Measure the thermal effect of airflow you can change for nothing

applied · 90 min · Objective 3.4

Task

Change one airflow variable at a time on a machine you own and measure the effect, so that dust, cable routing and panel position become quantities rather than folklore.

Steps

  1. Establish a baseline: run a ten-minute processor load and log temperature every thirty seconds into lab/airflow/baseline.csv with header reading,temp_c,condition, with condition set to baseline.
  2. Change exactly ONE variable -- panel off, or intake unblocked, or heatsink cleaned -- and repeat the same load and logging, appending rows with a new condition value.
  3. Repeat for a second variable. Three conditions in total, one variable changed between each.
  4. Compute the mean and peak temperature per condition into lab/airflow/summary.csv with header condition,mean_c,peak_c,delta.
  5. Write lab/airflow/conclusion.md naming which change helped most, by how much, and which changed nothing measurable -- a change with no measurable effect is a finding worth recording.

Verify

awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=3 {n++} END {print n" reading(s)"}' lab/airflow/baseline.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 {print $3}' lab/airflow/baseline.csv | sort -u | wc -l
awk -F, 'NR>1 && NF>=4 {n++} END {print n" condition(s) summarised"}' lab/airflow/summary.csv
awk -F, 'NR>1 {print $4}' lab/airflow/summary.csv | sort -u | wc -l
grep -c . lab/airflow/conclusion.md

Thirty or more readings across three distinct conditions, a summary with a delta per condition, and a conclusion. A summary where all three deltas are identical means the variable was not actually changed between runs.

Notes

Change one thing between runs. Cleaning the heatsink and taking the panel off in the same step gives one number for two changes, and the whole method of this course is that a change you cannot attribute is a change you cannot learn from.

This is an independent study companion for CompTIA A+ Core 1 220-1201 and is not produced by or endorsed by CompTIA.