A coworker of mine was an computer engineer in the early 2000s, but is now a warehouse director. She told me she helped her son build a new pc but it was having heating issues. I asked about fans and she said it only had 2 intake on the front with no exhaust. Told her a local shop that has cheaply priced good fans. She said computers have changed a lot in 20 years. I helped in about a week ago with choosing storage blocks, had no clue nvme even existed.
You do lose touch rather quickly. I'm a software developer, but I'm not really interested in hardware in my free time, so I honestly didn't know what exactly to make of nvme until very recently.
The first time I saw an m.2 SSD in real life was about a year ago.
When I was a kid, the first PC I built was a white box with a Pentium 4 HT, which was still a fairly new CPU at the time. It ran hot so I cut a hole in the side of the case, bolted a 120 MM fan in the hole, and covered it with a shroud that I think I must have fabricated with Aluminum facia.
It didn't look pretty but it worked. And it kept my bedroom toasty in the winter.
I mean, that's essentially how my first tower PC was cooled. Bought it as a complete PC and the cooling was a blower style fan that sucked cool air through vents on the side via a plastic shroud.
And it was also one of the wonderful pentium 4 space heaters with incidental compute.
Nice, I ended up just taping a fan on underneath using HVAC tape applied directly to the heatsink.
The plastic screw thing that holds the heatsink on can become brittle and break after some years. It might be worth picking up some small nylon bolts online before that happens.
Edit: or I guess zip ties would work if it comes to that....
Yeah, sadly a lot of server hardware is designed for high air-flow rack-mounted cases and doesn't deal so well with normal ventilation somewhat optimized to reduce noise. Especially PCIe ethernet cards seem to get really hot, but SATA extension cards are also problematic. Adding some better passive cooling also often helps.
If I could find a internal server fan smaller then 20x20mm. I'd stick one next to my 1U CPU Cooler. But for some reason I can't find one. Needs to be smaller then 20x20 because it would sit on top of the motherboard in a closed 1U server rack frame.
The board doesn't come with any extra on it. There is one used but it doesn't boot without that card. Not really sure what it does.
It's a Dell Poweredge R410 Server: looks like this: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/er4AAOSwNDVfyTuN/s-l1600.jpg
This bag contains already used zip ties in various lengths and colours. You can reuse the items and be creative. Build modern art for your living room, a fan holding bracket for your server or a cool handle for your hot coffee cup.