My P180 Chopped and Ducted

[Raygers]

It was a question of necessity that forced me to construct a new system. My daughters were complaining that they weren’t able to install the latest Sims game on the PIII machine that they inherited from me. So that gave me an excuse to give them my P4 and build a new one, and best of all, my wife agreed (women tend to stick together).

I already had an Antec Sonata and was very impressed with it, so when I was case shopping I looked at what Antec had to offer. The P180 looked very interesting, and a Google search brought me to SilentPc. What a lot of nuts I thought, they’re crazy, who goes to these lengths to silence Pc’s? Well now I know. . . . I do, and you know what, I’m loving it.

After a horrible nightmare of getting components I was ready to build. Starting with stock fans on the CPU and Video card and all fans in the case running, I could see where that would be very annoying, noise wise.

So the Scythe Ninja and the Arctic Cooler Silencer were installed, the Ninja had a Yate Loon clipped to the side facing the upper drive cage. Temperatures were good and the system was quiet, or so I thought.

I started looking at ways to lose some of the fans, reading the forum I saw that people had good performance with using ducting. So my fate was sealed. I spent the next several months with pieces of cardboard and duct tape (wonderful stuff) experimenting with different setups. My goal was, and still is, to make it as quiet as possible but still maintain good cooling and I think I have achieved that goal in the main. There are still tweaks to do that will bring the noise level down some more, but I think that the main part of my work is done.




An early attempt at ducting, CPU ducted out the rear fan, a ramp at the top hole to direct airflow to the “intake” side of the Ninja, and a duct to the intake of the Silencer with a 120mm fan blowing air in.


I had tried the duct with one ducted exhaust fan and also with two separate ducted fans, but this “box” duct with the 38mm Antec (running on low) at the top opening and the Yate Loon running from the CPU header (regulated with Speedfan) is working best for me.



At idle the Yate ramps right down and the Antec is almost inaudible, CPU idle temp is 33C, ambient is at 22C. When folding, the CPU goes to 41C with the Yate running at 1350 rpm. And this is with a mild overclock. So there is a lot of latitude for me to make adjustments regarding rpm’s and temperature.

One of the deciding factors in this design was to also maintain the airflow over the hard drives, my Seagate Sata seems to run quite hot. I don’t know how hot it would go but I saw it at 42C and rising, now, in a decent airflow, it runs about 35C.

I have the Arctic Cooler Silencer on the video card, this is a lot quieter than the stock cooler and it also exhausts out the back of the case, which I like, get that hot air out.
However it did take some of the air away from the CPU cooling so I constructed another cardboard and tape duct to the Silencer intake from the back of the case, where the Antec VGA duct used to be. This worked, not a lot of a difference mind you, but a degree or so on both components. Every little bit helps, so it stayed in the design.



Once I had this all in place I turned my attention to the lower chamber. This was sealed off from the upper and contained just the PSU. I had tried the Seagate drive in there but there just wasn’t enough airflow from the PSU fan to keep it cool. And I noticed that the PSU fan would ramp up considerably when running an intensive program such as Prime or Folding. If I opened the case side, the fan would slow right down, that indicated to me that the fan wasn’t able to get its “breath” even though all restriction were gone in the chamber.
What to do? Holes in the case side? I have a machine shop available so I could do it and it would look good at the same time. But it would have been another escape opening for any noise, so I opted for a cutout in the bottom of the case.



Let me tell you, that first time taking a Dremel to a case such as the P180 is intimidating, but once you get that out of your system. . . . . Hey! What else can I chop?

Now the PSU fan hardly changes at all, I have added a filter and that restricts the flow somewhat, not too bad though. I know there’s been a lot of discussion about filters and their merits or lack of but I’m trying for myself, we’ll see.

Now that I had the PSU taken care of I turned to the drives, they were working just fine in the upper chamber, but if I could just get them out of there it would be better I thought.
I was drawing a lot of air through the upper front vent and two empty bays, but there again, when I had the case side off, the CPU ran cooler. I had one more vent I could use, the lower chamber wasn’t being used. I sealed the partition between the front and PSU chambers, then out came the Dremel again, and the opening for the drive cables became larger.




A new floor for the main chamber completed the bulk of the renovations.




