SPCR

Wondering if I should leave my PCI slots in my Antec Sonata uncovered... Does it give enough benefits to do so? If I stick a fan near there with a Zalman FB123 Bracket, it might do some good things...

It depends on a few things. Would the fan blow air out or into the case ? And is your case pressure negative or positive ?

The effects of doing this can be difficult to predict. The airflow of your case might change for worse and if your case pressure is negative, dust might come in, which Bluefront (among others) would try to convince you to avoid I am sure

Yes, I do for one of my workstations. I use it to bring fresh air to the GPU (negative pressure case).

It depends entirely upon the airflow plan.

As for sucking dust in--this is a tradeoff.

Adding filters adds expense and may significantly increase airflow resistance (adversely affecting sound level and/or temperatures). A low resistance air filter may be rather bulky. The filters themselves require periodic cleaning/replacement.

In contrast, simply going without any filters requires periodic cleaning of the computer interior itself. The interior of some components, like CD drives, is impractical to clean. Dust buildup on some heatsinks may be difficult to remove.

My systems tend to have an absolute minimum number of components, and don't have complex internal ducting. A periodic cleaning is no hardship for me and a small price to pay for unrestricted airflow.

Bugs and other things can get in when you leave those slots open. Heck when I worked as a tech we had a system where a small mouse had gotten in through a pci slot that was uncovered.

Talz wrote:Bugs and other things can get in when you leave those slots open. Heck when I worked as a tech we had a system where a small mouse had gotten in through a pci slot that was uncovered.

One more reason for filtering.

If bugs get into the PC case, then...so what? They don't cause any significant adverse effects, whereas dust buildup can impede airflow and form insulative layers over heat sinks.

i have one uncovered slot atm, just temporary though, i have a hd sitting on foam on the bottom of my case and it was getting too hot, so the slot + filled slot above it acts like a duct until i get around to suspending the extra drive

Leaving a slot uncovered is no worse than the holes and duct in a SLK3000B.

I leave the bottom two pci slots open on mine to bring cooler air in for my vga card. I replaced the fan on my 6600gt with a 120mm Yate Loon on 5v and it gives me temperatures similar to the stock fan (84C peak on 3dmark03). With the pci slots covered, it went as high as 110C peak temp on 3dmark03.. Huge difference for me.

hmm.. I think I'll move my sound card up (on the bottom PCI slot right now) up a couple slots and open up my bottom 2 PCI slots. I don't want my sound card to become a dust pan.

I have a 120mm fan blowing down on my agp card, and I use a cut-up plastic food container to direct part of that flow out the two pci slots below it.

dyle wrote:I leave the bottom two pci slots open on mine to bring cooler air in for my vga card. I replaced the fan on my 6600gt with a 120mm Yate Loon on 5v and it gives me temperatures similar to the stock fan (84C peak on 3dmark03). With the pci slots covered, it went as high as 110C peak temp on 3dmark03.. Huge difference for me.

I'd say that is way to high temperatures! In my cramped barebone with a 6600GT i get load temperatures of about 80, with the stock cooler and a 70mm fan evacuating head from both the gfx and the prescott processor.

Ackelind wrote:

dyle wrote:I leave the bottom two pci slots open on mine to bring cooler air in for my vga card. I replaced the fan on my 6600gt with a 120mm Yate Loon on 5v and it gives me temperatures similar to the stock fan (84C peak on 3dmark03). With the pci slots covered, it went as high as 110C peak temp on 3dmark03.. Huge difference for me.

I'd say that is way to high temperatures! In my cramped barebone with a 6600GT i get load temperatures of about 80, with the stock cooler and a 70mm fan evacuating head from both the gfx and the prescott processor.

I know that it seems high (84C on load 52C idle) but those are the exact numbers that I got when I had the stock fan and heatsink on it. I have a GIgabye 6600GT agp using 69.03 drivers. If I set my 120mm fan at 12v, temps definitely go down but the noise level goes up. Repeated runs with 3dmark03 don't give me any artifacts so I'll settle with this.

Another thing, this is peak temperature on a complete 3dmark03 or 05 run. When I play hl2 or cs source, my temps don't go above 70C, using the monitor with rivatuner, 1024x768, everything high, 2xAA, 4xAF