[Beowulf] Re: Reliable CPU fans

[canon at nersc.gov]

Richard,

We've recently changed all of our Athlon based machines over
to fans similar to this....

http://www.dynatron-corp.com/products/cpucooler/cpucooler_model.asp?id=47#

It is a squirrel cage design which seems to move more air and has
better reliability (from our experience) than the vertical style
fans from the same manufacturer.  Unfortunately, the manufacturer
doesn't supply MTBF's for this fan.  I can say this...  The vertical
fans from Dynatron were very reliable at dieing for us.  It finally
got to a point where we decided to replace all the fans on 60+ dual
nodes to this squirrel cage design.  No regrets so far.  Another
96 Athlon nodes already had the squirrel cage design and all have been
reliable to this point.  Having said this, I would consider using
a CPU that can run with a passive heat sink (Xeon's and Opterons),
since CPU fans seem to compete with disks for being the most unreliable
component in a commodity system.

--Shane

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Shane Canon                             voice: 510-486-6981
PSDF Project Lead                       fax:   510-486-7520
National Energy Research Scientific
  Computing Center
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Berkeley, CA 94720                      canon at nersc.gov
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