just built a system with this inwin case, and made a few modifications to where I can run entirely without a CPU fan.

My temps after running CPU burn for an hour are:

46/38/42

Idle temps are

26/29/28 (perhaps lower)

I have a Zalman 7000 ALCu, which is a perfect "bowl shaped" heat sink for having a duct rest inside the fins, forcing all air through the fins. The front of the case has been sealed up except for a small amount of airflow carefully directed to run directly over the hard disc.
Air is exhausted from the case via a panaflo 80mm L1A and the PSU, which I will soon replace with a seasonic 120mm fan version, reportedly the quietest thing around, and capable of moving serious CFM when needed.

So this works by the case being low pressure, or a partial vaccuum, sucking all air through the duct and directly onto the cou cooling fins. My temps with the stock zalman fan were 47, or 1 degree higher at low fan speed, and 40 at high (loud) fan speed with the same case fan setup.

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Great first post

How fast is your processor clocked? Do you have any pictures of your duct setup?

BTW - what color is that case? It looks silvery

Sounds like he is saying that the duct that came with the caseslipped right into the Zalman heatsink.

You got it right QuietOne. Except I had to rotate it 90 degrees since it's oval shaped and wouldn't quite fit into the zalman heatsink. I also had to find a way to extend the duct (which has a couple inches of adjustment capability) once the case side was on. I cut out the restricting stamped grill of the vent, and reattached the plastic piece you can see in the photo, so it looks unmodified.

The case is plain old beige.

Oh, I have an intel board so I have no options for over/undervolting, under/overclocking, etc. It's 2.4GHz, and I have just one hard drive and no video card, so it's a pretty cool computer as it is. I can take good pictures of it, but I have nowhere to host them.

I'd love to see the pics.

There was someone that used to post here that would host your pics for free. Search the forums for "free AND hosting" (or something like that) and see if you can find him. Maybe he'd still do it.

I can host some pics for you.

I want to see them

Yes, acj's inwin case + zalman combo for P4C ducted cooling sounds quite alluring. Too bad I'm too lazy to swap my Alpha heatsink and I just bought a brand new case.

Here's what the closed case looks like. Every inlet is taped except for a little hole on the front which sucks air over the hard drive and the gray duct inlet on the side. Since this works, I'll tape the front from the inside so it looks cleaner



Here's the inside of the case, showing the zalman heatsink with fan removed. I try to keep things pretty clean.



I bent a piece of cardstock to shape and taped it in place here. This forces the most air through the fins, rather than through the large holes on the sides. Testing proved this helps considerably.



Here is a view through the hole in the side of the case. You can see the heatsink lines up perfectly.



This cover goes over the hole and holds the duct from the inside as well. Airflow and cooling are slightly better without this, but it looks more trimmed and is still acceptable with this cover.



This is an inside view of what the duct looks like. It extends an inch or two, but the case side can not be attached with the duct extended. It hits the fins of the heatsink. So I tied a piece of string accross the duct, and bent a hanger so that I can stick it through the gray plastic cover and push on the string, therefore extending the duct all the way into the heatsink AFTER the side is on.



Here is how the duct sits inside the heatsink. It seems to work best when all the way down, even though the outer fins don't get direct airflow. Maybe some drilled holes will be a future mod.


This one is a view through the gray duct cover. You can sort of see that the duct goes inside of the heatsink.



Finally, here are my temps according to intel active monitor. This is after running CPU burn for an hour or two while typing this, and running all the photos through photoshop, with pefect stability.

So there is no fan anywhere near this duct? Impressive

Hello:

What motherboard is it?

BTW, the long URL above can be shrunk to this: http://tinyurl.com/rphu

Hello

Does that PSU come with the case, and is it noisy?

Veerrry nice! Makes me want to get one of those Inwin cases just to play with. Maybe as an HTPC? It's pretty small, only 14" high. And it's only $38!

