How's that JetFlo doing for you (in terms of noise & airflow)? I'm considering getting one to replace the main CPU fan in my MDD, along with a few 60mm intake/exhaust fans too.
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Resolved Heat is the enemy, was: $4 and I'm happy!
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How's that JetFlo doing for you (in terms of noise & airflow)? I'm considering getting one to replace the main CPU fan in my MDD, along with a few 60mm intake/exhaust fans too.
It's great. Now I have other problems, lol!
This is a PC fan, so it comes with the four pin connector. The connector on the Quicksilver is nothing like this. Fortunatetely, with the OTHER fan I got, it came with a four pin to molex connector so I was able to rig the Cooler Master with that adapter.
However it seems to draw more power. Or maybe it's the other fan, IDK. But I turn on the Mac, it chimes and nothing. I have to force it off, then turn it back on again and it will boot normally. The power button dims a bit but then lites back up. I can't restart because it will just shut down.
I'm thinking it's because of the initial power surge when starting. It's a 12v fan, but it's drawing 0.4 amps while the previous fan was drawing 0.32 amps.
Once running though the Mac is (to me) pretty damn silent. The Cooler Master comes with two silencer leads which limit the fan speed. The Mac sounds like an air conditioner on low, but that's acceptable to me over the whine of the smaller case fan that was there.
The other problem is that the smaller case fan, because it's more efficient is pushing more air. A lot of that is hitting the back of the optical drive and overheating it. Trying a few things to fix that.
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Shhhhh!!! That's REALLY what I'm trying to do! The worlds first hovering Quicksilver G4!I'm really enjoying following your saga.....if you get many more fans in there that machine is going to start hovering over your desk
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Thanks Intell! Not going to try that right now though. My soldiering skills are bad at best and I just cooked a Radeon 9200. So, I'm going to leave well enough alone for the time being.
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Thanks for the tip!
"Good old" and popular AS5 was what the user reported me back, he had used on that Dual 1,8GHz Sonnet. If you like some encouragement.
(Though I will try some of the ones that are on the top here http://skinneelabs.com/2011-thermal-paste-review-comparison/2/ , when I will have to do it one time. Not sure, if in real life there is any difference beyond testing measurement mistakes, though.
)Here are the Specs for the Fans. Look for G4 933 (which is the Quicksilver with 933MHz) http://web.archive.org/web/20070303184013/http://infohost.nmt.edu/~holstien/g4info.html
According to these specs the 0,4A must be fine.
But I remember reading an article about changing the fan inside the PSU by that "Karl". There he stated power problems and what he did. I can't fin the article, but he is very nice and you can find his address on the linked page. You may want to ask him for the fan-swap article.
The 12V lines seem to get to much stress, too. I once had connected a 600GB Velociraptor along with other drives and two additional fans (additional to the two stock fans of the Sawtooth). Some HDDs won't show, unless I disconected one 120mm fan or the Velociraptor.
What about searching for a quieter thicker fan, to put in the place of the original case fan that blew backwards out of the case and was connected directly to the CPU-heatsink?
The problem with the heat blowing in the direction of the optical drive - can't you just turn it around, so that it blows onto the Logicboard and slightly out of the holes in the case?
Also, what I did once in my Sawtooth (I may have suggested that on the earlier pages?) is putting a 120mm fan (red) before the PSU. See the picture.
Excuse the kiddy draw
The orange one is possible in the Sawtooth. 70mm with the lowest PCI-slot free, 80-95mm two slot free, 100mm with three slots free. More than 100mm is not possible. (Though that would not do much, since the most heat is between the CPU und the PSU.)
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Well…the fans may be down to pressure inside the case. I notice that if I start the Mac with the case open I don't have any issues. So, I'm guessing that there's a pretty good air current going on when the case is closed.
As to reversing the fan, in my previous testing I discovered that I need one fan bringing in air and one fan expelling air. I can't have two bringing in air or two expelling air. So, that means the smaller 80mm fan by the CPUs is the one bringing the air in and the PSU fan (120mm) is expelling it.
Right now I think I have the optical drive problem sorted. Turns out (I think) it was the media I was trying to encocde that was causing Toast to crash. I swapped drives with my external and it's now working properly. But it crashed while encoding the media file. So, that leaves me to believe it's the media file and not the optical drive (or the heat) itself.
Once I get the AS5, I'll be pulling the CPUs so at that point I will swap the optical drives again. The one I now have in there says it's a DL drive but it doesn't seem to like seeing DVD-R, or DVD+R DL blanks. It sees burned DVD-R media, but it won't read burned DVD+R DL media.
