Hi Clint! The more fan opening the better. Big gaping fan holes are terrible to look at, though, and can let out some noise. About the bottom front bit - you can buy or make little feet for your case to keep the bottom front opening off the carpet. Or have a pedestal from old books or magazines, eve...

hey that's cool! Great on the dad-bonding, too :) I am now convinced that snips are the way to go now myself, despite having never tried a dremel. 6C drop at CPU -- most excellent! I believe going from 5200 RPM to 2580 RPM on the Intel heatsink fan should have reduced your noise quite a bit too! The...

I tried something recently which surprised me. Background: I have a Vantec Aeroflow which is adapted to an 80mm fan. The 80mm fan blows the "wrong way" - sucking air from the heatsink. This assembly is enclosed in a duct expanding to a 120mm side blowhole. The duct has a 120mm L1A@5v exhausting at t...

Xman wrote:very bad review no real temperature, no real contenders for comparison
http://www.overclockers.com/articles1043/

Idiotic diagrams

No comparisons??

http://www.overclockers.com/articles373/p4sum.asp

the wesson

Ehhh ... then you should construct a "160mm fan" out of 4x 80mm L1A. 160mm construct @ 5v: 2 dB + 6dB = 8 dB. 10CFM x 4 = 40CFM. A practically inaudible 40 CFM!! 160mm construct @ 7v: 9.3 dB + 6 dB = 15.3 dB. 14 CFM x 4 = 56 CFM. 56 CFM at 15.3 dB sounds *FAN*tastic to me. Or, 160mm construct @ 12v:...

You can be creative about how you lash 2 80mm's together onto your heatsink. An upside down "V" with the two fans jammed into a 100mm x 80mm box..? Or, lash them together end to end, straight, and place them so that the edges of the 2 fans (where the high velocity air is) are together at the middle ...

well look at it this way, you can try things out on a case that's destined for the scrap heap anyhow - and then do it right the first time on the expensive case.

For example, snipping holes merits some practice!

the wesson

Take everything out of the case before dremeling the case of course, because of metal bits flying around. Or never mind the dremel and use good-quality tin snips to snip fan grills etc w/o emptying the case. Search for "Wiss snips" in this site's forums and you will find a very nice article on snips...

First step: Attack your case. 44C is way too high. You're aiming to 30C. If you can get your case that much cooler, your CPU will be about that much cooler. If your heatsink is one of the temp-sensitive ones from Intel, that will also make the fan less fast (and loud.) Cut things (like fan grills st...

Looking at the fan database, here's a rule of thumb I would like to propose: Make a number for 1 or more fans: ((total CFM)/(total sq cm cross section)). The lower this number is, the lower the noise is. I propose this because one 120mm L1A @7v has a similar cross section, a similar CFM, and a simil...

Seems like adapters narrowing the flow coming OUT of the fan work much worse than adapters widening the flow coming INTO the fan. In other words if you want a 120mm adapted to 80mm you might as well reverse the flow despite the common "reversal penalty". SLK far better than SilentBoost which is nowh...

..this would easily get you to dead silent at 2.26, particularly if you happen to have a motherboard where the cpu socket will allow it to be oriented with the airflow horizontal, eg the Abit IC7 series. There are alot of reviews out there proclaiming it the best aircooling available. http://www.xc...

Yes, you lose a lot of airflow and get some noise ("whooshing") from the corrugated collapsible ducts like the Sunbeam - to the point where some reviewers reported a temp rise with the Sunbeam duct. A 62mm duct would be even worse than an 80mm duct. Go with Bluefront's suggestion. Or a curved sectio...

Ooh that's good.

the wesson

PS our society is full of plastic shapes isn't it ... it's almost criminal to buy an adapter.

I just mounted a 120mm L1A @7v inside a big cardboard duct that encloses my Aeroflow (narrowing down to 8.5cm x 8.5cm around the Aeroflow.) The duct fits right against the case door with some weatherstripping for sound insulation. The duct has 5cm x 7cm ports on all four sides around the HS to allow...

you can't really really tell but if the temperature monitor reports CPU >60C or so then overheating is a pretty good guess. google for "motherboard monitor 5" or "MBM 5" to get a temp monitor program if you don't have the one that came with your mobo. The higher the overclock, the lower the crash te...

