Front Filtered PC.....Tricks Revealed.

Show off your quiet rig.

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Bluefront
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Front Filtered PC.....Tricks Revealed.

Post by Bluefront » Mon Jul 07, 2003 12:14 pm

Here's another PC I finished recently....somewhat different from normal. It has three fans in the rear blowing out, and a std Intel fan on the CPU. In the front there is no fan, just a large filter that the rear fans suck through, the air being drawn over two hard drives in a duct.

Front Filtered PC

In order to pull this setup off, you need to find a case with a large flat area behind the front cover of the case. This eliminates most cases...most have switches, wires, brackets, etc in this area. The filter I used here came off a Nissan Xterra...in-cabin filter. It is a micro-filter, with moderate restriction. Because of it's size, it works well in this setup

pict#1 In order to make the fans draw through the filter, all the other cracks, vent holes, cracks between drives, etc. must be covered. I used CompUSA foam in the back...covered all the unused ports.

pict#2 I do have one vertical-mounted slot fan blowing out. The foam cuts down on the noise.

pict#3 I used an area with some vent holes...covered the rest of the area.

pict#4 Here's the hard drives sitting in the duct, in front of the filter.

pict#5 Keeping the internal cables out of the air-flow

pict#6 Showing the front of the case with all cracks covered.

pict#7 I use thin felt strips around the drives. seals the cracks.

pict#8 Tape all the cracks and seams around the drives.

pict#9 I enlarged the bottom area of the front case cover....this is where all the intake air enters. The computer sits on a Fellows roll-around stand, about 4" off the floor.

pict#10 In order to service the filter easily, the front cover of the case just pops off. Some cases require a bunch of crap to remove the cover.

pict #11 I usually use a PSU with the cables coming out of the lower rear....makes for cleaner cable routing.

pict #12 Cover the inner front of the computer an much as possible...keeps down the noise.

pict #13 If the power cables to the board are toward the front, by all means route them up and behind the PSU. This picture also shows my outside mounted de-coupled case fan. Mounting this fan externally, improves airflow in the case.

This setup runs cool, and is pretty quiet because of no fans in the front of the computer. Fancy low-noise fans would quiet the computer, as would an expensive PSU. But I'm mostly using stock stuff with a cheap, fairly quiet Sparkle 300watt psu. This is an unknown case from a computer show. A quiet PC on the cheap.....

Seal
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Location: Uk

Post by Seal » Sat Nov 08, 2003 10:08 am

nice setup1

Bean
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Joined: Fri Jan 17, 2003 3:14 pm
Location: USA

Post by Bean » Mon Nov 10, 2003 5:56 am

That foam seems like pretty good building material. I'm going to have to copy some of your ideas if you dont mind. Thanks for the pics!

its amazing to see that the old computers now are pretty cheap.

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