When I was building/testing my PWM fan controller I once forgot to plug the 120mm fan on my rad back into the PSU when I went back to work on the PWM circuit. Ran my system (just playing MP3's while I worked elsewhere so only like 2% load on it) for about 3 hours like that. The tubing (tygon, thin-wall) got REALLY soft and quite warm to the touch, but with all the surface area of the rad/tubing/etc. it was able to passively radiate enough heat to keep running. Then again - it probably would have overheated if I had had the side-panel on the case to stop cool air flowing in.
|