What direction is the airflow of the original xbox? I have a v1.0 and I wouldn't think it would make any sense to have the gpu fan blow upwards or even the back fan as an out take.....
That is completely backwards........u would think they would want the gpu to push downwards over the heat sync pushing the heat off the fins of the sync.....not try to pull it upwards....at least that's my thoughts
I think they did that so the case airflow would not be disturbed. The GPU fan was close to the case fan. The fan not doing much is probably why it was taken out after 1.0 boards.
I was debating on adding 2 of the gpu fans as an intake on the dvd rom side of the system because they are small and I can fit them with minimal changes to the case and flipping the gpu fan to push air over the heat sync rather than try to pull it away. Does this sound effective?
The GPU fan pushes air down. The Xbox's cooling solution is highly efficient and people's attempts to improve it never actually seem to do so. If your xbox is running too hot, you can get a quieter fan and just up the voltage to it. Leave the stock airflow direction alone. Removing the GPU fan entirely and adding a passive heatsink from a 1.1-1.6 will also be perfectly acceptable to cool it adequately and get rid of lots of noise.
IN erecting thoughts I was just pondering these ideas because I see absolutely no way that it takes in adequate airflow at all......then again I suppose this thing is not a dual core cpu or anything like that. I've kinda always liked the gpu fan and cooling system as a matter of fact Im adding it back into a v1.4 system. I was simply just thinking more intake would improve the flow of air across all of the heat sync fins keeping things at a cooler temperature was all. Then again I suppose this is all based on the cfm pushed threw the case as well. As a side note I've also always removed the metal shielding on the top of the xbox (and even the 360) because I see no real purpose for this and view it as a restriction of air flow more than anything.
I know people do the Pico PSU mods on the Dreamcast pretty regularly, and they are very efficient to bring down the heat in the console when for instance you are using a disc drive emulator such as the GDEmu or the USB GDRom drive replacements where the original air flow is altered for these new devices. I can only see it working on other systems as well, who knows it could actually work wonders on the OG Xbox.
When you think about it, adding an intake fan can't help much. Why? How can it move more air across the heatsinks than the exhaust fan can let out? The only reason it helps a little, is it relieves just a little stress from the exhaust fan. The air is already moving meaning it has to do slightly less work. You would barely notice this difference. Simply increasing the fan speed can help. Removing the shielding won't help much. The vents in the shielding are placed in strategic areas to direct airflow across the critical components. You might get more airflow by removing them, but potentially less across where it matters. Pull the motherboard out and look at the dust accumulation. You can see the pattern of the airflow this way and it is exactly what you want.
I've always figured the case designers at Microsoft knew what they were doing - cutting additional vents or removing the shielding and allowing air to flow across more of the motherboard could decrease air velocity over the critical parts of the the board and reduce heat transfer. If you're interested in getting temperatures down I've found replacing the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU has had the most drastic effect.
