Case temps are getting too high, wanna get rid of the cage (by any means necessary), stick the drives into 5.25" hotswap trays, and stick a 120mm Panaflo in the front.

Anyone got a link to this being done (saw it somewhere a few weeks back)?

Should I RMA the BQE and get the AMB instead? Does the AMB have 2 doors like the BQE?

Thanks.

3700-BQE
3700-AMB

I haven't used the BQE but both sides of the AMB does come off.

The aiflow on the AMB is pretty good, my case temps hover around 31-35c.

I'm going to rip out the drive cage of my future BQE and Seal did it

There's 15-20 rivets to be removed then the drive cage should be removable!

ah its only the rivets, i thought the edges were soldered on. ill chop it up then.

thanks mate.

No, no, no.

Remove the BQE's drive cage, certainly, but but the drives in mobile racks in the 5.25" bays with a big fan in front of them? No!

Drill out the drive cage rivets and remove it, then use the space to suspend your drives using the patented Aphonos Multiple Drive Suspension Technique. Put an ultra low speed 92mm or maybe a 120mm fan into the supplied fan opening and you'll have a setup that is quiet and cool. Put them up in the 5.25" bays and you'll have a setup that is hot and loud.

Perhaps, but the drive cage is a definite impediment to airflow through the case. Getting rid of it can only help that sitiation.

Has anyone turned the BQE cage 90* to improve airflow? Cut it out and put it back so the air flows over the drives from the new "front?"

The AMB and BQE are on my list now. I've given up on any decent looking cases with quiet pedigree coming out. The SFF are too loud and the rest are just not want I want.

im not really a fan of suspending drives, i don't like things dangling around in my case ... especially not the drives.

also im constantly changing drives, hotswap bays saved my a LOT of trouble in the past.

i had 2 of these before, after a few months the fan would rattle for a few seconds on boot. they're both stuck in my fileserver where i dont really give a shit about sound.

so now im getting 2 of these, which will hopefully arrive monday. fan is pretty worthless and moves jack all, but at least the drives are out of the way and most importantly, swapable.

thanks for the suggestions though, might suspend some drives on less used computers ... my grandfather's pc comes to mind.

I'm a giant fan of mobile racks myself and used to use them religiously. However, they don't lend themselves to quiet computing because they really, really need to be cooled an they all use those crappy little 40mm fans. If you search through my old posts here at SPCR you can see details of all the different 40mm fans I've gone through trying to find a quiet one. After two years I finally gave up and approched the problem from a different angle. Here's a few pics. It works very well, both from a cooling and a low noise standpoint. The fan is an 5V 80mm Japanaflo.







Note that the rack is one of the Kingwin KF-21s. They're a good strong rack that lend themselves well to being hacked up and still remain rigid.

My 3700 BQE came modded with the drive cage oriented front to back... but I still removed it for sorbothane mounts.

Acousticase 6607, by the way.

thats an interesting idea, thanks Ralf.

the cage is out, was easy as hell.

miyagi_

What were your case temps before the mod?

the hottest my case temps ever been is 40C and i live in uber hot FL

right now it is 32C

~RaNDoM

before

(idle and load respectively)
case 35c / 37c
cpu 52c / 57c

after

case 32c / 34c
cpu 50c / 55c

ambient temp was 25c


i still think the CPU is too hot, mainly due to the poor exhaust (120mm @ 5v - gonna replace it with 120mm antec @ 12v), and there aren't enough holes for the intake fan to work properly.

generally i got a 2c decrease in temps, still needs a lot of work though.

and that antec smartpower 350w PSU that came with the BQE is the loudest ive ever heard, needs replacing.