Medion case, worst case ever?

RaptorZX3 · Post by **RaptorZX3** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 2:30 pm

i went to a friend's house and he showed me his case, a Medion brand one, a bit shorter than usual.

so i opened his case...tons of dust inside, i even wonder how it didn't exploded yet, his CPU heatsink had crusts of dusts on it, that was ugly to see!

plus, his Medion-brand case, the only exhaust he's got on it is the PSU fan, no exhaust fan slot, nada! the only fans in the computer are the CPU fan and the PSU fan.

his board can take up to 4 SATA components, but as i can see it only got 2 hard-disk slots (the HDD in the case are placed vertically), he's got a small SATA hard disk, and the other components are IDE. The 2 only "good" things are the CPU heatsink (it looks a bit like a small ThermalRight brand, aluminium fins, copper base, but the copper heatpipes (4 or 5) are not zinc/aluminium-plated) and his PSU is a Fortron 350W (the 120mm model one that look a bit like the Seasonic S12)

he bought the computer in a Future Shop, so no wonder....

i'm sure that if i've put all that dust in a small glass, it would have filled it completely, it was scary!

at least his video card is fanless, it's a NVidia Geforce 6600 i think.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 3:06 pm

Your post is misguided. What does case has to do with dust? If your friend lives in a pigsty (I'm just theorizing here) no wonder it will be full of dust. Concerning PSU fan being the only exhaust fan, plenty of cases have use only PSU fan for exhaust, for example Antec Aria or Nexus Breeze. Are those cases crap? Hardly. A computer with low power CPU can easily be cooled by PSU fan alone.

RaptorZX3 · Post by **RaptorZX3** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:08 pm

i mean...i always hear that the best way to cooling is to keep most of the heat out of the PSU.

his case is not really silent, it got 2 fans, plus i think the hard disk is a bit noisy.

he doesn't live in a pigsty, he live in an apartment, he just never cared about cleaning his computer...the usual "my computer i broken i dunno what happened" and then you open the case and it's full of dust, no wonder why it's broken, vents are clogged by crusts of dusts. it almost looked like it had nests of bugs living inside the computer...yuck!

peoples need to know that they need to clean their computers with an air duster sometimes, it's better to take a moment and investing 5$ in a compressed air duster than investing between 50-200$ for a broken component.

i think he could replace the CPU fan for a better one, i'll check which size it takes, next time i to go his house. i told him to consider changing his PSU for a Seasonic S12 430W (the store where Seasonic PSUs are available only have 380W and 430W available, but the 380W is always out of stock). Plus, the Fortron installed in his computer only have 20pins+4 when his board can take 24pins+4

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 7:30 pm

The Fortran is not bad for the $. I'd think suspending the HD and upgrading the CPU cooler would help. Not having a case fan,in this instance,is offset by having,likely,a CPU fan that's way more RPM/noise than SPCR folk like..

An efficient CPU HS/fan,and a slow case fan would mean the PSU fan does not need to run hard. As the whole case exhaust,a Seasonic would tend to run it's fan at high speed,in which case it's no quieter at all.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:04 pm

RaptorZX3 wrote:i mean...i always hear that the best way to cooling is to keep most of the heat out of the PSU.

Didn't want to go there because it's a can of worms waiting to be opened. Yes, if you dump heat from CPU into PSU it may and probably will cause it to spin faster, thus more noise, thus the argument for putting additional fan exhausting CPU heat and heat other components out. However that means one more fan. On the other hand, with low power CPU additional hat being dumped into PSU is a very minor concern. My ninja on C2D stays barely warm, and that's without EIST enabled. It all depends on particular configuration.

RaptorZX3 · Post by **RaptorZX3** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:05 pm

suspending hdd is out of question on this case, no room to do that. Plus, there's a tube-duct on the side of the case that take the air and goes directly to the CPU fan.

i think his socket is an Intel 775 (not really good with Intel sockets, so bear with me), the one with 4 pins that does a kind of "X". the CPU heatsink is secured with 4 levers, 1 on each side.

but i was somewhat impressed by the heatsink with 4-5 copper heatpipes, for a computer bought already made (like HP, Gateway, etc...), in a big electronics store.

Chris Chan · Post by **Chris Chan** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 5:28 pm

Pics, darnit! And Medions are apparently not that great- there's a big thread on badcaps.net about them having bad caps. Check the MB for that too, since it's so dusty.

RaptorZX3 · Post by **RaptorZX3** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 5:35 pm

it's a MSI board, with 4 SATA connectors. his case is crap, i told him he should get a better case, Antec brand without the PSU inside, with a 120mm exhaust fan slot, and also a Seasonic PSU, and probably add 1gb of RAM. But i think he would just buy a whole new computer since he's going in the photographer business soon.

i'll surely take photos when i'll go back to his home.