dell cooling question?
 

working on a dell for a Friend of a Friend...

cpu (p4) fan is mounted on the back of case blowing nice cool air on the cpu Heatsink . However the 80GB sata disk is on the recieving end of the heat (this is what i need to replace).

So, should that fan be sucking the air out??? Was this installed incorrectly? Or is dell's idea of cooling the cpu and cooking the rest of the innards SOP????

Air flow - in the front, out the back on my systems...

yeah, usually the fan sucks air over the cpu from the rest of the box and then blows it out the back of the system.

I concurr, the cpu fan was intalled back wards.

Wow...dont know if this box was ever serviced by someone else, but if not, What a FU from Dell. and its probably out of warranty.

just put my hand on the HD and Much cooler. Although probably too late.

SYMPTOM: from a poweroff state HD is not recognized by system...afrter a warm start (3 finger salute) HD is recognized and boots just fine.

How long has it been running this way? Cooling air is the lifeblood of any electronic part.

If over a few months might be worth buying a second drive, installing it as the "C" drive and keeping the old drive as a slave. Try to copy any and all data to the new "C" drive and then use the computer for a month or so before trusting the old hard drive.

I didnt check the GHz on the cpu, but, i figure...more than a year bast on the size of dust bunnies inside.

my dell's have 2 fans......and my hard drives do get pretty hot, one failed recently

so does your fan blow the hot cpu gasses at the HD?

i will look tonight