I've had a Pinbot for a couple of years now that I've just finally finished getting working (It's by no means restored, but it'll play nicely, and that's all I care about). I've got one or two more tweaks to make, but I wanted to see if anyone else has seen a fan in the head before.

It's a 120V fan a few inches across, and it's at the bottom of the head, pointing down the neck.

Any good ideas what they were trying to accomplish? It's kind of noisy and I'm thinking I'll just remove it, but I wanted to see if anyone knows what they might have been going for. I had to rebuild the PS and do some work on the main CPU board before the thing would run, and I wonder if it was marginal with heat, and they put in the fan rather than hunt down the problem?

OK then - I was thinking that since it wasn't original, it wasn't needed, but that mess of electronics certainly shall generate a good bit of heat. I'm going to remove the neck fan (seriously - trying to move the heat DOWN is not the right approach!) and put a couple of small fans in the back blowing out through the vents in the rear of the backbox. That'll be quieter and should actually cool better than the existing fan madness.

I'll post again when I grab some parts from the junk bin at work - I'm going to try throwing an array of 40mm fans over the vent holes at the top of the back box and see what that does. After I prove it fits, I'll shell out for 3 or so silent ones and try some temperature measurements.

The LEDs are definitely something I should do eventually, but it's not something I can do this minute.