Video Card Thread (Mostly Gecube x1950xt)

So think about poor old me whose internet connection is 350ms between 3pm and 1am. Work my back off for 3 weeks trying to get BT to repair the phone line so I can actually get the internet, and when it finally arrives, the 8Megabit connection is lmited to 600-800kbps down (50KB/s download speeds) and a massive ping in the PM hours.

 

sammorris, waymon and kardson,

Well, mate, we never told you to live in England! :=)

Raymond (waymon) you're back! How's things in Connecticut? Travis (kardson) is still up for the BF2 matchup, but not just yet, having lost 4 teeth recently. !!!!!!!!! I think Travis is also on the East Coast - I'm not sure why I think that, but .........

Sorry, Sam, I didn't even know that there was an 80mm class of fans, I thought it was 40, 70, 120, and 140. (Never mind - I know nothing, remember? They might have upgraded me to junior member here, but I'm really newbie all the way, compared to you guys.) Yes I do see what you thought I meant, 4 70s would equal one big 140, makes perfect sense. So what size should I be looking to put on that rectangular slot?

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The exact dimensions are 4.5" wide, by 3.25" high, or 82mm by 114mm. Probably an 80, right?

Or should I just take my drill (which I am going to be doing anyway on the round holes) and run another line of holes to square the whole thing off at 114 x 114, (or 120mm by 120mm for that matter) and then put a 120 there? Maybe that's where I'll mount the 120mm that I'll take out of the Kama Bay.

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That is a nifty little thing you've got sitting up on top of your computer - tells you when the postman's at the front door too? Jeeezzzz!

Rich

 

Hey guys,

Here's just a little bit more about that Kama Bay. Nice review of it here:kama bay

And this is how the little jewel mounts:

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and this is how the front of your case looks:

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Pretty nifty, huh!

rich

 

By the way, Sam, I forgot this in the last post, but you said something about temp sensors not working that reminded me:

What do you know (for the future) about motherboards with several pwm fan headers?

(I mean if there were enough pwm fan headers on the mobo, would I need the Mcubed?)
Rich

 

It's not really england's fault, at home, although the signal is poor because of an old telephone line, we do get a constant 4.5Mbps (450KB/s download) and a constant ping of 49ms.
At university, the residential connection was 10Mbps synchronous (900KB/s either way, but no torrenting) and the connection at the LAN party was 100Mbps synchronous (8MB/s either way shared between 30) and unlimited. It was awesome!

As a matter of fact, 80mm fans are far more common than 70s. The only thing I can think of that uses 70mm fans is the Xbox and the Xbox 360. I've never owned a 70mm fan. My PCs have had 40mm, 60mm, 80mm, 92mm, 120mm, 140mm and 200mm fans.
The rectangular slot looks like it'd want an 80mm fan to be honest. You could put a 120mm fan there, and just have reduced airflow.
Unfortunately the Pertelian isn't able to tell me if the postman arrives, and as such couldn't wake me up to tell me that the BT engineer arrived at 9:05am on a SUNDAY!

I have actually seen a Kama Bay, a friend of mine had one, don't know whether he still has it or not, I think he does.

As far as I'm aware, Speedfan can control at least three PWM fans, maybe even five. If your motherboard has enough connectors you would only need use speedfan and could forget the MCubed.

 

Right, so which mobo would that be? (If you happen to know off-hand - not too pressing since I'm a year or two away.)

 

I don't know, it depends. As far as I know, my board can only support one PWM fan, and one non-PWM fan off its headers.

 

Yeah same with mine. So in a year or two I'll have to look for some multiple pwm support on a mobo - if there is such a thing - or just buy the Mcubed.

 

Hey everybody,

Here's the big debate:

I don't know if you remember my side panel, but here it is again.

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Here's a closeup of the area where Travis wants me to mount an additional exhaust fan:

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Sam is saying, just put the 80mm. Okay, here's how that would look:

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Or Sam is saying, well, you could put the 120mm, and just have reduced airflow, so here it is:

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Any opinions from anybody? Looks to me like the 120 would push more air even with the blockage. Would that cause additional noise - the blockage?

Rich

 

You photoshopped that Yate loon 140mm to appear as an 80mm? Despicable! lol

The blockage would cause a bit of a roaring noise, but nothing too much as long as you don't have a fast fan there. If you use the scythe from the kama bay, that's a 20dB fan, you wouldn't notice it at all.

 

sammorris

Sam I swear, you're the funniest guy I know. LOL!

I took that beefy 140mm Yate Loon and dropped it all the way down to 80mm for my sorry illustrative purposes. I apologize, it was the latest fan link just a few posts up - how the hell did you ever recognize it!!!!

 

The black and gold sticker in the middle. I've looked at plenty myself, they make fans for Nexus.

 

I would be using the 800 rpm 120mm Scythe that comes standard with the Kama Bay, until I perhaps switch over to the $30 newegg 1600 rpm version you linked me to.

So, other than a mild bit of roaring (how much of a roar, like a lion, or like a mouse) ....

..... do you believe the 120 would push out more air?

Rich

 

If you send me a personal message with your email I can upload a file with the sort of noise you can expect.

 

One more tidbit,

I have expanded on that mnemonic you liked. Listen to this: It all came about because I thought I had photoshopped the wrong fan, and I thought that I was looking at something that was sucking air up toward me.

