prommy heating element

[gokickrocks]

anyone using the heating element, notice that it gets extremely hot (well, obviously its supposed to be hot, but its insanely hot that it burns my finger and would probably melt the plastic) ?

[prommy_fan]

gokickrocks
Nope it dont. Cuz Chip-Con uses special plastic - it can stay in it's normall condition in very high and very low temps.

btw - As I know this heating element produce 40Watts of power.

[gokickrocks]

no it wont burn the plastic?
or no it isnt suppose to be hot enough to burn my finger?

[Gleep]

The heating element on the back of the motherboard is not 40 watts, I have both Prom 1 cpu kits and the AMD uses a 5 watt and the Intel uses a 7.2 watt.

Is the element mounted to the cpu kit? or are you just holding it to see how hot it is?

[prommy_fan]

Gleep Sorry I have mistake something..

gokickrocks - no it wont burn the plastic

[SAE]

Have a prom mach1 and mach2 amd kit with the heating element. Because it's getting such hot :D ...ouch... I don't use it anymore ;)

Now using the back panel from p4 :eek: It works. And I don't have the feeling cooling is affected by this burner :D

[Gary Lloyd]

A heating element seems counter productive to me. Seems like a band-aid approach, used in order to solve condensate problems?

[bowman1964]

yea the mach II's heating element gets really hot,compaired to a mach I...i tried disconnecting the heated on a mach II...and little to know differance in temps so far.they dont have enough insulation to handle the super cold temps so they use the heating element...i must admit i am supprissed it works as well as it does without hurting the cooling that much

[bmg]

Is the heating element on anytime the Mach II is plugged in, even when the Mach II isn't cooling?

[ellsworth]

i think the piont of the heater is to heat the insulation so that condensation doesnt form on the little insulation that they use. i think they did this so they could get away with using less insualtion which is completely counterproductive if you ask me, why not spend an extra $.03 for thicker neoprene that would be more efficient in the first place? i understand that most people dont use the heater, i sure wouldnt.

[Gary Lloyd]

Hmmmm... Handle the condensation problem by adding to the heat load on the system or handle it by subtracting from the heat load on the system. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Whatsmore it is more expensive for them. That heater and the controls for it costs a lot more than insulation.

I assume they have a reason, just haven't figured out what it is.

[ellsworth]

Whatsmore it is more expensive for them. That heater and the controls for it costs a lot more than insulation.

:doh: good point.

i think it would be to save space under the mother board so that it can fit into a stantard atx motherboard tray without bulky insulation, thats my best guess.

in these systems, any direct die system that is, the board is cooled below dewpoint for about 1" max around the socket. it seems that the heater is meant to heat the board, which wouldnt SIGNIFICANTLY affect the cpu, but it would reduce the efficiency by a few degrees maybe. anyways the heater heats the board itself to keep it above dewpoint making the need for waterproofing, such as die-electric grease, non existant. the prometia has to be joe sixpack proofed (im not saying anyone in here is a joe sixpack) somewhat and allow less room for error so that people dont blame chip-con for their dead mobo...imo. with the heater i think there is less work to be done on the user end resulting in a less efficient aparatus. atleast this is what it seems in my eyes.

[Gary Lloyd]

I think you are probably right. That all makes sense.

[JCviggen]

I'm not a fan of the heaters on the back of the mainboard... dont know why but I never use 'em. In some situations hower, condensation CAN occur there... so if you want to play it safe and follow CC's guidelines, you should use it.

I have done some (limited) testing and I have to say that neither of the heating elements has a realistic impact on the Evap/CPU temp. Much less than 1°C. Where exactly should this 'extra insulation' be put by the way..? the cooling head has to remain small enough to fit on all mainboards. The heating element in the evaporator head heats the outside of it, virtually no heat is added to the evaporator itself. I had to try it myself to believe it, but the heating elements make no real impact to the results, and they keep condensation away in all conditions so....i think its a pretty good solution all things considering.

More on heating the backside : it will definately affect your temp reading on boards like the EP 8RDA(+) which uses a thermistor in the socket. The actual CPU temp however wont be higher.

[ellsworth]

i think the extra insulation would go on the area of the motherboard that is left in open air around the socket. the only way to really tell is run it without the heater and put a bit of insulation and die-electric grease on the areas that form condensation, i have never used a prommy so i couldnt really give a specific answer. the best way to test for condensation is run the system as cold as possible, which means no computer, and check for moist areas and add insualtion accordingly. this will prevent condensation problems in the harshest of conditions once the computer is running. this is what i have been doing for a while now, testing for "the 100 year storm" conditions, a common practice in engineering and works very well.