Zero-mod NSK1300/1380, with melamine!

[PartEleven]

Because this awesome little case needs more love. Like a lot of other projects, this one came out of my never ending quest to quiet my main computer. After migrating to laptop drives, I suddenly had all these old 3.5" drives with nowhere to go. I thought about throwing them all into enclosures, but this made sharing the media on them between my HTPC and my main system a bit difficult. NAS solutions were pretty restrictive for the money they cost. So, I figured why not build a third system and have a little fun too

I prefer to build my systems without any permanent modifications to the case at all. That way any changes are reversible in case I change my mind later. The only "mod" I did to this case was to paint the top black, because the original beige color just had to go. System is built around the old Socket A platform and runs at an amazing 49W idle, even with those three hard drives in there. It's powered by an Antec NP-100 universal laptop brick and a PicoPSU 120-WI

Specs:
Biostar M7NCG
Athlon XP-M 2200+ @ 1.3V (166x10 = 1.6Ghz)
1GB DDR 333 RAM

Pics:



A shot of the rear fans. Air flows in through the 120mm, makes a U-turn at the front of the case and exits out the 80mm on the left. The foam is Sonex Willtec ordered from MNPCTech.


The hard drive cage with three suspended using 1.8mm Stretch Magic.


A shot of the top of the removable hard drive cage.


A side shot with the melamine foam. All of the melamine are friction fitted into place.


Side with foam removed. You can see the PicoPSU.


Check out that clearance! There's like less than 5mm between the fins/heatpipe and the drive. Any other combination of motherboard/heatsink wouldn't have worked.


The other side.

[AuraAllan]

Nice little setup you got there.

I like how you used a cardboard baffle to guide the airflow.

Have you tried flipping the 120mm fan and removing the 80mm?
That should work just as well as your current setup if you block air from going in/out from behind the front pnel.

[PartEleven]

I haven't tried that yet, but I've been meaning to replace the 120mm. I have my doubts that it would cool the vertical hard drive on that side as well though.

[AuraAllan]

Just try it out. (most) harddisks don't need much airflow to keep cool.