The burner in question is an HP DVD 740 (Lightscribe). If anyone knows of any drivers I should install for it, let me know.
EDIT: Oh, a couple pieces of clear packing tape placed over the back end corner of the optical drive seems to deflect the hot air being blasted at it. I'll probably put some sort of better deflector or so in there once I do the AS5 thing.
I hesitate to put another fan in as suggested by Cox Orange simply because I need at least one Molex connecter for the Radeon 9800 Pro when I install it.
EDIT2: DAMN! This is REALLY FUN trying to crack this nut! And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I mean, it's fun. I'm really enjoying this.
As to reversing the fan, in my previous testing I discovered that I need one fan bringing in air and one fan expelling air. I can't have two bringing in air or two expelling air. So, that means the smaller 80mm fan by the CPUs is the one bringing the air in and the PSU fan (120mm) is expelling it.
Right now I think I have the optical drive problem sorted. Turns out (I think) it was the media I was trying to encocde that was causing Toast to crash. I swapped drives with my external and it's now working properly. But it crashed while encoding the media file. So, that leaves me to believe it's the media file and not the optical drive (or the heat) itself.
Once I get the AS5, I'll be pulling the CPUs so at that point I will swap the optical drives again. The one I now have in there says it's a DL drive but it doesn't seem to like seeing DVD-R, or DVD+R DL blanks. It sees burned DVD-R media, but it won't read burned DVD+R DL media.
The burner in question is an HP DVD 740 (Lightscribe). If anyone knows of any drivers I should install for it, let me know.
EDIT: Oh, a couple pieces of clear packing tape placed over the back end corner of the optical drive seems to deflect the hot air being blasted at it. I'll probably put some sort of better deflector or so in there once I do the AS5 thing.
I hesitate to put another fan in as suggested by Cox Orange simply because I need at least one Molex connecter for the Radeon 9800 Pro when I install it.
EDIT2: DAMN! This is REALLY FUN trying to crack this nut! And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I mean, it's fun. I'm really enjoying this.
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LOL!
OK, so it looks like I absolutely have to have the old smaller 60mm case fan in.
That said, I've done some reworking again.
The old PSU fan connector was unused. I do not plan to use the old 120mm fan. So, I cut off the connector and took the 80mm high capacity fan and cut of it's connector. Spliced the ends and plugged it into the old PSU connector. That fan went were the blue LED fan (80mm) used to be (on top of the two smaller CPU fans). I then zip tied the blue LED fan to two Tinker Toy sticks and stuck that fan upright between the two SATA drives pointing towards the back of the case.
Going to leave it alone now and wait for the Arctic Silver.
OK, so it looks like I absolutely have to have the old smaller 60mm case fan in.
That said, I've done some reworking again.
The old PSU fan connector was unused. I do not plan to use the old 120mm fan. So, I cut off the connector and took the 80mm high capacity fan and cut of it's connector. Spliced the ends and plugged it into the old PSU connector. That fan went were the blue LED fan (80mm) used to be (on top of the two smaller CPU fans). I then zip tied the blue LED fan to two Tinker Toy sticks and stuck that fan upright between the two SATA drives pointing towards the back of the case.
Going to leave it alone now and wait for the Arctic Silver.
Forgive me if you already said this but: You were planning to get 5 monitors if I remember correctly. Do you already have them or not yet? I would be interested in seeing this.
I have one 20" Cinema Display (the non-high def one) and two 17" Studio Displays. All three of those are the clear acrylic ones with the foot in the back. I have two other monitors.
What I DON'T have is the DVI to ADC converter boxes that will let me attach these displays to DVI/VGA video cards. So, until I get those I have to leave my GeForce 2MX AGP card in the Mac because it's the only card I have that has an ADC port. The other two Studio Displays are just sitting there.
Once I get the converters I can run 5 displays. What I WANT, is 5 20" Hi-Def Cinema Displays (the acrylic ones).
The converters run about $100 on eBay.
Beautiful. It looks a bit cramped, though.
I think the blue LED fan is a great touch.
At least this link (Windows Firmware Update) suggests what seems:
- Adds support for additional DVD-R and DVD+RW media.
- Improves compatibility with double-layer DVD-R and double-layer DVD+R
media.
https://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?cc=de&lc=de&dlc=de&softwareitem=pv-42566-1
My Samsung DVD+/-DL Drive gets very hot, when burning DVDs (had no problem with any media or file), so hot, that once, when I had a 100x10mm fan laying on it, the plastic of the fan began to stink.
Unfortunately I had already sold my LG +/-DL Burner, I had pulled from a G4 that was used in a print agency, before I discovered the heat.
