Front Case Mod

[androsovic]

rahh... i tired. :( anyway
I had a relatively useless LCD panel on the front of my case (the temps were inaccurate etc). Also i only had one intake compared to 2 exhausts so...why not balance 'em off :D

Materials used:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16811999206 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811999206) - Generic fan filter
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16800888075 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16800888075) -Logisys Thermal Venting Kit - Blue
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16835129234 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835129234) - AeroCool Centaurus I 80mm Sleeve Blue LED Light Case Cooling Fan

(old image) case with lcd panel
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/before.jpg

So.. well
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/1.jpg
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/2.jpg
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/3.jpg
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/4.jpg
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/5.jpg
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/6.jpg
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/7.jpg
http://androsovic.ultra-gamers.com/Pix/modding/frontmod/8.jpg

[opium]

nice mod

i feel to open a modding sticky and let every post dey mods

[mojo]

looks mean...

nice mod. Thas the same PC that u got that 3dmark score on? QUAD SLI ftw!!!

[Paradoxxx]

all of a sudden andro turning mr gosu mod man.
nj, now to filter that incoming air and seal up the tower so that no ulfiltered air can come in

[androsovic]

Originally posted by mojo@Apr 14 2006, 06:49 PM
looks mean...

nice mod. Thas the same PC that u got that 3dmark score on? QUAD SLI ftw!!!
Quoted post


yea it's the same pc ;)
2400+
512 ram (soon to be a gig)
r9700
adobe photoshop cs2

:P
It was originally an April Fool's joke i was playing but nobody commented,lol. I took the stock from veggieman's 3dmark score.If you watch carefully you'll see it's the same :P

=====
@para

yep all the air is filtered,the grill thingy that ur seeing behind the thermal vent is the first cap for the filter.the side fan is filtered too.
==

Thx for the comments...not sure what to mod again though...maybe something small like Power/HDD LEDs.

[bushman]

balancing out air isnt always the bes solution. research the different effects of positive and negative air pressure in a case. depending on where your hotspots are in your case you could do more harm than good.


let me add however it is a decent looking mod :coolthumb:

[DBigBadSmurf]

^^what bushman said

personally i prefer to have more air going out of the case than coming in. But nice work on the mod tho.

[mojo]

actually, more extraction than intake would lead to air being sucked in from any where it can be. USB ports, IO shield, and anywhere it could pass to even the pressure. This leads to dust build ups in undesirable places.

I recommend a slightly higher intake than exhaust with all in intakes filtered. This would minimize dust build up over time.

P.S. I have a gosu mod i did with my redline DIMMs, will post pics when i get the chance.

*edit* For those of you who are not aware, andro has 2 sweaty HDDs right in that vicinity of the case, so IMO the fan is very well placed.

[opium]

yep wait mojo said is infact true

who evey did that research on that need to go to school, creating a vacuunm in the system is always in impossible, they might have a thoery saying hot air expands and removing expaned air is the best way to cool, but u will also never gain this vacuum pressure

what u need to do is control the air flow in your case to direct it at hot spots and have that hot air removed.

3 main hot spots to push air on to are the hard drive area, video card and NB and and the most important ram and cpu

[bushman]

Many suggest that when you plan case ventilation, you should try to get a little more air being pumped into the box than being pumped out, not the opposite.

The main reason for that is dust. A partial vacuum within the case will suck dust in through every gap or uneven seam. Dust can act as an insulator and cause case temperatures to rise. Dust can gum up floppy or optical drives. Dust can act as a sponge and absorb moisture from the air, eventually causing possible corrosion of components.

This article argues that despite all this, there's a good reason why you might want lower pressure inside than outside your case.

I have a passive duct on the side of my case. That's a tube running from a hole in the side door of the case to the CPU cooler fan. Just a hole, no other fans. With strong positive case pressure, the duct does the opposite of what I want. It doesn't bring cool air in; it just lets hot air out. To prevent this, I have set my case up with negative case pressure. That way, the partial vacuum sucks cooler air through the duct and on towards my CPU.