Good points ... I suspect that the warm air inside a 16x16 cm chimney will lift according the volume of air (and the warmth of the air) inside the chimney. Hence if the chimney narrows down to 8x8cm at one point, it shouldn't be fatal in terms of resulting airflow. The extra impedance of the narrowi...

If you do end up with heat problems, by the way, your best solution may be to improve the Sonata's airflow "by hand" before you get a bigger CPU fan. I hear case airflow could be improved quite bit in those things - tho they have many other great features, like quietness and looks. Some simple optio...

Panaflo 80mm L1A on SLK948, unless you like tinkering with knobs, in which case get a stronger 80mm of some sort and a fan controller like the fanmate on the SLK. ... Why? The 80mm Panaflo L1A's are really good. I love them. They are close to inaudible (outside the case) and are rated at 24CFM. 92mm...

Yes, it's interesting ... Comparison at full power: 80mm L1A - 24 CFM, 21 dB 120mm L1A - 69 CFM, 30 dB 3 80mm L1A's - 72 CFM, 26 dB So there you go, multiple 80mm fans are better in this case. 19200 cm sq for 3 80 mm L1A's. 14400 cm sq for the 120 mm L1A. It's a little more space efficient. Let me a...

if it is mostly the effect of turbulence then one could create turbulence in the incoming air in "suck" mode. wrap wires around the HS across the channels, perhaps. anybody with an SLK or SP want to try this? curiously, my Aeroflow works better in "suck" mode, but not with its native 70mm TMD fan - ...

So why do most standard heatsink/fans show a significant performance drop (20% higher C/W?) when the fan is blowing up and away from the mobo - when the "in" side of the fan is towards the HS? Suggestions: 1) The fan produces lots of turbulence on the "out" side and this aids cooling by mixing air i...

With those large fins the 7000 should benefit from incidental airflow, like general case airflow. Over at overclockers somebody got phenomenal performance out of a 7000cu - as good as SP-97 or anything else - by having the one fan in it, and another fan blowing air on it from a top blowhole - and tw...

Sorry about the double post, I got an error so assumed the post didn't post. Sure, that Zen 1000 might be good, with its large cross section - or a lot of the different tower heatsinks would provide an airflow orientation more suitable to sticking the mobo in a chimney [than the standard orientation...

Thanks fmah. Silvervarg, have you ever tried a really big chimney (like 4 feet?) According to the stack effect calculator, CFM will vary linearly according to the height of the chimney. Assuming no "incidental" effects like air friction or cooling in the chimney, the stack effect calculator says tha...

The thermal resistance of a simple heatsink, a small block. Calculating the C/W of an area of material A block of copper .0001 meter square (1 sq cm) 0.01 meter (1 cm) thick - a small block of copper heated by the CPU - shall have a thermal resistance of 0.01 / (390 * 0.0001) = 0.256 C/W. That is th...

Another hint that Wessons calculations where wrong is that fact that he could easilly cool a 80W CPU with convection and a normal heatsink to acceptable temps. Since noone manages to get even close to this in reallity it had to be really wrong somewhere. I didn't say a normal heatsink. I just said ...

Rusty, the data points you gave offer a pretty good fit if you assume a loss factor of a certain portion of the airflow for each sink. That loss factor is partly air resistance and partly other factors I am sure. I tried to fit a loss factor by hand and this is what I got. CFM-actual = rated-CFM / L...

Rusty, thanks for the compliment. I will have to disagree that with infinite airflow (surroundings maintained at a constant temperature) the thermal resistance of the heatsink will go to zero. The material of the heatsink itself, most importantly where it contacts the core, has a thermal resistance,...

Case at 32C - that's pretty darn good, considering the room is 24 or 27C. I would expect the DP to be doing better, really. Perhaps the reading is just off.

what's the CFM rating for the SilenX fans you're thinking of?

the wesson