Do 486 DX2/DX4 really need a fan?

[Chuck(G)]

Well, very few thin clients have fans (I can't offhand, think of any).

 

[jmetal88]

BTX was a terrible motherboard specification. The only company it benefited was the company that designed it, Intel.

As they couldn't work out how to reduce the power draw and heat output of their P4s, they just redid the whole motherboard so they could use ever more power hungry CPUs.

Systems that used BTX motherboards were often so cramped that you couldn't install a higher end discrete graphics card because the CPU heatsink gets in the way. Some designs put the main power connector right behind the PCIe slot, further limiting cards. Not to mention that the RAM slots were often stuffed near the edge of the motherboard, usually ending up being placed under the optical drive bays and an array of wires, making it an arduous task to add/replace memory modules.

BTX has a place in the history books and it needs to stay there, we don't need it back.

I have a (partial) BTX system back at my parents' house. My only real problem I had with it, while I was using it, was that the CPU cooler was extremely loud. It was the only BTX cooler I could find, designed of course by Intel, and it had a small fan running at a very high speed blowing air across a LOT of metal fins. Sounded like a wind storm every time it was turned on.

 

[griffk]

Ok, double. Although at the 5W end of things it's triple.
Something like a modern laptop's heatsink and heatpipe with radiators could easily be retrofitted to a 486 in a baby AT case and would likely cool passively with no problem. I just bring up the Aleutia fanless PC's as a recent example of what can be done in the fanless space.

Sure, it CAN be done - but I think the OP is talking about doing it with a stock setup, which, in all likelihood, is going to require a fan. The pretty little Aleutia boxes can run fanless because the BOX IS THE HEATSINK. Looks very well made too - probably a custom CNC milled billet.

I am writing this on a Dell Inspiron i5 laptop, and both the Dell i3 and mine BOTH have fans, as well as heatpipes! IDK about many others out there, but I don't think a laptop heatpipe is going to do it by itself...

gwk

 

[Chuck(G)]

I'm of the opinion that a fan mounted on a heatsink is a poor solution. Better to take some PVC pipe or whatever and use a real (not some dinky 486 heatsink fan) fan mounted on the case (or use the PSU fan) and direct the airflow where it needs to be. On occasion I've seen where the overtemp alarm gets triggered because the fins on the heatsink have been clogged with dust.

 

[paul]

I have a (partial) BTX system back at my parents' house. .. Sounded like a wind storm every time it was turned on.

My Dell T3400 with BTX is very quite with a large fan turning slowly for the CPU and chipset, ducted from the front of the enclosure. The little fan on the graphics card is far more noisy.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

That is why I talked about BTX2 and not bringing back original BTX. For example, it would be designed for today's CPUs with integrated memory controllers and with single-chip "chipsets".

There's no reason for making a new BTX standard. The ATX standard has pretty much every configuration covered that is needed.

For one thing, optical drives are becoming obsolete nowadays and I think there are now cases that don't bother with such bays.

Not in my book they aren't. I still use them and even floppy disks almost daily.

I have a (partial) BTX system back at my parents' house. My only real problem I had with it, while I was using it, was that the CPU cooler was extremely loud. It was the only BTX cooler I could find, designed of course by Intel, and it had a small fan running at a very high speed blowing air across a LOT of metal fins. Sounded like a wind storm every time it was turned on.

I had a number of BTX Dell P4 machines and they were crazy loud, especially the more power hungry P4s. Some of them moved so much air that the back of the case was like a wind machine.

My Dell T3400 with BTX is very quite with a large fan turning slowly for the CPU and chipset, ducted from the front of the enclosure. The little fan on the graphics card is far more noisy.

But it does illustrate the cramped nature inside the case. With the massive heatsink, shroud and fan on the front of the case, there was very little room for drive bays or cards. You also need absurdly long SATA/ATA cables to get anywhere without obstructing the airflow path.

 

[paul]

Perhaps the T3400 improved on that? One longer SATA cable (of 2 blue ones provided) is tidy but not essential for the most remote bay and standard 50cm SATA cables easily reach all other bays (like the red and orange ones shown.) Both PCIe-16 slots can take full-length cards with end support and dedicated fan provided.

 

[yuhong]

I had a number of BTX Dell P4 machines and they were crazy loud, especially the more power hungry P4s. Some of them moved so much air that the back of the case was like a wind machine.



