Since the PSU had no fresh air coming in from the sides of the case (like my old Sonata) the fan was speeding up to compensate for all the warm/hot air it was receiving. To me this got to an unacceptable level so I ordered up a 350W Fortron Aurora PSU from www.newegg.com. After installing my new Fortron I was very surprised to see that it was LOUDER than my old Antec TP380W PSU. This is because even though you have a manual control knob at the rear of the PSU to decide how fast you want the fan to run, that fan is ALSO temperature controlled so with all the hot air in my case being forced into the PSU, it sped up to probalby about 7-8V which was way too fast for me. On a whim, I decided what the heck, I'll just mod my Antec TP380W PSU with a Panaflo L1A. I went downstairs, soldered the L1A to the PSU fan connector wires and threw her in the case. All said and done this mod was very successful! However, after feeling the very hot air that was coming out of the PSU I decided that it was too dangerous to risk losing my PSU and possibly other components due to it overheating. I made a PSU duct out of cardboard that I taped into an emptry 3.5 bay in the top of my case (I cut out an empty bay cover with my dremel and glued some modders mesh in it) and my PSU now exhausts only slightly warm air, and when I open up my case and touch it from the side and bottom it is mostly slightly warm but sometimes when it's cold in my room (70F or lower) the PSU is COLD to the touch. Problem solved! As of now I am VERY happy with how this has turned out. At night (I leave this computer on 24/7) this is nearly inaudible, I have to strain to hear it. During the day when I'm not sleeping, I dont even notice it is on. Anyways, enough of my blabbering, onto the pictures!
EDIT: I've been modifying my case alot recently, so I guess it's time to give it the old update. What's new in my case now is the bird-house mod (much thanks to Bluefront for this idea) the front USB ports added to the floppy cover, and I changed my PSU duct from taking up one 5.25 bay to two.
Here's my case from the front:
The inside of my case:
The inside right part of my case:
This is a close up of the top part of my case:
Here's three different angles of the inside of my birdhouse; it houses two Samsung SP1213N drives:
This one shows you my psu duct that has been modified countless times
This is a close up of my front usb ports. I cut the hole in the floppy cover with my dremel, and then glued/taped the connector in place.
For temperatures I get 42C idle, 54 full load on my CPU, and 29 for case temp (ambient room temp of 72.7F). I only have one computer so I use this for everything; mainly gaming. I play UT2K4, Far Cry, Halo, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Splinter Cell, Doom III among others. I also use this for school work (MS Word), E-Mail, and watching DVD's, and websurfing. I leave it on 24/7 and at night during the spring/summer the crickets outside my window along with the wind and all those other nature sounds drown out all noise from my PC. The only time I can hear it is if I am sitting directly next to it and I have no music playing with my windows closed; this happens mostly in the winter. At night during the winter it is just a dull rush of air/whirring I hear that sounds like one huge fan running VERY slow. Any comments, suggestions, questions, are welcome![/img]
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they're too short, so I have to keep those right next to them for now, same goes for the power connectors for my hard drives.