As Grollins stated it depends on the heatsinks. If the heatsinks are on the outside of the enclosure it´s not practicle to use a fan on them. To use a fan the heatsinks must form a tunnel through the air can flow. When this tunnel is closed from all around and has only 2 openings front and back, a fan on one side can do wonders. There are also ready made tunnels to buy for high power systems but are rather expensive. In each case you have to know from the begining or calculate the heat transfer you can obtain.
Hi Scott,
I´m also building (maybe even slower) an Aleph 5 with fans. I will use 4 Heatsinks (Fisher SK53 0,6 °C/W) and two fans (120mm). I found a nice IC from Micrel (MC502) wich drives the fans dependent on heatsink temperature with a PWM signal so noise won´t be a problem. The IC has some nice features you can set with different resistors (start up temp etc. see http://www.micrel.com)
william
I´m also building (maybe even slower) an Aleph 5 with fans. I will use 4 Heatsinks (Fisher SK53 0,6 °C/W) and two fans (120mm). I found a nice IC from Micrel (MC502) wich drives the fans dependent on heatsink temperature with a PWM signal so noise won´t be a problem. The IC has some nice features you can set with different resistors (start up temp etc. see http://www.micrel.com)
william
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