cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46256923
why don’t they just do this? are they stupid?
Also, as a bonus, put a cheap 4-inch AC filter on that box fan.
Now you have:
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Zero dust in your PC
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Noise dampening
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A high CFM air purifier, right in your room.
Get a 20x20x4" filter, and the fan will suck it right to itself. Don’t even need mounting materials.
I do that with my tower fan and it’s incredible. Just zip tied the filter on and let er blast.
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I had to do this with a PC once. I upgraded the GPU in an old HP, and then it would overheat playing Modern Warfare 2. Finally just took off the side of the case and pointed a box fan at it. Never overheated again.
Damn, came to comment the same thing, and it also was an HP.
But people actually do do this, if for some reason a PC is overheating or the built-in fans are making too much noise. A big fan running slowly moves more air more quietly than a bunch of little fans. I even wired an external DC fan into the PC’s power supply once so that I wouldn’t have to plug them in separately.
It can and has been done, but this doesn’t work as well as people think in most cases. You need high static pressure fans for some of the good, dense fin heat sinks. There used to be some decent large, more open heat sinks that this worked well with.
I did this before discovering one could change the CPU’s thermal paste.
I did that once in one build.
It was a shitty PC that I kept upgrading, but for some reason kept the case. so when it kept overheating,I just put a box fan just like that
How well did it work?
100%
of course it did.
it looked like shit, but it worked.
Hook an industrial chiller to that mf
Sure its a joke, but have you not seen the lengths people have gone to cool machines?
Submerged in mineral oil baths, liquid cooling from diy to expensitivo pro systems, fanless 100lbs copper heatsinks.
Stupid? Almost certainly, but not because of our innability to use big fans.
And then there’s me with a 9800x3d with a low profile cooler in a fractal ridge. It only throttles under synthetic tests so I just say fuck it and let it run at whatever temp it wants to run at.
I’ll stick with my $700 pc fan, thanks.
Yeah I did this in university.
This doesnt work with dense fin stacks though, because there is not enough pressure to push the air in between the fins. This would only work with very low power systems or heatsinks specifically designed for this kind of fan.
I have done this. Heat in Australian summer and high end games requires more cooling then the stock Intel fan.
For $700, that little fan better be able to blow, if you know what I mean…
Or better yet: ducts.
I have zero case fans in my PC.
