I brought my Lian-Li into work to take some thermal images of the PC in action. I was hoping that I could measure the variance in air temperature with in the case by showing the values of the air as it moved through the case. However I found out that the Wave length of the camera could not provide the resolution of variance that I was looking for in the air as it was not designed for that task.
All was not lost as I was able to get some cool photos of my case showing the hot spots. The hot point was an area that I would never have though, that was the Memory buffer chip measured at 84.36C.
Due to the camera not being able to measure through the plastic door, I removed the panel and quickly took the shot. I was running Super PI at the time to place the CPU under load, and this may be why the memory buffer was so hot. I did not take a shot of the PC during Idle to confirm if running tasks makes it hotter or not. It was only after studying the pictures, and looking up the chip ID on the net that I learned it was the Memory buffer chip.
![](http://www.bingtech.com/llthermal.jpg" BORDER="0)
Here you can see the hot spot is S1 That's the memory buffer chip @ 84C. The second hottest area is the capacitors beside the HSF marked E2 The Alpha draws heat away from the HS so these are hot by nature as the warm air off the CPU is not being blown over them, rather the Alpha should be drawing cool air over them. You can see the graphics card memory is another hot spot at about 50C.
![](http://www.bingtech.com/llthermal2.jpg" BORDER="0)
Here is another shot shown at a different contrast. The HSF area E1 correlates very well with my Asus CPU diode that stated the CPU DIe was at 62C. Again the hot spot is S1 the memory buffer chip.\
Though I didn't get what I was really after, this was an interesting experiment none the less.
The camera used was a ExplorerIR
![](http://www.x26.com/images2/exploreIR.jpg" BORDER="0)
Bing
All was not lost as I was able to get some cool photos of my case showing the hot spots. The hot point was an area that I would never have though, that was the Memory buffer chip measured at 84.36C.
Due to the camera not being able to measure through the plastic door, I removed the panel and quickly took the shot. I was running Super PI at the time to place the CPU under load, and this may be why the memory buffer was so hot. I did not take a shot of the PC during Idle to confirm if running tasks makes it hotter or not. It was only after studying the pictures, and looking up the chip ID on the net that I learned it was the Memory buffer chip.
Here you can see the hot spot is S1 That's the memory buffer chip @ 84C. The second hottest area is the capacitors beside the HSF marked E2 The Alpha draws heat away from the HS so these are hot by nature as the warm air off the CPU is not being blown over them, rather the Alpha should be drawing cool air over them. You can see the graphics card memory is another hot spot at about 50C.
Here is another shot shown at a different contrast. The HSF area E1 correlates very well with my Asus CPU diode that stated the CPU DIe was at 62C. Again the hot spot is S1 the memory buffer chip.\
Though I didn't get what I was really after, this was an interesting experiment none the less.
The camera used was a ExplorerIR
Bing
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