Newegg also has a black version of this case with a slightly different bezel. Even better for an HTPC! $40!

Just wonderin', but wouldn't one also need to get the same mobo as acj in order to ensure that the duct with line up perfectly with the cpu socket?

Yeah, that probably wouldn't hurt. His board is an Intel 865G m-ATX board. All of those should have the socket in the exact same place so you'd be able to choose from within that subset.

I have an intel micro ATX motherboard with an 865 chipset with gigabit ethernet built in, along with intel extreme graphics 2, which is mediocre, but acceptable for the few games I play. I went intel for hyperthreading, which is awsome for what I do (like rendering movies, running long batch photoshop commands, etc.)

Nearly All microATX motherboards have the CPU within .5" of where this one is, so it should fit. Check out motherboard pics.

The PSU came with the case, all for $38. The PSU is remarkably quiet at low loads, still fairly quiet at the mac load my setup can do. It's still the loudes thing in the case. I plan to get a Seasonic Tornado 120mm fan, which I hope will actually give more airflow through the duct, at lower noise, and let me lower the voltage on my panaflo case fan.

If I get a higher powered video card, I may buy the VGA cooler featured on SPCR's home page. It exhails air from the case, further enhancing my duct setup, and keeping the hot video card air from warming up my case.

Nice setup.

But, aren't you supposed to run CPU Burn at Normal or High? At least that is what I have been doing.

jerry

Good point. I had assumed that it would be the same since it should theoreticaly use 100% of the idle cycles. Anyway, I tested it out. No difference in temps, even after hours.

That's the same case I got about a month ago for my new comp. I no longer have the duct there as I put a window in

I would buy another, but i don't believe the zalman HSF would fit in there (AMD nforce2 board, i think socket is closer to the psu on my board than on the one you have...

Its a standard FSP/Aopen unit... you can just swap an L1A in there and should be fine. Its got a good combined 5v/3.3v power rating despite the 250W total, its 180W which is the same as the 300W FSPs.

Ok, so there are no fans blowing on that Zalman hs? Or is one blowing in the hole to the duct? That is amazing that the HS cools that well with no fan. Very nice setup you have there.

The air that is removed from the case by the power supply and exhaust fan has to be replaced with outside air somehow and since that is the only substantial hole in the case it is forced in across the heatsink.

Right. There is nothing even blowing remotely towards the heatsink.

By the way, if I take the case side off, things overheat very quickly. To me this proves that the duct is working well.

very nicely done! good job, well done

That's a very nice setup. I like the elegance.

A couple of questions / observations :

1. Having the duct extend all the way apparently forces the air through the fins better, as your own experiments have shown. Drilling holes in the duct may be counterproductive. Anyway, the part of the fins closer to the CPU will be the hottest.

2. Since the fins are close together near the base of the Zalman, they might become clogged with dust easily. Not sure if the airflow is enough to prevent dust from accumulating.

3. I especially like how you extend the duct after closing the case.

Thanks for sharing this here.

Good observations. Thank you. Computers tend to act as an air filter, so I should be sure to periodically check the dust accumulation on the heatsink.

As an update, I have been running for quite a while now without a single lockup or problem, though I tend to use my computer lightly.

Are you running with onboard video? You have no other cards in the slots?

acj,
Brilliant!! I've been reading SPCR for awhile now and I've often tried to think of something innovative. Anyway, all I can say is you're making me look bad!! Who says Newbies know nothing?!

I would just like to add that you may want to reconsider the SS Super Tornado. There's been a lot of problems with them. I actually bought one and returned it because of them. Check out these before you make any purchasing decisions:
1).http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=7105 and
2.)http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=7489

exrcoupe: Nothing in the slots yet. We'll see how things run with more heat generating components at soem point in the future.

marc999: Thanks! And thanks for the warning. I do need a 120mm fan PSU for another project I have up my sleeves, which is much neater, IMHO. Perhaps I'll look for another.