A couple of comments and then a very recent, real-world story.
First, as someone has pointed out, Drake no doubt never intended to
have the 4-line fan-cooled and probably chose components and layout with that
in mind; i.e., good enough to last a decade or so at the heat load present
but certainly with no thought as to what people would be doing in fifty
years (after all, after a decade or even less they would want to sell you a
new rig, anyway).
For today's owner, I see the choices as one of three options:
1. USE IT EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE FOR SHORT PERIODS - You can probably get
away without any extra fans because it won't get that hot for very long, but
you will still be exacerbating the slow deterioration of components..
2. MUSEUM DISPLAY, SELDOM TURNED ON IF AT ALL - Definitely no fans or other
mods of any kind.
3. REGULAR USE, SOMETIMES FOR FAIRLY LENGTHY PERIODS - Cooling with a fan
is prudent insurance against failure due to heat. It will also slow down
any deterioration that may have occurred over the years (the amount of which
will depend on the usage during those years). But there are no guarantees;
i.e., not using a fan doesn't mean that it WILL fail, and using one
doesn't mean that it WON'T still fail.
REAL-WORLD STORY:
Several months ago I ran into problems with a Dell Dimension 4700
desktop PC, with random memory errors and "blue screen of death" crashes.
After trying all of the usual tactics such as registry cleaning, unused file
deletions, searching for viruses, etc., I did a web search on the problem and
found that one of the issues with the first few thousand of these puppies
was a cooling fan issue.
The unit contains two fans, upper and lower, with the lower one
pulling air in through the side vents to generally cool the interior while the
upper one acted as an exhaust fan that was designed to pull air up through
the memory module cage by means of a plenum that fits down over the cage.
Unfortunately, early ones had the upper fan installed backwards so that it
pushed air into the units and this did not create the cooling air flow up
through the cage & plenum and out the rear. Instead, it was pushing air down
into the top of a cage that wanted hot air from the memory modules to rise,
so it didn't adequately cool the memory module cage with the result that
over time the modules would start to incur errors because they were being
overheated and gradually damaged.
I checked my unit and, sure enough, the fan was pushing air in instead
of pulling it out. Instead of cooling the cage it actually caused a
gradual heat build-up since the air flow was designed to aid the natural
tendency of hot air to rise. Disassembling the cabinet & plenum and reversing
the
fan helped somewhat, but owing to the memory modules having been
permanently damaged (although not severely) the problem still recurred
occasionally,
albeit much less frequently. Since the unit was old and slow and had
limited memory, anyway, I bought a new Windows 7 desktop to replace it (tons
of
memory, etc., etc.)..
Designing for proper air flow is not a trivial exercise, and sometimes
what we may think "makes sense" doesn't work nearly as well as we'd like
to think it would. *IF* someone has taken the time to analyze the problem
and derive a suitable solution it is worth following their example.
73,
Paul, K4MSG
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