The last round with the TDP cooler
There’s no need to rehash it – if you’ve been reading (you havem haven’t you?), you know this TDP was a bit of a hot head. You also know I’ve tried several different types. Mainly for fun, but also for a little practicality. The truth is, I like the Nuke cooling tower. The other truth is, it’s absurdly tall. Cool looking, IMHO, but tall. And… it moves a LOT of air with it’s 60mm, brushless, dual ball bearing, radial fan. A LOT of air.
The wedge cooler from the last article, shown below, was a bit of a disappointment. It’s blower style fan just didn’t move much air. While making a shorter package, it’s 40mm x 20mm size and relatively low RPM simply didn’t move much air.
When looking for the next fan to try, I wanted a short height, which meant a blower style for side exhaust. Well, I guess the radial fan can be used, and inside of the CoCo/TDP case – but then I’d have nothing to write about. Which might work for some…
What I found was a 50mm x 15mm, brushless, dual ball bearing blower fan. The design goal this time was simple – coolness didn’t matter. Well… a cool appearance didn’t matter. I wanted the TDP to be cool temp wise, and not look like Microsoft’s AI Power plant at three mile island. Because… screw microsoft.
The test scenerio is the same – while framing out the text for this article, the TDP has been running the wire-frame shuttle program, continuously plotting a space shuttle on a green screen. I try to keep the rendering time to about 20 minutes with no cooler, then give the cooler time to do it’s job.
While cooling is it’s job, I think it’s important to state that the method for doing so is moving air. The more air moved, the cooler the TDP runs. With an ambient air temp around 73 deg F, it was a little bit warmer than the last test. As a remnder, the area I’m mostly concerned with would be in the larger image above, showing all three coolers – to the left of the TDP logo. The temps before placing the cooler on the vents were:
- Power Supply (thru vents): 110 – 114
- 3″ to the right of the PS: 108
- TDP case4″ towards front, in three places to the left of the logo: 103, 100, 98
After placing the new cooler in place, as shown in the left image below, I waited 20-ish minutes to re-take the temps. Occassionally, I’d use the handometer to feel the airflow and was quite impressed. Hot air removal IS the name of the game, after all, and this little blower was doing an admirable job.
- Power Supply (thru vents): 96 – 100
- 3″ to the right of the PS: 80
- TDP case4″ towards front, in three places to the left of the logo: 89, 88, 85
I think that about sums it up. This new blower works almost as good as the 50mm radial in the nuke tower, while being a little quieter as well. I view the temp 3″ to the right of the PS to be a subjective fluke. Nowhere else did I see a 20+ deg temperature drop. But, I am perfectly happy with the 12 – 14 degree drops on the case surface itself. If anyone else has a hot tempered TDP, you can get these fans from THIS LINK for a two-pack.
If you want the STL, it’s below.