It's hard to decide whether this should go in the cooling, general, systems or cases section, but I'm choosing cases because that's where I'm most wanting to ask for suggestions. Comments on the whole idea are welcome though, of course!

At present, my plan is to have a large-area intake filter somewhere on the case, probably a car engine air filter or a car passenger-air filter (cabin air filter).

Air will be drawn through the filter (or filters) by one or more quiet fans.

Air will leave the case through a car radiator or heater matrix (heater core to you folk across the Atlantic). This will probably be something thin and flat with a large area for low air resistance, perhaps mounted on the side of the case.

Air will also leave the case through the PSU. This will be a standard ATX PSU (probably the Nexus NX-3000). Initially I shall run it as supplied, but in the long term I would like to remove its fan. The idea here is that inside the PSU is a noisy place for a fan. Instead the output from the PSU's fan control circuit will feed into one of the inputs for the airflow control system I want to make. This system will assume that the PSU is happy so long as it is not trying to feed more than say 11V to the fan it thinks it has.

From the beginning, the control system should respond to CPU and motherboard temperature measurements (perhaps hard drive too?) and keep the fans running just fast enough that all the measured temperatures stay below preset values. Ideally this would involve some way to vary the proportions of the airflow leaving the case through radiator and PSU.

I plan to watercool CPU, hard drive, perhaps GPU, possibly north bridge, almost certainly not RAM. The point of watercooling the hard drive is to let me encase it in foam then in solid rubber without it overheating.

The pump will probably be an Eheim 1046 or 1048, or perhaps a Maxijet for size reasons. Probably submerged in a well-sealed reservoir hardly bigger than itself, and mounted on sponge foam.

Any recommendations for a case, and how/where to mount the radiator, filter and fans?
Initially it will need to hold two standard size optical drives and one thickly wrapped hard drive as well as all the normal stuff plus the watercooling gear. It would be nice to have space to add more drives later on if needed. It will need to be strong enough to stay sturdy after all the big holes I expect will be needed.

I would recommend the case I use. Not only is it big (full ATX) but it's made of very sturdy steal (makes my old Dell feel like tin) with rounded edges, and it has 4 5.25" bays - 3 on the top and one on the bottom that has a door to conceal it. That bottom drive bay door might be the perfect place for your intake system to reside, since there is plenty of space beneath the 3.5" bays (just leave the door open). There are 2 fan-grills right there, as well. There is also a hole in the bottom of the drive cage through which you could run tubing, etc. With 3 bays left on top you'd have room for your sealed HDD, CDR, and DVD, or other combination. If you do that, you could use the drive cage to mount your pump, etc, or to vertically suspend another enclosed HDD. Just a thought. Below is a link to a good review of the box. Good luck! That sounds like the most complicated setup ever. More of a Jaguar compared to our regular old VW beetles!


http://www.thinkcomputers.org/reviews/N ... _case.html

Thankyou. That does look like a good case. (It would be even better with a removable motherboard tray. Perhaps if I drilled out the rivets and replaced them with screws?)
Sadly, I haven't (yet) been able to find anywhere that sells it in the U.K.

You all have Google over there, right?

I got a great deal on mine, but only after Googling it for a very long time. I KNOW that somewhere along the line I saw one for sale from a UK site.

It's also sold as the Nikao Noblesse. Codegen makes one that they also call Noblesse, but it is a cheap knock-off with a silver mirrored face on both the black and white models.

You might contact Ahanix/Nikao directly for the name of a UK distributor.

http://www.ahanix.com
http://www.nikao.net

As for the MB tray, I don't know. Its pretty sturdy (which is why I recommended it). At any rate, it would be well beyond my expertise, so I don't think I can comment. But good luck!