Raspberry Pi Fans

[Mthilton]

I have a Raspberry Pi and I'm thinking making an enclosure and adding two (small!) fans, one for intake and one for exhaust. I know they are totally unnecessary but I want to do it as a proof of concept. My plan is to mod the two fans so they are activated though USB. (Instructions on how to do that can be found Here)

Now my question is, do you think it will work without a heatsink or do I need to get one. It was pointed out to me that it is in fact a SOC, and just like a CPU it needs a heatsink. However, I do believe that things like a south bridge don't use a heatsink and can just have the fan blowing directly on the chipset.

Just for anybody that's curious, I plan on using the Pi for either:

Cloud Server Controller using Owncloud (Instructions on how to do that can be found Here)

or

Minecraft Server (Instructions for that can be found Here)

I just gained access to an old server at my school that i was told i could use so I'm leaning toward using that as the Minecraft Server and the Pi as a Owncloud Server.

Thanks in advanced

 

[IRyannHD]

I tried a MC server even whilst my PI was OC'd and it's really laggy, as for the fans it's a complete waste of money... PIs don't overheat to a point you need a heatsink or fans...

 

[Mthilton]

I tried a MC server even whilst my PI was OC'd and it's really laggy, as for the fans it's a complete waste of money... PIs don't overheat to a point you need a heatsink or fans...

Like i said, i know its way overkill, its just a proof of concept. I've had some use with them and generally they dont overheat as you said. I felt like this would be a fun little project that for the most part id be using things that i already had. Really the only thing that i would actually buy is like a 5 dollar heatsink. Everything else i have lying around. And im not surprised about your server problems. this is an ARM processor with 512 mb of ram (assuming you have a model b) so not too shocked but this, again is just for fun. But if you had to choose between heatsink and no heatsink, what would you pick?