cooling in a Dell 5150

speedlever · Post by **speedlever** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:39 am

Manual found here:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/s ... /index.htm

A friend has this computer that is about 1.5 years old. The Seagate 7200.7 SATA drive failed in it this week. I replaced the single drive with a Seagate 7200.10 320 Gb drive and added another WD 3200 AAKS (320 Gb) drive for backup.

After I reloaded the OS (XP/home) and programs, I added speedfan 4.33 and checked the HD temps reported by SMART. I was surprised to find the temps in the low to mid 50*C range... which seems pretty warm to me. Perhaps that is why the original drive failed so soon.

The case has no case fan, just the CPU fan and PSU fan. There are no fan headers on the mobo that I can find to power additional fans. I would like to add a case fan for exhaust and also a fan near the HDs to help cool them.

Any thoughts on how to do this (short of building her a new PC with a decent case and cooling)?

joeyl · Post by **joeyl** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:39 am

we have a couple of 5150s in the office I work at, and both lost their hard drives, according to the onboard diagnostics, they were replaced by Dell under warranty, but it was disturbing since it was such a short time.
you could use fans plugged directly in the power supply's molex plugs, 5v through red and black for silence

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:13 pm

It'll have to be a ghetto mod. There is plenty of unrestricted air intake on that case but nothing is done to cool the hard drives. In fact the shroud over the CPU (BTX design) pretty much blocks/short circuits the airflow that could come from the PSU fan.

You'd want to grab a cheap low speed fan (think Yate Loon or Scythe unless you have an Antec Tricool or some other low speed fan laying around not being used) and hang it from the lowest point you can right behind the hard drive or on the rear of the case. Unfortunately I don't know that a 120mm fan would fit or that you'd have anything proper to attach it to in those positions. You might have to use a 92mm fan.

You may have to get creative with shoestrings, zip ties, rubber fan mounts, etcetera to find a way to suspend a fan in the right spot.

speedlever · Post by **speedlever** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:16 pm

Yeah, it won't be pretty. But maybe taking power like joeyl said and rigging some sort of suspension aft of the HD assembly will make a difference.

I have a spare 80mm fan. Not sure a 120 will fit, but I bet a 92mm would fit.

That is an easy case to get into, but a lousy case design for cooling.. and mobo too... with no fan headers.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:39 pm

Just remember you only have to get rid of stale air. Even slow air flow near the drives will make a huge difference in temps when a hard drive is at or above 50Â°C.

If the fan is within an inch or two of the drives you might want to try 5v first. 7v if the fan won't start at 5v or if you can't get temps below 40Â°C at idle.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article63-page1.html

speedlever · Post by **speedlever** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:54 pm

Thanks. That link is what I needed.

Edit: looks like the only available power connector is an unused FDD connector from the PSU. I should be able to try the 5v and 7v power options fairly easily with that.