Cooling Fan For SWMs...

darita said:

Just got all hooked up with 2 SWMs. The system I'm using stacks the SWMs, so they are getting pretty hot. Both the SWMs are in the garage. I'd love to find a small, quiet, high CFM, AC fan to cool the SWMs. In fact, if it's quiet enough, I'd like to use one in my entertainment center as well. Thanks for the help.

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I would try a fan from a PC case 12V

I'd love to find a small, quiet, high CFM, AC fan to cool the SWMs.

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Small, quiet, & high CFM are all mutually exclusive.
Quiet means slow spinning & high CFM means large fan.

What "I think" you're looking for is a 120 mm slow [around 800 RPM or less] spinning fan.

veryoldschool said:

Small, quiet, & high CFM are all mutually exclusive.
Quiet means slow spinning & high CFM means large fan.

What "I think" you're looking for is a 120 mm slow [around 800 RPM or less] spinning fan.

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Keep an eye out for Fry's ads. I just got a 120mm fan for $6 and free shipping.

http://shop3.frys.com/product/4763939?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

The price is back to normal at the moment but they go on sale frequently.

Newegg has them for the same price. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835129030 Check out the reviews.

First of all get some space between the two. Also, mount them a piece of aluminum to act as a heat sink. Then a fan may not be needed.

BTW, how many receivers do you have that require two SWMs?

jdspencer said:

First of all get some space between the two. Also, mount them a piece of aluminum to act as a heat sink. Then a fan may not be needed.

BTW, how many receivers do you have that require two SWMs?

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I will try the aluminum thing. I have 3 HD HDDVRs and possibly a fourth coming. I also have one HD receiver and one standard receiver. I probably could have done it with one SWM, however I wanted to be able to expand the system later. I also wanted to keep it all to one wire per room.

I might be wrong about this, so some please correct me if I'm wrong. I just setup my SWM this Saturday. I looked at the small doc included in the power inserter and swm box. I thought that I needed to run one wire then split each for both tuners. I soon dicovered that even my old HR20-700 was marked FTM (old name for SMW). To sum it up, each DVR needs only one wire run unless you are using OTA. I have 2 HR20s 1 HR22 and 1 H20 all hooked up to my SMW. After reading a bit more I was able to dipelx OTA succesfully. So the one wire per room is easily done and you only need a spitter if you have more than one receiver in the room or you are diplexing. Good luck

That is correct – the FTM/SWM-ready DVR’s like the HR2x only need one coax connection. Even so, it still uses two of the channels. A SWM-8 has only eight channels, so even though you might only run four cables from it, if they all go to dual-tuner DVR’s, then it’s full.

"The real problem" here seems to be the enclosure. SWM8 (s) are designed to be mounted in the open air. The case is waterproof enough to be mounted outside and the ribs are there for cooling. While they do run "warm", they don't run hot [or shouldn't].
The idea of an aluminum plate is good, but it too will need to have enough air to dissipate the heat and the more fins the better.
"The simplest" solution seems to be mounting them without the box. Even if the garage is used for woodworking and dusty, the SWM8(s) wouldn't be affected and the ambient air movement would be enough to keep them cool.

I have seen some very large aluminum heat sinks for the older Pentiums chips with lots of large fins. they would be ideal to mount to a SWM with some heat conducting grease or some such, but as VOS says, nothing wrong with just plain mounting them without a box. or maybe just a roof and two sides.
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curt8403 said:

I have seen some very large aluminum heat sinks for the older Pentiums chips with lots of large fins.

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Aluminum heat sink is quite common at the surplus store/recycling center. "The Pentium" heat sinks are merely a small piece cut-off the extruded aluminum.