When in doubt, provide air passages on the bottom and top of the case for convection currents to form and that might be enough. A lot of CPUs and RTC chips have built-in temp sensors, so you can have software monitor the temperature and take appropriate action, such as cutting-back on the number of tubes being driven.
On Thursday, May 7, 2026 at 5:38:04 PM UTC-7 Nicholas Stock wrote: > Agreed. I've had a DR2000 clock running for years, never noticed any > significant heat from the tubes at all.... > > On Thu, May 7, 2026 at 5:33 PM 'Oskar' via neonixie-l < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> I have no experience with IV-9s specifically, but I do have a DR2010 >> Numitron clock, and the tubes don't even get slightly warm. They feel close >> to ambient temperature even after hours of operation. Granted, I am >> slightly underdriving them but I doubt running them at their rated current >> would make a significant difference. Based on that, I am fairly confident >> that active cooling isn't necessary for your use case. >> >> >> newxito schrieb am Freitag, 8. Mai 2026 um 00:16:43 UTC+2: >> >>> Has anyone measured how hot an IV-9 can get? Right now, I don’t have >>> access to a tube to test myself. >>> >>> I'm wondering if I need to foresee some kind of active cooling for my >>> project. I’m designing a calculator with 16 x IV-9 tubes in a closed case >>> with some ventilation slots. If I calculated this correctly, they would >>> dissipate about 11.5 watts if all segments were on and that’s a lot… >>> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "neonixie-l" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/32bdb20a-3fc4-4b5c-9f38-a4095b19ded5n%40googlegroups.com >> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/32bdb20a-3fc4-4b5c-9f38-a4095b19ded5n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/4eb7a93b-d58f-45e0-bf22-70976942132bn%40googlegroups.com.
