Cool down your processors with silent fans
One of the key parts that contribute to the acoustics of the Clusterstation is our 60/70 to 80mm fan adapter which allows us to replace the low quality and noisy smaller OEM fans used today on top of many CPU heat sinks with the more efficient 80mm fans.
There are many fan adapters on the market, but most of them are 1 inch (25.4mm) high as conventional PC cases can accommodate them even when used with thicker fans (25mm) instead of the low profile fans (15mm) usually used on top of the heat-sinks. This adds 35mm or 1.37" ( 25mm for fan adapter + 10mm more for standard fans) on top of the CPU heat sink.
For slim 1U/2U rackmount cases or for our ClusterStation ATX blades, we clearly needed a very low profile fan adapter that allows us to use standard and widely available 80mm without increasing drastically the height of the overall CPU heat sink (Heat sink + fan adapter + 80x25mmfan). This is why we kept the thickness of the fan adapter to the strict minimum (0.125" or 6.35mm) just enough to create counter-bore holes to keep the head of the internal screws flush with the top surface of the adapter so they don't interfere with fan blades rotation.
Furthermore the existing fan adapters can either adapt 60mm to 80mm to replace the 60mm fans used in AMD processors heat-sinks or 70mm to 80mm fans for Intel P4 CPU heat-sinks. Our patent pending design fan adapter supports both 60 and 70mm fans in one fan adapter which makes it unique and very versatile for both Intel and AMD based CPU coolers.
As the 80mm fans have been produced last decade by millions around the globe in different shapes and colors, their technology has been greatly enhanced and their price reduced. Today, one can find ultra silent 80mm fan like the PAPST that can provide efficient air flow at 14-19dBA.
Again, Cluster In Motion saw in this air cooling technological enhancement an enabling step in getting the Cluster computing technology closer to the user's personal workspace meeting one of the important personal computing requirements : low noise or nearly silent operation.
As an illustration of the benefits of using our fan adpater, let's use an example of a cluster with just 8 nodes: Most of the OEM fans shipped today on top of CPU heat sinks feature an average noise level around 35dBA (for low profile or 1U heat-sinks the noise level is even worse around 45 dBA sometimes). For an 8 nodes cluster equiped with such fans, the overall noise level is : 35 + 10log(8) = 43 dBA. If we replace these fans by a widely available and cost-effective 80x25 mm at 21dBA, the overall noise level would be : 21 + 9 = 30dBA which is 13dBA lower than previous configuration which means that the noise level has been recuded by a factor of 20 times !.
In summary, our ultra-low profile fan adapter allows us to use in our slim ATX blades efficient 80mm fans that not only contribute to the thermal efficiency of the system by providing almost twice the air flow to the processor but reduces drastically the overall noise for an enhanced user's super-computing experience.