EJ, Marc, Jonathan, Erik, Dave:

EJ noted that the Dolphin PCIe cards located at the endstations and read out by h1cdsrfm in the corner are running much warmer than the rest of the Dolphin cards.

h1cdsrfm has 3 Dophin IX cards on its PCI bus, one is plugged into its local PCIe bank, the other two are in Adnaco expansion chassis which are located at the end stations, and are accessed by a 4km single mode fiber link connected to local adnaco adapter cards.

The local Dolhin card, cooled by h1cdsrfm's fans, runs at 62C. The EY card runs at 74C and the EX card runs at 90C. The end station temps are significantly higher than the manufacturer's recommendation.

The Adnaco expansion chassis were inspected at both end stations:

   both chassis side mounted, resting on a shelf

  both chassis have their cover installed

  both chassis fan is operational

The only difference between the two end stations is the PCIe slot the Dolphin card is installed in. At EY (74C) it is in the slot closest to the fan (closest to center of chassis), at EX (90C) it is the slot furthest from the fan (closest to the edge of chassis).

The chassis has one airflow outlet, the fan itself blowing outwards at the rear. There are several airflow inlets: circular hole pattern on top lid, center of the chassis; rectangular hole pattern on top lid, directly above the four PCIe slots; series of slots on left side, from front of chassis to half way back; ditto on right side.

At 14:06 at EY we put a plate on the top lid which blocks the circular hole pattern. Now air comes in from the holes directly above the PCIe slots, and the left and right slot array. This cooled the Dolphin card down from 74C to 65C in 30mins.

At 15:00 at EX we put a plate on the circular pattern, and blocked the right side slot array with tape. Now input air is directly above the PCI connectors and on the left side array only (the one closest to the cards)

Attached trend shows EX and EY temps over this period, started with 90C,74C and now at a steady 76C,66C