When you redo the thermal paste, you most probably will have access to the screws of the little fans. Maybe you want to consider putting these away entirely (those on my Dual Sonnet are very loud) and replacing with a bigger and maybe thicker fan (or with the one you already have).
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Arctic Clean used and Arctic Silver applied! Mac running at 1.8ghz.
We'll see how this goes. One freeze already, but I don't know if that counts. Seems to be quieter though. Which is good!
On another note last time I went to Fry's Electronics I noticed some plastic tubing of the kind to wrap cables and whatnot inside cases. I'll be picking some of that up soon and getting this rat's nest under control.
We'll see how this goes. One freeze already, but I don't know if that counts. Seems to be quieter though. Which is good!
On another note last time I went to Fry's Electronics I noticed some plastic tubing of the kind to wrap cables and whatnot inside cases. I'll be picking some of that up soon and getting this rat's nest under control.
Well
that's it. It froze again. So
looks like 1.73Ghz is the limit with air cooling. That's cool, at least I know I've given my best shot at it.
Water cooling to try later on down the road
Seems to run quieter though! So, applying the Arctic Silver didn't hurt!
Water cooling to try later on down the road
Seems to run quieter though! So, applying the Arctic Silver didn't hurt!
One final note on this. It was not until today that I realized that with all the fan switching and agonizing I was doing I NEVER CHANGED OUT THE FAN INSIDE THE PSU!!!
I didn't realize that I could do that. So, my project for tonight was to take the new 80mm fan that I had doubled up on top of the CPU fans and put it INSIDE the PSU.
The old fan inside was seriously dusty and I am guessing that it was the sole fan making all the racket. All the other fans are quiet. And this 80mm I replaced it with as mentioned earlier is 3500RPM and 62CFM. I imagine that's much better than the old fan that was inside there.
In any case the Mac, while still a bit loud is MUCH quieter than it was.
Now, I'm done with fans! Tubing still to get and a video card to make another attempt at flashing tomorrow night.
I didn't realize that I could do that. So, my project for tonight was to take the new 80mm fan that I had doubled up on top of the CPU fans and put it INSIDE the PSU.
The old fan inside was seriously dusty and I am guessing that it was the sole fan making all the racket. All the other fans are quiet. And this 80mm I replaced it with as mentioned earlier is 3500RPM and 62CFM. I imagine that's much better than the old fan that was inside there.
In any case the Mac, while still a bit loud is MUCH quieter than it was.
Now, I'm done with fans! Tubing still to get and a video card to make another attempt at flashing tomorrow night.
Erik, can you post, what model and make the original fan was? (curious if it is the same as in the link underneath) and what ampere rating your new fan has?
The guy from the fan specs overview page I have posted here and there on the forum http://web.archive.org/web/20070303184013/http://infohost.nmt.edu/~holstien/g4info.html
had done this in his Quicksilver (this article is not available over the waybackmachine it seems, anymore). He stated, that he had to regulate the fan externally, because his new one had to much Ampere.
But I heard differing things on that. Some say it doesn't matter since it is still the big PSU, where the power comes from, others say, since the fan is attached to a temp sensor and speed regulator board, it might fry it.
Not wanting to scare you.
btw. in my Sawtooth it is the only fan swap I have kept till today (i.e. new one in the PSU). I was happy with the gained quietness at approximately same airflow and after trying a Xigmatek XAF-F1255 PWM 120mm (CFP-DXGWL-KU5) for the case fan (which was loud) I stopped with the stock case fan. But I will try it somewhen again with some other fans I have on my list... once I have the time and whim.
The guy from the fan specs overview page I have posted here and there on the forum http://web.archive.org/web/20070303184013/http://infohost.nmt.edu/~holstien/g4info.html
had done this in his Quicksilver (this article is not available over the waybackmachine it seems, anymore). He stated, that he had to regulate the fan externally, because his new one had to much Ampere.
But I heard differing things on that. Some say it doesn't matter since it is still the big PSU, where the power comes from, others say, since the fan is attached to a temp sensor and speed regulator board, it might fry it.
Not wanting to scare you.
btw. in my Sawtooth it is the only fan swap I have kept till today (i.e. new one in the PSU). I was happy with the gained quietness at approximately same airflow and after trying a Xigmatek XAF-F1255 PWM 120mm (CFP-DXGWL-KU5) for the case fan (which was loud) I stopped with the stock case fan. But I will try it somewhen again with some other fans I have on my list... once I have the time and whim.
