Thing before you accuse something of being pointless.
Lazarus

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While a fan wouldent hurt to

While a fan wouldent hurt to have an a slot loading iMac, they really dont run very warm at all. But a 40mm case fan is not going to help temps any, it doesnt move enough air. A 80mm or larger that moves a decent amount of air would help, or a high rpm 60mm, but those are way noisy. The original iMacs used 90mm fans blowing up through the top. These helped cool the CPU and its overly SMALL heatsink and disperse heat from the CRT.

Now G4 towers on the other hand over heat very easily. Add a CPU upgrade,, few HD's, and a faster video card and it will get very warm, very fast.

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The opposite seems true. G4s hot?

The past 3 or 4 years of development has made the size of the fan a very minor factor in its noise. There are 100mm fans out there that run at less than 20 db on a high setting. This is from computer-aided fan design, and ultra-quiet bearings in new motors. If anyone is willing to pay an extra $10 or so, they can get a fan that is very difficult to detect except for the air leaving the machine.

As I have said in other posts, I repair Macs for a living. It is my ONLY job and I have seen a great deal of them. Overheating is almost NEVER the cause for a problem in a Powermac G4, while overheating is almost ALWAYS a factor in SL imac failures. You stated, from what evidence I have no clue, that the G4s run hotter? This is pure and utter BUNK. Please tell me how a PowerMac, with a sizeable fan and well-designed cooling structure can overheat MORE than an iMac with NO FAN and a CRT built in? Immediately behind me as I write this, there are no less than 7 slot-load imacs sitting idle in need of major work because they OVERHEATED. I have a DUAL PROCESSOR 450, with 768 megs of RAM, 3 internal HDs with a total of 320 Gigs of storage, an internal DVD burner, both AGP and PCI video cards, USB 2.0 card, and a SCSI card and it runs cool as a cucumber. The air coming out is barely warm (about 90 degrees).

Once again, you over generalized. The new Hard Drives, thanks to those same ultra quiet bearings, are cool to the touch, and Apple's dual processor heat sink is MORE than adequate. It runs 24/7 and NEVER has overheated.

SOME of what you said might have been true about 8 years ago, but not today. Do you just say stuff to say it? The heat sink on the CPU of the original Bondi Blue iMac was not "overly small" as you say. It was designed, with the fan, to provide adequate cooling for the G3 chip, which does not run very relatively hot, compared to its Pentium cousins because the much of the processor wiring is OUTSIDE the chip, while the Pentium's wiring is largely INTERNAL, causing heat build up.

I have DOUBLE the video, DOUBLE the processors, the same cooling system, and TRIPLE the hard drives, yet my computer runs cool. It must be a FREAK!
Lazarus

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I have over heated G4's to th

I have over heated G4's to the point of kernal panicing many times. A bone stock 400 sawtooth with 1 HD and a Rage128 wont over heat. Put a 1GHz+ upgrade in it, A newer radeon, and a few HD's, and it will over heat quite easily. The case is terribly designed in terms of cooling. The only exhaust fan is the PSU (this goes all the way to quicksilvers). They have intakes, but no exhaust. Sure they have a big 120mm fan that sucks in air from the back, the 733's and up have intake fans for the CPU's, but again, the only exhaust fan is the PSU. Where did you get a new HD that is cool to the touch? I have yet to see a 7200rpm HD that runs cool to the touch.

As for fan noise, its generally rpm and blade design these days that determine noise. You can get 60mm fans that run at 7k rpm and pump lots of air, but are very loud (38dB or so). Where a 120mm fan running at 3.5k rpm will put out just as much air, but be uch quieter. Also, a thicker fan will pump more air. The G5 uses 80x30mm fans they can pump lots of air at a lower rpm.

Before I moved my G4 into the G5 case, the PSU would spit out *HOT* air whenever the CPU and GPU where heavily used (which is all the time) The G5 case barely gets warm inside, as it has unrestricted air flow from front to back.

I didnt say SL iMacs dont get hot period, I said they run cooler then the 233-333 iMac's, which even with a fan, get hotter. And even then it is only a single part that fails in the iMacs hardware wise. The mainboard/CPU rarely fail.

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You're right!

Yep, you are right about the output fan. You can get the antec PCI mount exhaust fans that are not too noisy an provide a great adjunct to the existing situation. 7200 RPM HDS 120 Gig and 160 Gig--Seagate Barracuda (newest model with state of the art bearing and areal density increases) is a good semi-cool HD. The Samsung SpinPoint 7200 RPM 120 Gig IS quite cool to the touch even after extended use. Unlike the Maxtors and WDs that you can fry an egg on.

The key with the G5 is the NUMBER of fans, the fact that the system is divided into 4 zones, and they OS regulates the fan speed to match temperature. The result is fan speeds that are along the line of ceiling fans instead of radiator fans. Yes, the input and output makes a difference but it is one part in a big design overhaul.

The MDD Powermacs had that screwed up recall. The only recall I have ever heard of with a 4 month expiration date! People who didn't hear about it in time (probably because the noisy fans in the first gen were so loud it made them DEAF) got NO recall. Nice going APPLE!! The fans were improved, but the noise was absolutely unacceptable.

In my opinion, a simple exhaust fan with a small CPU fan is more than enough unless you're running crazy hot internal stuff. Sure, the 1 Ghz upgrade creates heat issues because the case just wasn't designed under those parameters. You don't pick up 300 board feet of exterior plywood with a Yugo. It is not the right car for the load. Same is true of the upgrade. You should upgrade the cooling system if you are doubling the heat output.

Laz

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Heh... weird

Must be a US thing...

My 300MHz overclocked PowerMac 5500/225 board still works, and I used to kick the cr*p out of that thing by running it for hours and making it pump out mean graphics constantly.

My 600MHz iMac EOL runout model is just fine- only issue was a dud hard drive 1 week out of warranty.

My 333MHz Tangerine iMac runs fine, and has had the screen on so much it's badly burnt in.

My 366MHz(FireWire) iBook never had a single heat problem.

Neither did my first real Mac, a 333 Blueberry iMac with 40GB 7200rpm/8MB hard drive, and a hefty overclock to 400MHz.

But then there are my customers' computers... uhh... never mind. Wink
Maybe I'm just lucky. Smile

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great idea. maybe I will do

great idea. maybe I will do this.

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The Gods have SPOKEN!!!!!!!!!!

I know NOTHING. If Macs only break if you did something stupid, Kurami is in for seven years of broken macs!

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