How did I do this?

I put a 92mm exhaust fan to the lower front of the case, along with another 92mm exhaust fan to the back of the case, just below the power supply. Both fans, along with the power supply fan, blow air out. I'm not sure what the CFM rating of the 80mm fan in the power supply is, but the two 92mm fans have a combined flow of approximately 65cfm.

I also taped up as many holes and seams as I could on the case to make sure that the air flowing in to equalize pressure is going through my duct.

How Well Does It Work?

One day, after tinkering with my setup, I left my CPU fan (Volcano 6cu+) unplugged. All that stood between having a Duron and a keychain was the Volcano 6 sink and my duct.

After about 50 minutes of use, my system temp was 59C. Not ideal, but it could have been a helluva lot worse.

Just recently I was testing motherboard voltages with my system running and didn't realize I had disconnected the CPU fan. To test the voltages with my multimeter, I had to have the door off. No negative case pressure, no duct action, just the heatsink.

After only five minutes, the temperature was already at 63C. Not a lab-style test, but I think significant enough to show that negative case pressure helps.

Testing . . .

Recently, I decided to try my Volcano 6 sink with a quieter fan. I have the CU+ model with a 38CFM fan. I substituted a 26CFM fan, and found that there was no real temp difference between the two.

I mentioned this to a few people and they were interested to know more about this. I decided to run a series of tests. Again, no lab here, but I tried to keep all outside factors balanced to keep the tests fair.

I wanted to see how much effect my duct had. If the duct backed up only by negative pressure could keep temps under 60c for almost an hour all by itself, maybe I didn't really need a strong but noisy fan on the heatsink.

So I ran the tests twice, once with the case door on and the airflow setup intact and once with the door off and no structured "case flow" at all.

I also used two different programs to check temperatures. The first was Asus Probe; the other was Sandra. For those critical of Asus Probe, while it tends to report high with other mobos, it does fine with the A7V-E. Besides, I'm interested in changes in temperature, not the temperature itself.

(Ed.note: Since the reported temperatures using Probe and Sandra were very close to each other, I'm just including the Sandra numbers to keep this simple--Ed)

The test were run using using a Duron 800@1050, voltage 1.86V. Both CPU and motherboard temperatures were measured after five minutes of idling and after 45 cycles (about 15 minutes) of SANDRA burn-in. These tests were done with the case door on and off. The machine was powered down and allowed to cool off after each test.

Volcano II Results

Case Door On

CPU Idle: 39.5C
MB Idle: 33.4C

CPU After Burn-In: 42.8C
MB After Burn-In: 33.9C

Case Door Off

CPU Idle: 42.3C
MB Idle: 33.0C

CPU After Burn-In: 46.4C
MB After Burn-In: 33.0C

Volcano 6cu+ fan

Case Door On

CPU Idle: 38.5C
MB Idle: 32.5C

CPU After Burn-In: 41.4C
MB After Burn-In: 33.9C

Case Door Off

CPU Idle: 40.4C
MB Idle: 32.5C

CPU After Burn-In: 43.8C
MB After Burn-In: 33.0C

As you can see, not only did the duct provide 3-4C additional cooling, it also reduced the temperature difference between the Volcano II and Volcano 6Cu+ from 2.0-2.9C to 1.0-1.4C.

I bought both my Volcano II and Volcano 6cu+ from the same store. I paid more money for more noise and 3C's worth of cooling. With negative airflow, you can save yourself the extra money, get half the cooling benefit, and not have SETI or FOLDing keep you up at night.

[camrachi-mishima]

Air management is simple, very simple, you don't need a degree in physics to figure it out cause it's common sense. You want air to move thru the case evenly, or as evenly as possible. Fresh air in, passes over the components, moves the (spent air) off the components, heatsinks, and out the case. That's all there is to it.

More air in than out?

More out than in?

Bollocks!

You want it to move as evenly as possible, the more components it can cover the better.