Case Mod Advice - Aerocool M40

[amjedm]

Would be grateful for some advice

I have a system installed inside a Aerocool M40.

Review of the case - Hi-Tech Reviews.com


Top view



HD is mounted in the cage which is bottom right of the above photo. I'd like to suspend the HD.

1. Any suggestions (prefer not to suspend in the 5.25 bay)?


Back view



2. Should I cut out the fan grills above the I/O plate (don't intend to attach any fans)?

3. Shall I cut out some of the case/grill which will be blocking the air intake of the 120mm PSU fan?

4. Rear fan at the top, I intend to mount a 80mm to 120mm fan adaptor and attach 120mm fan. Is this worth doing?

Thank you in advance.

[cordis]

I've seen that case before but don't know anyone who's actually bought one, let us know how it turns out. As far as your questions go:

1. Going with elastic suspension for a drive in that position will be somewhat tricky, especially if you open the case up often. It's not a bad spot for velcro connection though, that would hold it solidly in both positions. That would fit the space pretty well too.

2. Maybe, I'd probably leave them in until verifying that the cpu cooling is adequate. The big cooling problem with this case is that it doesn't seem to have any air inlets on the sides, so it's pulling all the air from the front. I have a micro-atx case with closed sides like that, and getting decent airflow is hard. If you have any kind of high end video card to put in, definitely put fans there. You should be able to cut out the grills and leave the mounts intact, so if you can do that, it's a good compromise.

3. That could be helpful. Or you could flip it over, cut a hole in the top of the case and pull in air from the outside. I have a case that pulls in air over the card bay, and any kind of high end graphics card in there makes the psu really hot.

4. Maybe, like I said all the air seems to be coming in the front, so the more flow you have front to back, the better off you'll be, generally.

[JamieG]

Please post the specs of the system you've got inside this case.

I'd definitely cut out the fan grill on the front 120mm fan.

Unless you plan on mounting 2 x 80mm fans above the I/O plate (which would be a good idea IMO), you might just wish to leave those grills in place. If you go with the top rear mounted 120mm fan using an externally mounted 80mm to 120mm fan adaptor, you might even want to seal off these holes, so the rear exhaust fan pulls the CPU heat up and out.

Unless there is room to suspend a HDD in the lower area of the case somewhere (eg near the front over the RAM or something), then the DVD bay really is a good place to suspend a HDD (unless you've got both bays filled, that is). If that HDD cage is removable, you might be able to rig up some sort of suspension there instead, but it would be tricky. Otherwise, maybe try resting the HDD on some foam in the space behind the DVD drives (top left in your first picture), as that seems to be unused (although I guess heat from the CPU cooler will rise as you've got no other rear exhaust fans, which may not be ideal).

[amjedm]

Thank you both for the advice, much appreciated


cordis - I'd forgotten about velcro, might give that a try.

The motherboard has integrated graphics and I intend to use those.


JamieG - specs are

Samsung F1 1TB HD
2GB RAM
Asus M3A78 motherboard
AMD Opteron 8450 2.1GHz (triple core)
SATA DVD-RW
120mm fan at the front
Seasonic 430W PSU

The fan grill pictured in the original photos was only a 60mm unless you saw a review? - see below.

Good idea about sealing the rear 2 x 80mm fans grills, might try that.

The HD cage is removable but I'd rather put the HD in front of the 120mm fan in the lower section, not sure how I'll put it there but...


Should I cut out all the grill in the photo below or just the outlined bit for the PSU?



Should I cut out the lower fan grill (120mm)?



I've already sealed off the 3.5 FD slot

[JamieG]

Definitely cut out the front 120mm grill.

I'd just cut out some space for the PSU's downward facing fan.

Are you using a stock heatsink on your CPU? You could consider buying a top-down cooler and reverse the fan on it so it pulls air up through the heatsink and pushes it towards the upper area of the case (you will probably increase your CPU temp by a few degrees doing this though, but this should be offset by the increase in cooling performance over the stock CPU heatsink).

[amjedm]

Definitely cut out the front 120mm grill.

I'd just cut out some space for the PSU's downward facing fan.

Are you using a stock heatsink on your CPU? You could consider buying a top-down cooler and reverse the fan on it so it pulls air up through the heatsink and pushes it towards the upper area of the case (you will probably increase your CPU temp by a few degrees doing this though, but this should be offset by the increase in cooling performance over the stock CPU heatsink).

Thank you again JamieG

Reason I wanted to cut out the grill next to the PSU is that if I use a top down cooler with the fan orientation reversed, the air will come straight up rather than hitting the grill (quite restrictive).

[amjedm]

Update: did finish the setup but it was too noisy for my liking and very difficult to do any tinkering.

I wanted the CPU fan to be controlled by the motherboard and it was ramping up straight away - probably because it was a hot CPU and an old heatsink.

I didn't want to spend anymore money on it so decided to use the internals in another case - Coolermaster Elite 340.

Picture of the hard disk suspension - I went for the one in the first picture.



Have now passed the case (using the same heatsink with a setup which runs cooler) to a relative.