HSF Modifications
The old HSF is noisy and pretty rubbish. Task one is to remove it from your processor. This may involve a careful examination of how it is attached to the CPU. If you are as unlucky as me, it will also be attached with thermal epoxy. If so, gentle twisting motions, back and forth should loosen that. Failing that, its time to heat it up with a hair dryer and keep twisting.
Next you need the following items:
Replacement heatsink – suggest this one
A nice quiet 80mm case fan – eg nexus case fan. Thisis a funky coloured fan from TCS, and its nice and quiet
Some cable ties – local hardware store
A Vantec silicone gasket to put the fan in, or it will vibrate like hell against the HSF.
Now you need to strap the fan to the HSF. Do this out of the case so that you can make sure the cable ties are nice and tight. The arrangement of the ties in the pictures worked best for me. If the ties are too loose, you will get a lot of vibration against the HSF – even with a gasket. If the ties are too tight you will deform the case fan housing causing the fan blades to catch. Its common sense, it’s not hard.
Overall HSF pic 1
Overall HSF pic 2
These 2 picutres show the overall arrangement that you are trying to achieve. Clearance is very tight.
Reverse angle
Close up showing cable tie attachment to HSF
None of the pictures show the case fan sitting in the gasket. Initially I did not use one, this was a mistake. The HSF and fan resonated against one another. The gasket solved this nicely.
PSU Modifications:
Replace the PSU fan with a good quiet case fan, and dangle its power connector out of the PSU into the inside of the case. Look back to the first picture showing the HSF medications and you can see the power cable for the fan running out of the hole where the lower fan used to be.
GPU:
Attack the GPU with a passive cooler from Zalman. Or if your budget will not go that far, just lower the voltage of the current fan.
Case Mods:
Make sure that there is a little case airflow. For I me I needed to make an air intake. This was created by drilling a lot of holes in the front part of the base section. The case was then stood on some magazines to make sure the air could reach the holes.
I think I went overboard with my next move by making a top blow hole, but I did it anyway.
Fan Control:
Now hook up the new fans to a fan controller if you want flexibility. Alternatively use a 7 or 5V mod to connect the fans.
