Resurrecting a 1999-Vintage Win98SE Machine

[TELVM]

Since your PC is 1999, you might want to consider instead of XP some Basic Linux 3.5, MicroLinux, TinyCore which reqire no separate partition and run off an image file. These use abot 20 MB RAM, and Sindi Keeson and others have the very best drivers -- all this being freeware. From within this you can run even win9x, 3.x, 2.x, 200x, XP, Vista and 7withe Wine or QEMU. And since it's all UMSDOS, you can simply delete it if you do not like it. You can load it even from two 1.44 floppies. The drivers are MUCH easier on old hardware and give MUCH better performance.

That's very interesting stuff Dave , thanks. I'll try to explore it.

[TELVM]

Saharan heat here around, turboed the dino.

"Varrrooom! Its jet exhaust... frying chickens in the barnyard!"

[dencorso]

Wow!

[Foxbat]

The slot setup presents some very unique airflow characteristics, peferct for tweaking around. It seems you weren't with satisfied with the thermal performance. Now using the drive cage as a duct, and isolating the fan with foam. Have you isolated the exaust and PSU fan as well? The large intake grill holes look very airflow friendly, and certainly helps with the appearance than a complete open front.

Let's examine the top portion of the case. Generally, straight-through airflow would be ideal, but under this challenging setup there are many twists and turns. Airflow from the front may take the following paths:

-hit the RAM and the pocket of air from the HSF.

-flow through above the HS and meet with the vertically moving air along the slotcket wall, then turn towards the PSU, but contributing to cooling for the slotcket.

-flow around the HS, get sucked into the HS cooling the CPU, hit the motherboard and RAM, cooling a part of it, with some of that moving towards the slotcket wall, and others becoming recirculated air. With half the HS overhanging the mobo, air from that half would hit the case wall and wires, ending up as a pocket of air that impedes some incoming air from the front.

Your latest modification brings in some ambient air to the CPU, but it has to make many 90º turns along the way with Lots of back pressure. The high static pressure fan will certainly help to push air around those obstacles. Now this is interesting. I've vaguely heard of mounting a cone to a fan before. This is the first time I've seen it in use. It could help reduce some back pressure. What is the thermal performance so far? Does the cone mod contribute to any perceivable improvement?

[TELVM]

The extra intake fan wasn't really needed, max CPU temps at full throttle, even in the hottest days, never reached 50C / 122F. It's just that I'm a deranged freak and love fiddling .

From what I'm experiencing and what I read from other people who fiddled with Tuallys, seems Windows can't idle correctly the server Tualatins. Idle temps are abnormally high, 42C idle & 48C full throttle (while my OCed Coppermines idled at ~33 C). I really hated having to see an idle temp beggining with '4' , even in the hot of summer, so proceeded to kill mosquitoes with heavy artillery .

The grill comes from a '91 Mazda Miata NA.

Holes are large and pose minimal restriction to flow (just about half a degree of CPU temp empirically). Dino looks much better without a huge square hole in the front.

The golden front hub or spinner is some cosmetics flask plastic top. The black rear cone is cardboard cut & rolled to shape.

There is method in this madness!

The center part of an Arctic Cooling F12 fan, as it comes from the box (flat bow & flat stern) ...

... behaves aerodynamically like a short cylinder (drag coefficient ~1.15).

With hub and cone its shape gets closer to the subsonic ideal rain-drop streamlined body (cd ~0.04).

Big boys know this well:

I haven't scientifically measured the results of hub & cone, but I can tell with them the fan is less noisy at full RPM. Which means less turbulence, which means they do some good .

There is now a strong forced jetstream flowing straight thru the CPU heatsink.

Now at 27C ambient, CPU temps are 37C idle & 42C full throttle. Telvm happier .

The progression of the dinosaur as recorded by the venerable TestCPU in W98SE:

Edited July 15, 2012 by TELVM