Has anyone opened a New Dell and seen the CPU cooler ?

[Richard_Cranium72]

We got in a new Dell at work for CAD work and the tech and me pried the case open to see if it had a Slot or Socket Pentium3

What shocked me was this HUGE plastic fan housing that totally enclosed the HS/Fan and routed Cool air in from the back of the case.

This thing was about 3" Square and 1/8" thick Bright Green plastic.

A really novel idea, get cool air from outside the case for the CPU, kewl http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[mousepotato]

My Mom has a PII 350 HP that has a heatsink w/o fan on the CPU and a case fan from the rear & a cowling that directs the air from the fan onto the board where the heatsink on the cpu is...she got it when 350 was the fastest thing around....lol

[OuTpaTienT]

Oh yeah, that's what Dell machines are all about...airflow. Ducting & airflow.

Think if it were water. Would you rather turn your garden hose on full blast to put out a fire, or (if it could be easily done) just redirect the local river to simply drown the fire.

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Also, take note gentlemen, there is a little trip switch on most Dells I've seen that will tell the Dell service tech that the chassis has been opened. You should be able to just reset the trigger somewhere in the bios, that way they'll not suspect you of tampering. This is only a concern if you ever intend on having Dell come out on service calls.

[sharder8]

Doc --

I have to agree with the Caddmann, I won't use anything but an Athlon for my CADD.

BTW, I have a similar set-up on my system (fan and duct and my system is 50 weeks old). I did make one change though, I reversed the fan so it is bringing in outside air to the CPU fan, it originally was sucking air out. That dropped my CPU temp 4 degrees C.

Harder

[This message has been edited by sharder8 (edited 05-05-2001).]

[nick t]

I use CAD (AutoCad 2000 and Catia)on a P111 800, but i`ve been told that Solidworks doesn`t work with AMD Processors. Is there any truth in this?

[This message has been edited by nick t (edited 05-06-2001).]

[Yar1182]

i've seen the ducting before. I believe they call it a wind tunnel. Dell tries to use as much passive cooling as they can. not a bad idea. I'm interested in learning how to reset this trip switch in the bios. I understand if you open the case you void the warrentee. Make sure you reset it before a service call or sending the system back for service. anyone have more info on this trip

[fshanda]

You should have went one more step like I did. If you remove the plastic duct you will see that there is no heat sink fan. This Dell was a slot one PIII 700e. The exhaust fan on the rear of the case is drawing air out of the case thru the duct and over a set of aluminum fins attached to the heatsink. It's using an 80mm fan wich is very quiet. It's a neat setup but I was amazed how much dust collected inside of the housing on the heatsink and the fan. Nothing a little caned air couldn't take care of. Next time you open it up take a look at it for yourself. Im not so worried about the warranty. The Dell we have has been one of the most trouble free computers we have ever owned. I like building my own but my Wife got a deal thru Long and Foster Realty that was to good to pass up.

[This message has been edited by fshanda (edited 05-06-2001).]

[lazerbeam]

We use several Dell high-end work stations at my work for a graphics rendering farm. They all have the microswitch sensor in them. The reason it is there is to let your systems admin person know if someone got inside the box without permission. And yes you can reset it. The instructions should be in you Dell manual. If you can't find how to do it in the manual go to Dell's website. They have excellent on-line help/instructions. BTW, my company has over 185K employees and we use Dells almost exclusively for non-unix based applications. As a sys designer/engineer I get to "peek" inside most of the machines we buy/use, including Sun, SGI, HP and IBM. Beside SGIs, Dell's internal configuration is one of the best to work on. Everything is modular and easily removeable and re-instllable.

[MJL]

I just upgraded a PII 450 Dell to an Athlon. What a pain. Dell has so much proprietary sh?? on their machines it took for ever to get it right. Those cool fan ducts they use also dump a lot of dirt on the CPU so watch it. I had to clean mine about every 2 months.

[Imperion1]

The ITs where I work don't know how to reset the switch. Of course there are alot that they don't know. Two examples: They don't know how to save a web address in the Favorites, and they don't know how to create shortcuts under the start button.

[rbvpp]

In the IT Dept I'm in it's close to the same situation. The people who are "team leaders" think Windows NT/2000 is the greatest thing around and yet have trouble understanding why the systems are down so frequently.
(ADSW)

[struggles]

I think the whole design and layout of the Dell case is superior to other "name brand" computers. Definetly a good cooling setup although dust buildup does occur.The case opens with one thumbscrew.Easy swapping goodies.Grab handles on ide cables....etc.

Of course its not as great as something you or I can build, but as far as name brands go its alright.And dont worry, sooner or later they'll start slappin in them kick-***** AMD'S!!

[Cavalier Ed]

Ive got a new DEll L800r and the cooling arrangement is standardheat sink and fan. There are some other points I'd like to make since this post generated a lot of 'Dell talk'.Recently I got a new PC at work, part of a contract bundle, the specs are P3 800, 10Gb HDD, 64MBram and Win ME. A colleague brought to my attention (I do computer support)the fact that when he installed MS office 97 all portions except Access would run. Upon investigation the machine said "there is no license for this application on this machine".
I used the Dell online support options and found that there is a registry fix which comes with the Dell support /reinstall cd. This got the application working fine. This provoked some questions;- why did this error occur? It seems a bit short sighted for any pc manufacturer to have some kind of inbuilt license restriction- they do not know what the end user is intending to intall or use.
Ive never seen this kind of error before and I've built and fixed many machines. Can anyone shed some light on the origin of this problem.
Also some general observations on the dell machines -
we got a good price on them as we bought a batch of them
the case is too small- no empty 5.25 bays for install of extra cd-rw or dvd.
-only one empty 3.5 bay (which is obviously for a zip drive, going by the installed software).
-the psu is only 130Watts not leaving much scope for extra devices anyway.
From day 1, the machine wouldnt write to floppy, further investigation led to the conclusion that the MOBO floppy drive controller was goosed. when I contacted the warranty support I was asked to change the ribbon cable leading from MOBO to floppy. I had already done this and changed the drive, which involved swinging the psu out of the way, all to no avail.This was no problem to me but I wouldnt trust many people (especially corporate pc users!)to open the case of their machine. Didnt seem to be any issue with case opening/warranty conflict.
The support operative agreed with me that the MOBO was faulty and the next day the "Dell guy" was out to replace it. Good service!! there is always a chance that some will leave the factory with some unseen faults.
On the whole not bad machines for use at work but I wouldnt buy one with my own cash. Any comments ??