Air-cooled information processing apparatus having cooling air fan, sub-fan, and plural separated cooling air flow channels

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Accordingly, it is a first object of the present invention to provide an air-cooled information processing apparatus in which, using a cooling system of a limited capacity, devices and components in the apparatus are adequately cooled by forced air cooling, without being accompanied by a rise in the production cost while suppressing increase in the noise, discharge air flow rate and electric power consumption.
It is a second object of the present invention to provide an air-cooled information processing apparatus in which, despite a dense arrangement of devices or units such as heat-generating boards, e.
g.
, IC chips and LSI packages, hard disks, power supply units and so forth, these devices and units can be efficiently cooled to ensure high reliability of the whole apparatus without raising the level of noise.
It is a third object of the present invention to provide a casing structure for electronic apparatuses in which the rigidity of a front panel is enhanced to reduce distortion, while enabling divesification of the design.
It is a fourth object of the present invention to provide an electronic apparatus cooling structure which has a simple construction occupying only a small space and yet capable of providing a high cooling efficiency while enabling local concentration of cooling effect to portions where electronic devices having specifically large rates of heat generation are installed.
In order to achieve the first object, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided an air-cooled information processing apparatus having a plurality of units and a casing accommodating the units, comprising: at least one cooling air supply section and at least one cooling air discharge section provided in the casing; a partition member dividing the space inside the casing so as to define at least two cooling air flow channels between the cooling air supply section and the cooling air discharge section; and at least one main fan unit disposed in each of the cooling air flow channels; wherein, the at least two cooling air flow channels include at least one first cooling air flow channel in which at least two units from among the plurality of units are disposed in parallel with each other with respect to the direction of flow of cooling air, and at least one second cooling air flow channel in which at least two units from among the plurality of units are arranged in series to each other along the flow of cooling air