Holmes Applicance Introduces Computer Cooling Solution?

Posted on June 30, 2009
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

How the kitchen window fan saved my A$$

Here is a silly little blog post that I wanted to share with you about an ugly experience I had with my failed heat sink fan.

Kitchen FanHolmes Appliance, mostly known for its line of fans and dryers has become the next big player in the CPU heat sink cooling industry for the AMD Phenom II X4 Class of CPU’s. Although the headline was meant more as a pun on the situation, the Holmes Dual 10" bi-directional window fan fit the bill as a computer cooling solution just shortly after my Thermaltake Ruby Orb fan tanked on me. With little warning screens and bells chiming away the system automatically shut down Friday afternoon putting me effectively out of business without even the slightest hint there was a problem. Its one of my petty character flaws trying to keep my system as clean as I can almost to the point its compulsive. So with Q-Tip and cleaner in hand I went about cleaning all the little ports and fan blades in the throughout my system, apparently bumping the Orb in a way that set it in a downward spiral to failure. Just 4 hours after cleaning the system, BAM! down she went. Normally this isn’t an issue, just replace it with a backup heat sink fan and be done with it. Yeah, thats what I thought too. Turns out the ASUS mainboard was built for specific types of heat sink solutions and not just any fan would fit. Being down, unable to work over the weekend, simply could not happen. Or at least not happen at a worse time than last weekend where wrapping up outstanding projects was essential.

Ruby OrbAlthough not a real big issue initially to see a CPU Heat Sink fan go, I was a bit surprised at how quickly it went. Thermaltake is semi famous for delivering high quality computer cases and cooling products popular in high end gaming systems and workstations like my Phenom II X4 system. That was right up until I realized that it could get real serious however when you discover that no one in the area offered Thermaltake products, much less the Ruby Orb Heat Sink setup. A weekend replacement was out of the question and mail order, although the only solution for fully restoring the system, could not take place fast enough. What to do?

Desperately needing the system back online to finish projects already pushing long overdue, I decided to cannibalize my other mainboards in hopes that a CPU fan would fit the bill. No such luck, since the Orb and RAM cooling were tied in together I was pretty sure I was done for 4 or so days. After an entire afternoon of trying to fix the Orb with super glue and some plastic weld from a hot iron it was clearly pointless to try and revive the fan to a semi working order while a replacement was ordered. Could not stay down another day, I opted instead to lay the box on its side, pile on the heat sink compound combined with an older Pentium fan and hope it kept the CPU cool enough to work with. It worked fine so long as I didn’t try to use the machine, running at an average of 112 Fahrenheit. Its a little hot but it would survive until the new Orb arrived. However, having a semi-cool machine in non working or non usable order would not do as it ran at nearly 150 Fahrenheit with applications open which was just at the overclock temperature. I needed a way to keep the case extra cool by blasting cold air down onto the heat sink so I could work. I’m lucky I guess in that regard because my office has an AC port directly above my desk so there was no short supply of cold air, but getting it into the case required something extra. I decided to take the dual fan out of the kitchen window and place it over the open computer case with both fans at full speed. Although I can’t use Firefox with more than two or three tabs open (firefox, you stinking memory hog), and I can’t use Photoshop or any Microsoft Office products, but Dreamweaver, FTP and phpEdit Pro could still be used without jacking the CPU temp beyond 120 degrees (spikes to 140 sometimes). Anyway, below are a couple of crappy photos from my very old digital camera showing my desperate solution to keep me in business.

Kitchen Fan 2

Kitchen Fan 3

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