But it does illustrate the cramped nature inside the case. With the massive heatsink, shroud and fan on the front of the case, there was very little room for drive bays or cards. You also need absurdly long SATA/ATA cables to get anywhere without obstructing the airflow path.

With modern CPUs they no longer have to be as massive.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Perhaps the T3400 improved on that? One longer SATA cable (of 2 blue ones provided) is tidy but not essential for the most remote bay and standard 50cm SATA cables easily reach all other bays (like the red and orange ones shown.) Both PCIe-16 slots can take full-length cards with end support and dedicated fan provided.

I'm pretty sure that case won't fit a full length PCIe card. You have to remember in BTX the slotted cards face upwards, not downwards. This is important because if you look at the back of the top slot, it's completely obstructed by the fan shroud and more obstructed by the fan in the very back of the slot.

Many beefy GPUs are 2, 2.5 or sometimes even 3 slots tall, which clearly won't fit because of the fan shroud. Even if you could shoehorn it in there, many GPUs still use blowers, which would be sucking on plastic and not be able to move any air.

This doesn't take into account the power connectors either. The extreme distance between the back of the card and the PSU, plus all of the stuff in the way would almost definitely require extension cables, which isn't desirable.

With modern CPUs they no longer have to be as massive.

You want BTX yet you keep reaffirming reasons to not bring it back.

 

[yuhong]

I'm pretty sure that case won't fit a full length PCIe card. You have to remember in BTX the slotted cards face upwards, not downwards. This is important because if you look at the back of the top slot, it's completely obstructed by the fan shroud and more obstructed by the fan in the very back of the slot.

Many beefy GPUs are 2, 2.5 or sometimes even 3 slots tall, which clearly won't fit because of the fan shroud. Even if you could shoehorn it in there, many GPUs still use blowers, which would be sucking on plastic and not be able to move any air.

This doesn't take into account the power connectors either. The extreme distance between the back of the card and the PSU, plus all of the stuff in the way would almost definitely require extension cables, which isn't desirable.



You want BTX yet you keep reaffirming reasons to not bring it back.

I don't want BTX back and I know about the dual slot graphics card problem, I want a new case standard that uses the same CPU cooling principle as BTX and does not have the problems.

 

[paul]

Photo attached shows a plastic ruler laid across the top of the dual-slot card already installed and clearing CPU cooler along the full length. If you had an even thicker card it could go in the lower PCIE-16 slot.

Blue/black power cables for graphics card can be seen tucked into the empty front-lower disk bay and are long enough to reach any part of any installed card.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I don't want BTX back and I know about the dual slot graphics card problem, I want a new case standard that uses the same CPU cooling principle as BTX and does not have the problems.

You can have the BTX cooling system and bad placement of everything, or the ATX system with good placement of stuff and slightly worse airflow, but you can't have both. Like I said before, the memory slots dictate the entire system layout because of the critical timing involved and the length of the traces must be as short as possible.

I read about a technology Intel was working on where the parallel multi-drop memory bus was replaced with a fiber link between the CPU and a dedicated memory controller near the RAM slots. If this worked out, you could have the memory slots in a building 3 miles away and design the board however you wanted to.

Photo attached shows a plastic ruler laid across the top of the dual-slot card already installed and clearing CPU cooler along the full length. If you had an even thicker card it could go in the lower PCIE-16 slot.

Blue/black power cables for graphics card can be seen tucked into the empty front-lower disk bay and are long enough to reach any part of any installed card.

That's a short dual slot card, so yes it will work. I'm talking about cards like this:

The blower will be sucking on plastic in the top slot. It also requires 8+6 pin power, which I don't know if you have. You might be able to get it in the bottom slot if the motherboard will accept it.

 

[paul]

That gaming board would fit in the lower slot without compromising it's air intake.
Keeping it in context, the T3400 is an 8-year old workstation and allocates 300 watts for the graphics card via two 6-pin connectors that were customary for that time.

 

[yuhong]

You can have the BTX cooling system and bad placement of everything, or the ATX system with good placement of stuff and slightly worse airflow, but you can't have both. Like I said before, the memory slots dictate the entire system layout because of the critical timing involved and the length of the traces must be as short as possible.

I read about a technology Intel was working on where the parallel multi-drop memory bus was replaced with a fiber link between the CPU and a dedicated memory controller near the RAM slots. If this worked out, you could have the memory slots in a building 3 miles away and design the board however you wanted to.