Well here's the thing. The one inside the PSU has got a stock Magic fan. Two wires, black and red. Your usual power and ground. Now the fan I replaced it with is speed sensing. But to hook it up elsewhere earlier I had to splice the power and ground wires to work with an Apple proprietary connector.Erik, can you post, what model and make the original fan was? (curious if it is the same as in the link underneath) and what ampere rating your new fan has?
The guy from the fan specs overview page I have posted here and there on the forum http://web.archive.org/web/20070303184013/http://infohost.nmt.edu/~holstien/g4info.html
had done this in his Quicksilver (this article is not available over the waybackmachine it seems, anymore). He stated, that he had to regulate the fan externally, because his new one had to much Ampere.
But I heard differing things on that. Some say it doesn't matter since it is still the big PSU, where the power comes from, others say, since the fan is attached to a temp sensor and speed regulator board, it might fry it.
Not wanting to scare you.
btw. in my Sawtooth it is the only fan swap I have kept till today (i.e. new one in the PSU). I was happy with the gained quietness at approximately same airflow and after trying a Xigmatek XAF-F1255 PWM 120mm (CFP-DXGWL-KU5) for the case fan (which was loud) I stopped with the stock case fan. But I will try it somewhen again with some other fans I have on my list... once I have the time and whim.
Getting the connector off the post in the PSU was problematic. I didn't want to damage anything by forcing things. So, since I was going to have to splice the thing anyway I just cut the wires, removed the sheath and put power to power and ground to ground and wrapped it all up with electrical tape. I don't think it can be a speed/thermal type switch. Maybe the board the connector is attached to limits power, IDK. But the fan works.
All the searching I did about this mentions that people simply replaced the fan with whatever 80mm fan they found. Other than the myriad warnings of killing yourself by touching the caps inside the PSU nothing else was mentioned about anything special that this fan needed. So I'm not going to worry about it. It's working.
Right now, my other problem is that it froze last night at some point and now either system fonts are corrupted or the entire OS X installation has gone bad. Going to be running DW when I get home tonight from my other Mac. Have to pull the boot drive and put it in a case. The QS won't boot from the DW disk now. Which worries me because it was perfectly fine before.
I don't know if that's because the DW disk relies on the Giga Designs CPU data that's on the boot drive or not (probably) that allows booting with this processor, but I guess tonight I will find out. It boots normally and operates just fine, but the moment I try to open an app inside my account weird crap starts happening. A different account seems to be fine though. Hoping DW fixes things.
*0 ok, then they might have used different models (one being a Delta).
*1 I had the luck that I could connect the three pin connector to the two Pin socket. The third just overlaps on the side and is not attached.
*2 well mine does speed up, when I have it on several hours.
*3 Might very well be, that the person on the edu-site was wrong.
I wish you good luck on the re-installation thing.
IDK. Maybe. I just know it's working on my Mac.
Well, the fan came with a three pin socket that I could have plugged in to this two pin socket. But, I had already spliced the wires to make it work with a dfferent connector and the one on the PSU wasn't coming off. So, I cut it and respliced it.
Yeah, it seems to do that a bit. Don't know how it may be regulating it, if it is. All, I know is the fan is working.
What can I say. The fan is working and I'm not having issues.
Yeah…about that!
Did some research today. I was getting a bunch of errors such as this (not the exact error numbers): "kernel FireWire (OHCI) TI ID 823f built-in: no valid selfIDs for more than 3 minutes after bus reset."
One of those errors was also a PCI error. So, I thought about it and the one thng that came to mind was my FW400/USB 2.0 card. And yep, I was right. The damn card failed!
Once I pulled the card the Mac booted right up into DiskWarrior and I repaired the disk. Now I do not seem to be having any issues. So, the card must have been going bad and last night when the Mac froze I guess is when it actually died.
Anyway, things seem to be back to normal.
Cleaned up!
OK!
Went and bought another one of the b-blaster80 fans. 80mm, 3500rpm, 62cfm. This is the same one I swapped out inside the PSU.
Took a tip from Cox Orange and placed the fan behind the PSU.
I also took the time to run in tubing to clean up the rats nest of cables. Lastly, I finally swapped out cabling from my cable modem to my router and to the Quicksilver with CAT 6 ethernet cable (yeah, it makes a difference!).
Pics below!
OK!
Went and bought another one of the b-blaster80 fans. 80mm, 3500rpm, 62cfm. This is the same one I swapped out inside the PSU.
Took a tip from Cox Orange and placed the fan behind the PSU.
I also took the time to run in tubing to clean up the rats nest of cables. Lastly, I finally swapped out cabling from my cable modem to my router and to the Quicksilver with CAT 6 ethernet cable (yeah, it makes a difference!).
