Internal single fan cooling

PhilgB · Post by **PhilgB** » Tue Dec 30, 2003 10:22 am

Inspired by Bluefronts many interesting DIY posts, I quickly drew this up, trying to bring his 'New Form Factor' setup all inside the case. The plan is missing quite a few details, but maybe someone can throw in a few ideas.

I wanted to keep it down to one fan (plus HSF) if possible. And originaly thought of having it exhaust through the front. The main problems right now would be to cool the hard drive, probably ducting the PSU and then possibly some way of filtering the whole thing.

Could possibly push back the PSU like Bluefront's Super Duct and then place a filter there somewhere.

The box holding the 120mm fan would probably be made out of wood with rubber on the edges that touch the case, and then fixed somehow.

The inside of the box as well as the channel would be covered in sound dampening material, and some or all of the 3.5" external bays for exhaust.
The entire front bezel could also be entirely lined with sound dampening.

Any ideas?
Thanks

sbabb · Post by **sbabb** » Tue Dec 30, 2003 10:55 am

If the 120mm fan is an exhaust fan, then you'll be "cooling" all of your electronics using air that's been pre-heated by the PSU. You'll also be fighting natural convection and your airflow over the PCI cards will be almost nil.

Better to use the 120mm fan as an intake, have it blow across the PCI cards and CPU, then exhaust it out through the PSU. Of course, that's the same way that most PCs work right now.

I just built a system using an Evercase 4252 with a Fortron 300-60PN PSU and a single slow 80mm fan in the rear. The HSF is a Zalman 7000AlCu, so the top rear corner of the box has the 92mm HSF, the 120mm PSU exhaust fan, and the 80mm exhaust fan all within fractions of an inch of eachother. The hard drive is down front behind the front air intake grill. If I'd stuck with the original left-side panel with the vent (I replaced it with a windowed panel and a light - it's my daughter's PC) I probably would have ducted the vent to the Zalman so that it's drawing outside air. The 80mm fan may also be unnecessary, but I didn't have a handy way to close up the hole to prevent hot air recirculation, so I just put in a slow fan instead.

The upshot of this ramble is that I used the plain old "in at the bottom front, out at the top rear" airflow pattern and I have a quiet system with a Barton 2500 overclocked to 3200 speed and the graphics card and HDD also stay cool.

PhilgB · Post by **PhilgB** » Tue Dec 30, 2003 12:02 pm

Yeah i figured the regular way would be the easiest way. I have a few older cases with no room at all for 80mm in the back and was hoping to come up with a quiet idea for cooling everything.