I now have the Seagate residing in the lower cage and it’s temperature is 35C. There are another two drives, one of which I will also move down there, the other is a removable backup drive, so that stays in the upper bay area. I just need to figure out the wiring arrangements.
That’s a piece of Aluminum screwed to the sides of the Seagate to act as a heatsink, does it work? I’ve never ran any tests, but it does get warm so I imagine it is taking away some of the heat from the drive




I cut the exhaust fan grills and also the upper intake grill for better airflow and noise control, I don’t have facilities to measure airflow beyond using bits of paper so I don’t know whether that helped, I like to think so, but it did make a noticeable improvement in the noise aspect.

All in all I think it went well for me, there’s still some tweaking to do such as isolating the fans from the case and looking at how I’m mounting the drives, that Seagate is a vibrator. I used very soft ear plugs to mount it in the upper cage and that worked extremely well, it seems better when it’s in the lower, maybe because it’s mounted on it’s side.

I experimented with a 120mm fan inside a duct to the VGA and that showed promise. Because of lack of space and the size of the fan I had to put the fan on an angle, so that reduced the workable area, and I felt that the fan in the Silencer was a restriction as well, I had it unplugged but didn’t want to dismantle the unit at that time.

So this is a project for the near future, make a duct from the rear of the case to the VGA and then carry the same duct over the heatsink and out the back. I think it can be done without too much trouble.


My finished rig





Ray
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Antec P180 - Asus A8N-SLI Premium - AMD 64X2 4400@2500 - Scythe Ninja - (Ducted with 2 fans, Yate Loon and Antec Tri-fan) - EVGA 6800GS Video - Arctic Cooler NV Silencer (Ducted) - 2GB OCZ memory - Dremel

[GamingGod]

looks really good, how did you construct the ducts?
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Internet Computer: e4300w/Mininja, DS3, 2gigDDR800, hd501lj, Evga 8800gts, 380w Earthwatts Big Fan Modified Case

Gaming Computer: q6600w/TRUE penny modded, GA-EP45-DS3P, 4gigDDR800, WD640 Black, Evga 260core216, 520HX, Antec 900

[fmriguy]

Nice work Raygers! I'll admit, you've gotta have balls to break out the dremel on a new P180

I had a similar duct on my Ninja, but found that under load the power circuitry on the motherboard was getting way too hot for my comfort. As many have pointed out, the ninja really limits the air running across the mobo. My power temps were hovering around 56*C. I actually ended up dumping the duct and just positioned a 120mm fan (@7 volts) in the 5.25" drive area aimed kind of down towards the ram and power circuitry (but some airflow likely blows through the ninja as well). This dropped power temps to the mid forties (but I obviously lost a bit of cpu cooling in the process). At least the ninja lets me idle at ~32*C most of the time.

Just out of curiosity, what are your motherboard temps like? Does your motherboard measure temp of the power management circuitry?
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Main: Antec P180 :: Seasonic S12-600 :: Abit IP-35 Pro :: Intel E8400 w/ Scythe Ninja :: WD 250 & 500 :: PNY 8800GT :: 4GB Crucial
HTPC: Custom Wooden Case :: Antec Smartpower 500W :: Asus A8N5X :: AMD X2 3800+ :: 7200.10 400G + Hitachi 80G :: Passive 6600GT 128MB :: 2 GB Corsair & OCZ

[JimX]

Good job!

[Thomas]

[Raygers]

Thanks everyone for your comments:

[cmthomson]

The simplest mod of all will improve your airflow: remove the slatted front doors. Just pop them open and depress the tab by the top hinge. The filters remain in place, and look okay.

It looks like you have two single-bay air filters/inlets in the bottom 5" bays. What are those?
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Core 2 Duo E8500@405 (3.85 GHz), Asus P5Qdlx, 4GB G.Skill Trident 5-5-5-15@1215, Intel X25M + Samsung HD502HI 500GB, Gigabyte N98TZL GPU@690, Antec P180 case, Antec Phantom 500 PS, Scythe Ninja Rev A CPU HS, Accelero S1 rev2 video HS, 3xNexus + 1 AC PWM 120mm fans <= 600 RPM, AcoustiPack foam, homemade ducts.

[Raygers]

[Dr. Gonzo]

I wouldn't have the balls to take a Dremel or a pair of tin snips to my new P180!