preferred fan speed control methods?

[Ben Scott]

On 11/29/06, David Ecklein <dave at diacad.com> wrote:
> Maybe someone should start a commonsense movement to reverse the
> conventional airflow direction in PCs.

  They tried that with ATX.  The PS fan was supposed to blow in, not
out.  Nobody listened.  They eventually changed the spec to match
reality.

  They also tried with BTX.  BTX isn't getting much traction, outside
of Dell and Gateway.  And even with BTX, there's usually still a PS
fan blowing out.

> If there is a real reason (besides a mistaken tradition - I don't quite buy the
> cool-power-supply-first rationalization),

  It's not cool PS first, but last.  If the PS is the biggest heat
source, you don't want all that hot air blowing *in* to the computer.
Then you're just pre-heating your cooling air.  But times have
changed.  These days, the CPU, HDD, VGA, and even RAM easily generate
more heat than the PS.  But try getting the IBM-PC industry to change
something.

-- Ben