Like a lot of the members here, I wonder why Alpha PAL always recommended that the fan be sucking hot air away from the HS and not blowing cool air onto it. So I went as recommended but not satisfy with what I have seen so far. I even got a high speed Sunon fan and the temp is still not as cool as I wanted to be.
Temps with fan sucking hot air away as recommended from Alpha.
-Idle when system has warmed up------36C-38C, depending on day to day temp. outside. No AC running.
-Underload (gaming)-----------------------42C-47C. No AC running.
I thought to myself with so many questions asked but no satisfactory answers, so I went ahead and try the short experiment. I have a Foxconn supercase where there is a 92mm fan sucking hot air out the back. I got two 80mm pulling cool air in from the front but on the bottom are two HDs metal rack which reduce cool air from reaching the inside system a bit. I got a Zalman HP80A fanless heatsink on my Radeon 9700Pro, but it was too hot so I put another 92mm fan right on the side blowing right at the Zalman. I got an Antec True Power 430W. No other fan. All of my fan are connected to the "fan" connectors on the Antec True Power, so the voltage is not full 12V which mean the fan are spinning at low speed.
My case has a very small blow hole on the side of the case, smaller than the size of the 80mm fan so I cannot mount any thing there. I tried the 60mm fan but it does not fit either. So I thought to myself, since it's directly right over the CPU cooler fan, why not use a duct to bring the air directly right on the fan and make the fan blows onto the HS instead. By the way, you have to remove the shroud for the air to blow well onto the heatsink. I figured right, since the alpha fins designs are similar to any other heatsink, why would the alpha not benefit from the cool air blowing onto it to exchange the hot air out of the heatsink.
So:
I went from two 92mm, and two 80mm low speed fan and on top of the Alpha is the high speed noisy Sunon and I mean noisy to a much lower noise system. Basically, I turned the Sunon to blow onto the heatsink, and lowered the speed of the fan. I also made an isolate duct which already there to bring in cool air just to the alpha.
So now that my system is very quiet and cooler.
Present temp with Sunon fan blowing onto the heatsink.
-Idle Temp:-----31C--34C, mostly 34C. No AC running.
-Under Load (Gaming):--------37C--41C. No AC running.
So how about that. By the way, I am running an Intel P4 2.53Ghz OEM chip at 3.06Ghz, and now it's cooler, I clocked it up to 3132Mhz. I plan to go higher later. So I would imagine this is a successful story.
To make this scheme works well, you must have a blow hole with duct isolate to bring in cool air from the side directly right onto the heatsink. And you must remove the shroud.
One more thing, get some metal filter at 2cootek.com to reduce the dust coming through. I use AS3 also as a paste for the CPU.
Temps with fan sucking hot air away as recommended from Alpha.
-Idle when system has warmed up------36C-38C, depending on day to day temp. outside. No AC running.
-Underload (gaming)-----------------------42C-47C. No AC running.
I thought to myself with so many questions asked but no satisfactory answers, so I went ahead and try the short experiment. I have a Foxconn supercase where there is a 92mm fan sucking hot air out the back. I got two 80mm pulling cool air in from the front but on the bottom are two HDs metal rack which reduce cool air from reaching the inside system a bit. I got a Zalman HP80A fanless heatsink on my Radeon 9700Pro, but it was too hot so I put another 92mm fan right on the side blowing right at the Zalman. I got an Antec True Power 430W. No other fan. All of my fan are connected to the "fan" connectors on the Antec True Power, so the voltage is not full 12V which mean the fan are spinning at low speed.
My case has a very small blow hole on the side of the case, smaller than the size of the 80mm fan so I cannot mount any thing there. I tried the 60mm fan but it does not fit either. So I thought to myself, since it's directly right over the CPU cooler fan, why not use a duct to bring the air directly right on the fan and make the fan blows onto the HS instead. By the way, you have to remove the shroud for the air to blow well onto the heatsink. I figured right, since the alpha fins designs are similar to any other heatsink, why would the alpha not benefit from the cool air blowing onto it to exchange the hot air out of the heatsink.
So:
I went from two 92mm, and two 80mm low speed fan and on top of the Alpha is the high speed noisy Sunon and I mean noisy to a much lower noise system. Basically, I turned the Sunon to blow onto the heatsink, and lowered the speed of the fan. I also made an isolate duct which already there to bring in cool air just to the alpha.
So now that my system is very quiet and cooler.
Present temp with Sunon fan blowing onto the heatsink.
-Idle Temp:-----31C--34C, mostly 34C. No AC running.
-Under Load (Gaming):--------37C--41C. No AC running.
So how about that. By the way, I am running an Intel P4 2.53Ghz OEM chip at 3.06Ghz, and now it's cooler, I clocked it up to 3132Mhz. I plan to go higher later. So I would imagine this is a successful story.
To make this scheme works well, you must have a blow hole with duct isolate to bring in cool air from the side directly right onto the heatsink. And you must remove the shroud.
One more thing, get some metal filter at 2cootek.com to reduce the dust coming through. I use AS3 also as a paste for the CPU.