Someone asked if there was dust in the old PSU. Nope. I'm a bit of a fan (sorry
) of filters. And, I think I dusted the case/PSU out with a can of compressed at at the end of 2012--the last time I had the case open. The PSU came out of the case looking just like the original picture (in the other thread).Here was its home.
I cut the grills off the front and used a trimmed, foam shopvac filter, held in place with some 1/16" black elastic cord to filter the front fan opening. The upper drive bays were covered with the same filter material. I opened up the edges of the front of the case for additional airflow (poor cell phone camera picture below) as well as cutting away most of the bottom of the front panel to allow air to flow in from below. You can see the carpet padding on a piece of wood with furniture sliders on the bottom, that I still use to raise the machine off the floor and make it easy to slide out.
I cut 1/8" foam core display board to make the PSU duct. (The duct has been improved since this image was taken. It is now mounted on a set of CD drive rails, and the Silent Drive right below the duct is no longer being used.) The new, replacement Tornado PSU is a 120mm bottom-fan model, so it will help with air evacuation out of the case. I left the duct in after swapping the PSU, just to help keep air from the top front of the case. And, yes, I know the SATA cables were not all plugged in for the photo.
Here is the back of the case, so you can see an outside shot of the drive-bay Zalman fan controller I modded and mounted to the back of the case. The electrical tape cuts down on the blue glow in the room.
There's the old Seasonic with the blue elasotmer mounts and the Panaflo.I run this headless on a wired network. The keyboard, mouse, and monitor were plugged in for setup when this picture was taken.
This backup server has a 6-drive acrylic rack that I made myself. All those drives are not the most energy-efficient, but it makes a good use of older drives. Everything is mirrored and it only runs about an hour per day in the middle of the night (and it isn't my only backups).
It is hard to see on the rack in this image, but the side of the rack with the fan has a 1/16" sheet with a 120mm hole in order to direct air across the drives from the front of the case. I used the stretchy bracelet stuff for suspending the drives. The fan is decoupled from the acrylic with some grommets and zip ties.
Here is a picture of it loaded.
I knew there was a reason I took all these photos in the first place. I guess some of this is pretty dated stuff around here by now, but it still works, it is paid for, and most importantly, it is still quiet! I can hear the drives spin up if I bring it out of standby, but even with everything running, it is a quiet machine.