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Acorn
Asked: 2011-10-02 05:36:20 +0800 CST

Best orientation for CPU blower/cooler in 1U chassis

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I'm putting together a 1U rackmounted PC. I have a blower cooler for the CPU, but the chassis has no fans at all.

What would be the correct way to orientate the CPU cooler? With the air blowing in the direction of the power supply, or across the motherboard?

I'm also slightly worried that the cooling wont be adequate.

The CPU being used is an AMD Athlon II X2 255. Is the lack of case fans likely to be a problem?

The two options: enter image description here

The CPU cooler: enter image description here

The chassis:

enter image description here

central-processing-unit hardware physical-environment fan

3 Answers

  1. All airflow in rack mountable hardware should take air in from the front and blow it out of the back. Neither of your proposed orientations are ideal. I wouldn't even run a normal PC without at least one case fan, never mind a 1U server.

    You should monitor the temps with speed fan or something similar if you're unsure whether or not a single fan is adequate. In all likelihood, it won't be.

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  2. Does the power supply at least have a fan? I hope so. If this is the case, then your best bet would be to blow hot air towards the PSU, which will (hopefully) blow it out of the chassis.

    I agree with others, though: without case fans, airflow will very likely be too small to replace the hot air which will build up inside the chassis.

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  3. YOu will overheat. The orientation does not matter- you NEED fans in the case, or the air gets stuck in it. 1u is very small for natural air flow, esepcially given that there is no way for the heat to get out on top.

    Sorry, this may work for a low power CPU that does not require active cooling, but one that requires a blower.... you just kill the harware through environmental overheating.

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