Has anyone tried your pc upside down?

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Thu Aug 21, 2003 12:58 pm

I know this sounds crazy but has anyone ever reversed your fans and flipped your pc upside down, the benifits:

Direct cool air for your cpu and psu, if you mounted your hd in the 51/2 bays it would be cooler too!

OK now drill holes in this idea, c'mon guys and gals.

Gooserider · Post by **Gooserider** » Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:53 pm

frosty:
I know this sounds crazy but has anyone ever reversed your fans and flipped your pc upside down...?

Define further please? Are you talking about flipping a tower case, so that the mobo is still vertical, but at the top of the case, and putting the HDD's, PSU, optical drives, etc. on the bottom?

Aside from possible airflow issues, and ensuring that the CPU or cards don't get stuck in a mass of hot stagnant air, I don't see a big problem.

Or are you talking about a 'desktop' style case, where the mother board that was flat on the bottom of the case, is now uppside down on the top of the case?

I see several problems with this...

1. Gravity will tend to make any cards or socketed components tend to creep out of their slots.

2. Major airflow issues, not the least of which is trapping a layer of hot air under the mobo.

3. Only an issue if watercooling - an upside down WB will trap air, and any trapped air will act as an insulator between the CPU die / WB baseplate interface (where the heat is) and the coolant - this will cause MAJOR temperature issues....

Etc....

I wouldn't try flipping a desktop style case, but might consider flipping a tower. However I don't think it would offer much advantage over the standard way of doing things coupled w/ good airflow management.

Gooserider

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 6:14 am

Yes a tower, just a thought cos of my cpu and psu and hard drive being at the op now but I neve considered my passive 7500 ati card.

Post by **Rusty075** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 6:37 am

Ok Frosty, you asked for it.....

Damn, I think it might actually work.

A couple of tweaks it might need though:

I'd rather the CPU gets the coolest possible air, not air that has passed though the PSU already, so maybe dual intakes. One for the PSU, and one for the CPU. You'll probably need an exhaust fan, or at least a good sized opening, at new "top" of the case. That way the hot air won't just pool up there.

Give a shot, you may be able to patent your new form factor.

You can call it "FTX"

rpc180 · Post by **rpc180** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 8:36 am

Chili used to make ATX cases that way

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 9:04 am

Rusty075 wrote:Ok Frosty, you asked for it.....
Damn, I think it might actually work.

Hehehe,

Hey Rusty I guess I was just sitting by my pc and thinking about how the psu, cpu and hard drive were all at the top and really the agp card is about half way up in the case.

Should be fairly easy to try since all I have to do is disable the psu fan for a try and reverse the exhaust fan and reverse the front case fan, uh well I could tear apart the psu and mount the fan externally I need to anyways or would it be better mounted on the inside of the psu, maybe less noise maybe more from pulling air thru the psu, but then the heat from the psu fan would blow right near the hd so then I could have fan turning at a 90 degree turn sending the psu air to the top of the case.

Why do we tinker so much?

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 10:50 am

You could also isolate the airflow for the PSU so that it did not feed its air into the case ala powergyoza

In your idea, frosty, you could have the PSU fan blowing either way if the air duct was isolated from the rest of the case a la Dell's new gaming PC.

Otherwise, I agree with turning around the fans....the typical exhaust blowing in toward the CPU and the typical intake now an exhaust at the "top" of the case.

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 11:25 am

Great Idea Aphonos, my only problem is the decoulpled hard drive would be right in the path of the psu air flow, I did try removing the one of the drive bay covers and let the air flow right past the hd and out the back but until i added my hs hard drive cables and upped the case fan to 12v did I see any change in temps.

Thanks for the pics, got my poor brain a spinning again!

Mike C has created a monster in me! :}

aphonos · Post by **aphonos** » Fri Aug 22, 2003 11:34 am

frosty wrote:Great Idea Aphonos, my only problem is the decoulpled hard drive would be right in the path of the psu air flow

With your case flipped upside-down, suspend the HDD at the new "top" of your case (formerly the bottom) so it is right in front of the new exhaust (formerly intake), rather than in one of the 5.25" bays.

Or.......have the duct that isolates the PSU use only one of the 5.25" bays, leaving others for optical drives and suspending.

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 6:24 am

Turning it upside just did not help my system temps rose about 5c - plus I put a nice scratch on the top of my pc - oh well.

arman68 · Post by **arman68** » Thu Aug 28, 2003 1:17 am

It depends on your case design and components, but my case benefited from turning it upside down and I have been using it this way for a few weeks now. See the following thread: http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=5731

I have also found that many of Dell new dekstops actually have their power supply at the bottom. Knowing how much care they put in silencing their PC, they must have noticed a beneficial factor. To be honest I am very impressed with Dell latest desktops (I get the chance to play with quite a few at work): there is really a lot of thoughts and good quiet designs going in there, some of them we could never reproduce in a home PC; example: their rails for HD and optical drives are made of sliding plastic with a very large absorbent core that further isolate the drives and screws from the plactic rails and the case, you have to see it to appreciate it.

frosty · Post by **frosty** » Thu Aug 28, 2003 6:57 am

Thanks Arman, I was also considering mounting a fan to draw air directly from the bottom of the case and hopefully eliminate front case fan noise, I prolly did not set mine up right when setting it it upside down, I did notice the other day a very quiet compayq at the store for only 500 US and wondered how compaq got it, a 2.0 Athlon so silent. I also considered running a big 92 exhaust fan and no fr case fan at all just and open hole.