I looked at the blades, curved counter-clockwise. I said to myself, well I have learned that fans spin in the direction of the blade, as one swings a grass-cutting scythe. So this picture shows a fan spinning counter-clockwise. But the blades on the left look like the leading edge is on the bottom, therefore it would be scooping up air toward me and sucking, how could that be?

So I went back to your fan link and looked at the full size 140mm Yate Loon right here:

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It's a little easier to see from the right side of the photo that the leading edge of the blade is closest to the viewer, therefore the fan is pushing, so my previous pictures correctly showed the fan mounted inside the case.

That made me realize that there is a missing piece to the mnemonic - is the fan pushing or pulling?

Don't worry - it's all solved: (Here's another shot of the despicable shrinking of the Yate Loon lol)
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You're standing there, Sam, looking at your wristwatch. "Rich, could you be any slower with this post, it's been 30 seconds already and you haven't correctly placed the first picture." A minute later, "Rich, now it's one minute, 30 seconds, and no picture."

Which prompts me to reply, "Sam would you cut it out with the counting seconds, you're pushing me, and I'm having enough trouble as it is.......... photoshopping your precious yate loon and deforming the edges to correspond to the deformation of the rectangular screen, so that it looks halfway decent on the forum."

So there is the complete mnemonic, the side that spins (in the direction of the scythe) is the side that is counting, turning counter-clockwise, pushing the air.

Brilliant! :=)

Just that one thing right there should upgrade me to addict, eh what? Lol

Rich

 

sammorris

I'm looking forward to the roar wav file. So tell me, does it look to you like the 120, with partial blockage, will be more effective - given a tolerable amount of roar. (that word scares me!)

 

Lol counting seconds? hardly! I'm off to bed now, it being 2:45am over here!
As you've posted that picture, the fan is blowing air out through the vent (into the screen, as it were). You can tell not only by the blades, but also by the fact that the cable frame is on the other side.

When I say roar, it's really very little, you'll hear it when I send you the email (thanks btw), it's really not much, especially with that fan.
I recorded this from an 1100rpm NZXT Sleeve bearing fan. To get the ideal sound, play it through your speakers and then adjust the volume so it's just about audible in a really quiet room. That noise level is around 24dB. The S-Flex 800rpm is only 20 normally, that fan is around 23dB in plain air.

 

sammorris
kardson

Well, Sam, you'll get this in the morning then. If Travis wakes up from the anaesthetic, I wonder also what his thoughts would be.

Here's a thought: The 120 is 3/2 the size of the 80. Assuming same rpms, I would expect the 120 to move cfm per ratio of the surface area of the fan, which I think would correspond roughly to the square of the blade size. (I might be on the low side - are the 120s also deeper fans, in addition to having a larger diameter? Just going by diameter, this gives us 3/2 x 3/2 = 9/4 larger, for 9/4 more cfm.

Is that how they work in the real world Sam?

But in this case, 1/3 of that area is blocked. So 2/3 x 9/4 gives me 6/4 as much surface area exhausting air out the vent (into the screen as you say regarding the fan and square vent pictures.)

...
Now, if I am not far off so far, I realize that I haven't taken into consideration the fact that the part that is blocked is the part of the fan farthest from the center, which is doing the most pushing. So the blockage cuts into the superiority of the 120, giving me a ratio of cfm, from the two proposed solutions, more like 5.5/4, or even 5/4. This would go up if it is true that 120s are deeper, as well as wider = more blade surface creating more airflow.

In any event, I believe I will get more cfm from a partially blocked 120mm, than from the completely unblocked 80mm. Would you agree?

Rich

 

One last thought to unblock the 120 a bit, (other than drilling out my side cover.) What if I were to get several case fan gaskets (thanks Travis for the proper name) and mount the 120 maybe 1/2" off the surface of the side cover.

Would that help, or hurt?

By backing the 120 off the surface of the side cover in this way, would that allow the blocked air more room to collect and get sucked into the air stream of the rest of the air, reducing the blockage?

Or, conversely, would this actually allow the the turbulence from the blockage to propagate further, disrupting the laminar airflow of the unblocked portion even more, for an overall decrease in cfm?

I was even wondering, if I were to back off the 120 a bit, would that give me room to tape a piece of stiff paper to the blocked area, angling from the top of the opening across the top of the fan gaskets, before I adhere the fan, creating a ramp or duct funneling smoothly into the rectangle?

Here's a sideways view of my proposed "funnel":

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How many fan gaskets do I need for 1/2" of pushoff? Any opinions?

 

TO be pedantic, a 120mm fan is 9/4 times the size of an 80, it's 3/2 as long and as high.
All case fans are usually 25mm thick, with the exception of slim fans (15mm) or the occasional thick fan (38mm, some Silenx fans are like this, it doesn't gain you any extra airflow).
I'll give you the figures for the three nexus Realsilent case fans, so you can get an idea of the comparative airflow. It's reasonable to assume that twice the rpm = twice the airflow.

120mm D12SL-12: 1080rpm, 22dB, 47CFM
92mm DF1209-SL3: 1380rpm, 21dB, 28CFM
80mm SP802512L-03: 1540rpm, 20dB, 22CFM

After all that I would still say you'd get more airflow from a blocked 120 than an 80mm - if you blocked the 120mm completely in half it'd deliver 23.5CFM at only 1080rpm, versus 22CFM at 1540rpm. Conseqeuently, the 120 is still giving more air per revolution.

As for the turbulence idea, I'm not quite sure. I would imagine it would be detrimental to the cause, but then the only way of proving it would be to test doing so.