I think killing the optical drive will probably be easier than this, though I know that it will take time (probably years, right?). USB flash drives are already faster at reading than optical drives, not to mention smaller.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Let's compare a 4 GB flash drive with a 4.7 GB DVD+R/RW, 8.5 GB DVD+R/RW DL and toss in a 50 GB BD-R DL for grins.

Cost Comparison:
- A reputable 4 GB flash drive is between $5-$9. That's between $1.25-$2.25 per gigabyte of storage.

I'll price the optical discs as purchased in packs of 100.

- 4.7 GB DVD-R is around 25¢. That's 5¢ per gigabyte.
- 4.7 GB DVD-RW is around 68¢. That's 14¢ per gigabyte

- 8.5 GB DVD-R DL is around 30¢. That's 6¢ per gigabyte.
- 8.5 GB DVD-RW DL is around 70¢. That's 8¢ per gigabyte.

- 50 GB BD-R DL is around $1.10. That's 2.2¢ per gigabyte.

Speed Comparison:
- Your average USB 2.0 flash drive can write 10-20 MB/s and read is capped at the USB 2.0 speed limit of just under 60 MB/s.
- DVD read and write ranges from 1x-24x, which translates to 1.31 MB/s to 31.5 MB/s.
- Blu-Ray read and write ranges from 1x-16x, which translates to 4.5 MB/s to 72 MB/s.

So an optical disc costs 78-95% less money while providing 17.5-1150% more storage space. The only sacrifices you make are they take up a bit more room and they're a bit slower. I don't know about you, but I don't think it's logical to pay more for less.

That gaming board would fit in the lower slot without compromising it's air intake.
Keeping it in context, the T3400 is an 8-year old workstation and allocates 300 watts for the graphics card via two 6-pin connectors that were customary for that time.

2 x 6 pin is actually 150W (75W a piece) plus the PCIe slot can provide an additional 75W for 225W total. I'm not really sure I trust the slot to provide that much power though, I've seen plenty of burned slots before.

The 7970 non-overclocked uses 250W+ so it wouldn't work. The 8000, 9000 and GTX200 series around the time would be right on the edge power wise; But the dimensions are almost identical to modern cards regarding length and height. They'd have the same space issues unless you use the second slot.

 

[SpidersWeb]

Either way, I'm still saying a 486 processor should be cooled with an alloy chipset heatsink ($2 on aliexpress, woo) and a small fan!

As for DVD's, I use mine for installing Windows and burning Windows 98 CD's because I keep losing them. That's about it. If Windows came on a Boot USB, I wouldn't add the drive to new builds (just one in the house will do).
For storing data we use hard drives, backed up to other hard drives. For moving big data we use an external hard drive with USB 3.0, for small files a cheap $5 USB stick does just fine. Software comes from the interwebs.

There is another thread discussing this in Off Topic I think. DVD's and BluRay will be around for a long time - but I think it's going to become an accessory rather than necessity.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Well, I've lambasted the PC cooling scheme for about as long as there have been 5150s. Cooling for interior components is laughable. Compare the cooling measures for Multibus, VMEBus, Eurocard or even C-bus and the PC's is just a bad design. The other bus configurations permit cooling of cards by blowing air through the card stack. How any ISA/PCI card gets adequate airflow has always been a mystery. The PC bus configuration is so uncharacteristic of IBM design practice, that I found it shocking.

 

[yuhong]

As for DVD's, I use mine for installing Windows and burning Windows 98 CD's because I keep losing them. That's about it. If Windows came on a Boot USB, I wouldn't add the drive to new builds (just one in the house will do).

And Win10 will, BTW.

 

[vwestlife]

Well, I've lambasted the PC cooling scheme for about as long as there have been 5150s. Cooling for interior components is laughable. Compare the cooling measures for Multibus, VMEBus, Eurocard or even C-bus and the PC's is just a bad design. The other bus configurations permit cooling of cards by blowing air through the card stack. How any ISA/PCI card gets adequate airflow has always been a mystery. The PC bus configuration is so uncharacteristic of IBM design practice, that I found it shocking.

IBM did at least add a piece of plastic covering up the vents below the drives on the XT so that the air intake would have to flow past the motherboard and cards.

 

[smeezekitty]

For whatever it's worth, I run my 486-120 with a large heatsink and no fan. It stabilizes about 50c after several hours and gets no hotter