First post, by vutt
Are thermal cameras/imagers useful tools in our hobby?
Bought my first thermal camera UNI-T UTi 690A (also known as UTi120S UTi712S) recently and thought to share experience.
I guess it especially useful tool for 1998 - 2002 time period where things got hotter and build in temp sensors for devices were not that common.
It revealed/confirmed few aspect of my Asus P3B-F/Geforce3 Ti200 system.
1) First of all excluding GPU the hottest chip running while in Win98 desktop is not CPU but FrontBus voltage regulator chip (surrounded with green marker on screenshot). Of course I'm running my FSB at 133Mhz like any civilized BX chipset owner. So I ended up adding heatsink I found laying around.
2) Geforce3 Ti200 version is running rather hot at even at default clocks. Surprisingly memory chips while running idle seems to be hotter than GPU chip. I think I'm going to treat memory chips with aftermarket heatsinks as well. Few sets of Rasberry Pi 4 heatsinks sets should do the trick. I already put out order.
3) This case is from my OG Athlon system so it's treated with sound dampening material. It also have ventilation holes at the bottom of side panel. So with always running power supply and additional silent 80mm outtake fan ATX case ventilation is working as intended - My passively cooled Geforce3 stays cooler when case panel is closed.
Of course same thing could have been achieved with cheaper remote IR thermometer but ability to assess bigger area same time makes imager better choice.