I have lately been looking for a new case and just found out that a friend of mine had a old machine lying in his basement. He gave me the case and some miscellaneous content inside all for free - so why not? =)

The case is probably closer to 8 years old, branded Chieftec and entirely made of aluminium, which I did not expect. Overall a sturdy construction. Since it is so old, it is unfortunately also designed for 80mm fans, not great. But can certainly be solved, or so I hope.

That is a really cool case. You should be able to dremel out fangrills and make place for a 120 mm fan.

I think the picture makes it obvious that's not possible at the back, maybe the front...

@OP

why that case? you got some nice components there, why not something new?

I like it when people recycle Chieftec cases are built to last, it's a pity they have so many holes in side panels.

You can create a separate chamber in your Chieftec. Use those horizontal rails (braces) as a support for a PCV or ply divider. Flip the PSU upside down and you've go yourself a separate chamber for the PSU and HDDs. The PSU will suffice to suck enough air to cool itself and the drives (no need for that Noctua).

The bottom chamber could be improved by putting an after market CPU cooler, for example a Ninja.

Final thought: what do you need 8GB ram for?

I like the idea of not trowing perfectly good things away. So I will give this box a chance, but I will probably end up with a P183 like all the rest of you...

8GB RAM is great, if you like me work in Photoshop.

Yes, a new CPU cooler, like you said a Ninja or something must be fitted. Plus two silent 80 mm fans, I can't fit a single 120 mm fan. not enough space.

Here are some pics of the elastic bands, HDD/fan-modification.








Work in progress



Harddrive fitted



Padded with some foam

looks nice. You could see what single good quality 80mm exhaust would do your temps but I'd block all excessive holes.

Nice.

I have one of those cases of identical design, but badged Antec and made of steel. Does anyone know if Antec licensed Chieftec's design, or was it the other way around? They are great cases though, definitely built to last!

@thejamppa, I have a better solution.

The tiny 80mm hole in the left side door has been enlarged. All it took was some blood, sweat and tears...



Still needs some more sanding and a few missing holes

@blackworx

Good question, I don't really know.

saber saw + metal file? or big ass hole saw?

just wondering...

Wondering the same thing...

Also, how did you mount the fan? I don't see any holes on the outside for screws or softmounts. I'm guessing glue or dual-sided foam tape?

BTW, I just finished a build in a new Chieftec. I love Chieftec cases!

I think they call it, surprise surprise..."Hole Cutter". Adjustable between 30-120mm. About $15...

The fan hasn't been mounted yet, need to drill the holes first. 4mm if I recall right.

I'm glad you like your Chieftec case =)

Awesome and inspiring. Thanks for sharing.

Update, update...



Side-fan where it belongs -- but how did I attach it?



Answer: velcro and superglue. Quite stable and with good anti-vibration properties. No need for holes either. Only time will tell if it stays in place...


Next? Temps update and blocking of all excessive air intake/holes

lol thats a ghetto mount.

but I like it.

Ghetto, like the rest of my modds. But it works great!

Anyway, some temps -- all with the excessive holes covered. Noctua runs @800 rpm and the Nexus @7v.

All idle temps.

CPU 34-36°C (stock-cooler @50%, or 900rpm)
VGA 62-68°C (stock-cooler @25%)
HDD 27-30°C




Decent I think. But I will replace the CPU-cooler...

u should up ur FSB..

Nah, it's all done by SpeedStep. The FSB is constant but the multiplier varies.

Nice looking setup you wound up with.

I had one of those cases for a pre-built system. Unfortunately the door broke in shipment (twice!), and the oddball PSU mounting bracket was always bending. So both my brothers got a free case & I got the one in my sig.

Yes, but.. You should increase your FSB. Assuming your board supports frequency scaling with the FSB increased, you'll use little extra power, for a significant performance boost.

yeah.

if ur not into over clocking, just up your FSB to 400, and bring down your multiplier and fsb:ram ratio. your mem clock will remain the same, and so will your cpu, but you will be moving more 1s and 0s across your board

love the ghetto mount. mostly because it looks neater than screws/silicone tags, but also because I'm guessing velcro must have a decent decoupling effect too?

@RoGuE

Thanks. I will try that later. I haven't fiddled around much in BIOS yet.

@blackworx

I also think it looks better, from the outside that is... Very easy to install/fix on flat surfaces too. And vibrations are not a problem either. When I first got the velcro-idea I just laughed... So simple, but effective at the same time, and it works!

Well that makes no sense, considering if you increase the FSB to 400 on a Q9650 and a P43, you are overclocking, no matter the core speed.

Taken from the ASRock website:

LGA 775 for Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme / Core™ 2 Quad / Core™ 2 Duo / Pentium® Dual Core / Celeron® Dual Core / Celeron®, supporting Penryn Quad Core Yorkfield and Dual Core Wolfdale processors
Intel® P43 + ICH10 Chipsets
Supports FSB 1600/1333/1066/800MHz


note especially that last line...FSB 1600. That means that setting the fsb to 400 is the max, NON overclocked fsb speed as rated by the manufacturer.

so I will repeat for the O.P., upping your fsb to 400, and bringing down your cpu multiplier and fsb:ram ratio will not be overclocking anything, but will speed up your front side bus.

So 400 * 7,5 is better than 333 * 9? My RAM is running @1066/4=266

well yeah, think about it. If you bring up FSB and bring your processor down to around the same clock speed, you are giving yourself a performance boost that your motherboard is designed to handle.

One tip I might suggest is a SLIGHT overclock of your cpu by bringing the multiplier down to 8,6 instead of 7,5. Your board should more than be able to handle the extra clock with auto settings on voltages.

of course, none of this is neccisary. I just thought you would be interested to know that you can get more performance out of your board without going over spec.

As for the build, I really like the soft mounted fan in the front with the surrounding foam. You did a good job with that. Nice HDD suspension as well.

I really appreciate your reusing the case from an old machine. I have system at my office that reuses a plain vanilla mATX that I recovered shortly being trashed. I saved a considerable amount of money by reusing the case and carefully picking cool and quiet components. Thanks for sharing the picks!

Both the CPU and the chipset (ignore ASRock, the chipset is made by Intel) run at 333MHz stock. You are overclocking if you increase that. It won't do any harm, but it is still overclocking.

Thanks all! BTW, I just increased the FSB to 388MHz or 3.5GHz and it works great. But at this speed I really need a new cooler.