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The Story

After upgrading from a lowly Celeron to an Athlon XP1800+, Dave found at the height of summer the temperature of his system and in particular his CPU was causing stability issues. Needless to say a solution needed to be found. The PC had rarely been used with a cover on and certainly hadn't since the upgrade.

A little bit of research found that a cool air duct on to the CPU fan should yield some improvement and with a little work with a pair of scissors, some adhesive tape and the box from a 10 pack of CD-Rs the following duct was constructed and installed.

This solution had an element of the desired effect, the PC took longer to heat up and hang. So, based on this experience some metal cutting was required. A hole was cut in the case cover to line up with the duct inlet.

So what was achieved with this? A massive improvement in stability brought about by a drop in full load CPU temperature from 52°C to 41°C.

The Next Stage

Now that the temperature is at a sane level and the machine is stable, why not try and make the machine quieter? Some further experimentation will be undertaken to see if the CPU fan can be removed, a new duct constructed and an 80mm fan mounted at the outer end of the duct. (The hole in the case cover was cut to 80mm by 80mm with this idea in mind)

With a modern 80mm "Silent" fan this should reduce the fan noise from 38dB(A) to 20dB(A) whilst still maintaining the same airflow and therefore CPU temperature

Many thanks to Chris (the guy in the purple top), Dave's Dad, for the help with the metalwork

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