Pics below!
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Hm, I had the luck, that this "angle" at the top of the PSU is not present, so that I could fit in a 120mm fan. Sorry, it didn't work for you.
OK, did some more minor work tonight. Borrowed a drive cage from an old PC, put one of my 120mm fans on the bottom of the case and the drive cage vertically on top of the fan. Seems to be working fairly well.
I would have liked to place it horizontally, but there was no way to get the door closed doing that.
I would have liked to place it horizontally, but there was no way to get the door closed doing that.
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Hard drives…
Just noting here. The two SATA drives I have in my QS are Western Digital WD5000YS-01MPB0 Caviar RE2 drives. They have ALWAYS run hot in any system I've had them in, including external cases. Considering my issues with heat I've been slightly worried about them.
My understanding is that outside drive temps are about 60º C. 30-40º C is optimal range, while 40-50º C is acceptable. After doing some research it seems that the 45-50º C range my drives operate under is normal for them. Turns out these are server class drives (the RE in the drive name is for RAID Edition). This makes sense as they were originally purchased as backup drives to the work server.
They are operating about 4º hotter where I have them now, but still in the acceptable range. What's interesting is that the OTHER drives in the case are running cooler and the system overall seems to be faster. This tells me that the heat the drives were generating was rolling over on to my PCI cards Now that heat seems to be contained in a different area of the case and the system is overall cooler. Interesting!
Just noting here. The two SATA drives I have in my QS are Western Digital WD5000YS-01MPB0 Caviar RE2 drives. They have ALWAYS run hot in any system I've had them in, including external cases. Considering my issues with heat I've been slightly worried about them.
My understanding is that outside drive temps are about 60º C. 30-40º C is optimal range, while 40-50º C is acceptable. After doing some research it seems that the 45-50º C range my drives operate under is normal for them. Turns out these are server class drives (the RE in the drive name is for RAID Edition). This makes sense as they were originally purchased as backup drives to the work server.
They are operating about 4º hotter where I have them now, but still in the acceptable range. What's interesting is that the OTHER drives in the case are running cooler and the system overall seems to be faster. This tells me that the heat the drives were generating was rolling over on to my PCI cards Now that heat seems to be contained in a different area of the case and the system is overall cooler. Interesting!
Allright. Well, like usual, the latest experiements failed. So, now I am back to just having the drives loose on the bottom of the case again. However, this time they are flat on the metal. Before I had put some risers under them to supposedly allow for air flow underneath the drives.
I am guessing however, that the metal in the bottom of the case acts as some sort of heat sink because without risers and the drives flat on the metal they are keeping relatively cool. I do have a fan on top of one drive blowing towards the back of the case.
So the drives are now hovering in the 106º-115º range which is much more acceptable than anything I had previously.
So, now, ultimately I think until I have the cash and time for a case mod this is pretty much how it's going to be. I do note that in my research travels it appears that as great as I think the Quicksilver is, there is a mention that Apple had heat issues with this case. Considering my issues I do not find this surprising at all and I think that's probably the truth.
A basic QS came with one hard drive, possible two if you had a BTO. Just two drives, a ZIP drive, an optical drive and the standard CPU card (for whatever model you bought) with that giant heat sink and the standard fans and the case is fine. But start expanding as I have and the internal temp balance goes up. Two more hard drives and the case is all of a sudden an oven.
Add in extra cards (particularly better and hotter video cards) and a third IDE drive as I have done and you've got heat issues.
I am guessing however, that the metal in the bottom of the case acts as some sort of heat sink because without risers and the drives flat on the metal they are keeping relatively cool. I do have a fan on top of one drive blowing towards the back of the case.
So the drives are now hovering in the 106º-115º range which is much more acceptable than anything I had previously.
So, now, ultimately I think until I have the cash and time for a case mod this is pretty much how it's going to be. I do note that in my research travels it appears that as great as I think the Quicksilver is, there is a mention that Apple had heat issues with this case. Considering my issues I do not find this surprising at all and I think that's probably the truth.
A basic QS came with one hard drive, possible two if you had a BTO. Just two drives, a ZIP drive, an optical drive and the standard CPU card (for whatever model you bought) with that giant heat sink and the standard fans and the case is fine. But start expanding as I have and the internal temp balance goes up. Two more hard drives and the case is all of a sudden an oven.
Add in extra cards (particularly better and hotter video cards) and a third IDE drive as I have done and you've got heat issues.
You can build your own for probably about $30 each, probably less for more. That's what I plan to do.