advice needed on scratch built

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northan
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:17 pm

advice needed on scratch built

Post by northan » Tue Jan 03, 2012 10:49 am

Hi All.
I'm designing and building a case for my pc to cater for my particular requirements in the living room.
I've recently built an AV area under my stairs in the living room that houses a TV, amp, blu/ray, sat, xbox..... anyway you get the picture. My HTPC has always been in a normal pc case sitting next to my unit, but in a bid to streamline our living room I have decided to get rid of the case and build it into the false wall I made behind the TV. Extreme I know but this computer serves well for me with 6tb of films/music with decent pc gaming and having a normal HTPC case or putting it in another room is not an option for me.
Ive cut a whole as you can see in the picture ready to install said computer case. Once the TV is in front you should not see or hear the pc on.
Image
Image
I've got these plans for my design as you can see, it will be predominantly made of MDF with some plastic/aluminium bits and a recycled motherboard tray stripped from an old case. It won't be pretty, but that's not a problem as it won't be on show.
The orientation is that it pulls cool air from the bottom of the case tunnelling it through compartments and expelling hot air out the top. I've designed the compartments to allow better thermal reduction letting me fine tune the fans best for efficiency/sound. As we all know heat rises and there shouldn't be any thermal pockets.
Although not shown the hard drive rig will be suspended on a bungee system but still letting air pass through.
There will be a usb optical drive in the cabinet and a remote power switch hdd activity light. Also I will have a usb hub in the cabinet for future connections.
Case with lid off showing the direction of air flow
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With lid on
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Anyway with what I have proposed in my design does anyone see a glaringly obvious problem or tips to make it more efficient/quiet? I do plan to put in 140mm fans in the future, but 120's will have to do for now
Also I have a palit gtx 460 with the standard heatsink. I was hoping to find a heatsink that could go 90 degress to the gpu which would be much more effecient with cooling. Does anyone know of such a thing, if not what are my other options? So far I have thought of using a standard cpu heatsink so that it would jut out increasing the surface area of cooling. I'm not too worried about it covering expansion slots.
Thanks for reading my rambles

Lsv
Posts: 108
Joined: Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:50 pm

Re: advice needed on scratch built

Post by Lsv » Wed Jan 04, 2012 5:19 pm

Have you considered any sound dampening foam? And if you're cutting 120mm holes you could use like... Thermalright TY-140s or Noctua P14s which both mount to 120mm screw points.

xan_user
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 2269
Joined: Sun May 21, 2006 9:09 am
Location: Northern California.

Re: advice needed on scratch built

Post by xan_user » Wed Jan 04, 2012 5:50 pm

WELCOME TO SPCR!

Neat idea!
have you considered how long the power leads to the hard drives will need to be? maybe put the psu in the middle chamber for easier power cable routing...?

northan
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:17 pm

Re: advice needed on scratch built

Post by northan » Wed Jan 04, 2012 10:52 pm

Thank you for replying and welcome - long time lurker. Yes I considered the psu in the middle on my first design. Image
However I came to the conclusion the it was hard to come across sata cables of a suitable length (close to 100cm) that would stretch from the motherboard to the hard drives. (well not so much hard, rather an extra cost factor that I'm not keen to spend right now) So yes the psu will struggle to reach but it will be easy for me to extend the power cables to make sure they reach.

Yes I have thought long and hard about sound deadening, completely shocked at the price. I have a couple of sheets of 6mm foam (perforated plastazote which is a medium density closed cell polyethylene foam) I thought I might use for the moment until I can afford better stuff (unfortunately it's pink :cry: ). Is there a consensus on what I should be using or what is the baseline standard? I imagine there are a few on these forums that work on the same principle as myself that you don't always have to throw money at the situation.
Anyway cheers for the reply's.

Deucal
Posts: 100
Joined: Sun May 02, 2010 3:10 am
Location: Iceland

Re: advice needed on scratch built

Post by Deucal » Thu Jan 05, 2012 6:19 pm

Why not have the PSU in the same side as the HDDs and skip the middle section. Have it lie on it's side with a hole in the wall with the MB section and it can suck out heat from there when/if it heats up. You can move one or both fans in the HDDs section up.

I don't see a fan on the CPU Heatsink, not going to use one there? Or is that a fan in the middle of it?

northan
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:17 pm

Re: advice needed on scratch built

Post by northan » Sat Jan 07, 2012 3:02 pm

Deucal wrote:Why not have the PSU in the same side as the HDDs and skip the middle section. Have it lie on it's side with a hole in the wall with the MB section and it can suck out heat from there when/if it heats up. You can move one or both fans in the HDDs section up.

I don't see a fan on the CPU Heatsink, not going to use one there? Or is that a fan in the middle of it?
Hi,
I'm not too keen on pulling air out of the mobo section with the psu. Psu's generate a fair amount of heat without the added extra temp from gpu/cpu, but you did get me thinking about your suggestion. I don't mind the psu sucking heat out from the hard drive section as there is little heat generated, with this little mod I can expand the amount of hard drives I mount in the future.

bit like this
Image


Yes there is a fan in the middle, I will be using an Artic freezer xtreme rev 2. Not used it yet as my case is too small.
cheers for the feedback, makes me refine things.

Deucal
Posts: 100
Joined: Sun May 02, 2010 3:10 am
Location: Iceland

Re: advice needed on scratch built

Post by Deucal » Sat Jan 07, 2012 7:22 pm

My Seasonic X-750W PSU doesn't get that hot in computer 1(sig). Since I let convection draw the heat. Heat enters the case though, but I've got decent blow through.

Now in my comp 2(sig) the fan would get turned on alot, until I turned it over so heat wouldn't get trapped in there.
PSU at the bottom of the case with fan up, not down.

5 HDDs in comp 1.

Edit: Do like what you are setting up, neat way to tidy everything up.

northan
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:17 pm

Re: advice needed on scratch built

Post by northan » Sat Jan 07, 2012 9:55 pm

Your right, I'm making assumptions based on my current set up. At the moment I have a freezer pro 7 rev 2 on my Amd 4 core cpu and because of Artics inadequate advertising I have the fan pointed up blowing the hot air from the cpu into the air intake of the psu.
This is the main reason for changing the heat sink.
At the moment I'm happy with the arrangement of psu in this set up it allows me for a greater number of hdd's.
Thanks for your advice and recognition.

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