Antec P150 airflow idea

[Silenator]

Hello,
I recently bought an Antec P150. It works great! I have however pondered if the airflow really is optimal in this case.

What I'm thinking is: Is the air intake on the back of the case necessary? If one blocks this intake, more air would flow in through the front and cool the harddrive. And this might be positive for the longevity of the harddrive. My guess is that the back intake is designed for a hot GPU, something most of us do not have.

Regarding noise level, I am not sure which intake produce the more noise: the muffled, but more physically close, front intake, or the back intake. Maybe someone has done some empirical studies?

The only negative aspect of blocking the back intake I can think of is that the airflow through the front *might* become louder, since the pressure increases and the air is pushed through pretty small openings.

My system is low power and temps are also very low. Around 30+ C on both CPU and HD. I have an AMD 64 1,4 GHz, a simple ATI GPU, and a Samsung Spinpoint suspended in the front.

Finally, since this is my first post, I would like to say a big thank you to all the staff at this website! You guys rock. I have learnt a lot about silent computers here.

[Cams]

The rear fan is an exhaust fan and sucks the air out of the case. The front is the intake.

Since you say that your system runs cool and you have only one HDD, you could most likely unplug the front intake fan all together. It doesn't get much quieter than that!

[Silenator]

Maybe I was unclear. I have the 120 mm exhaust fan but no front fan. But I don't mean that one should touch the fans. The air intake in the back I'm talking about is the one below the exhaust fan. You know the rectangular one consisting of many holes, without any fan.

[nici]

Block it.. Its there because the P180/Sonata2 stylee duct was originally supposed to be there but since it was practically useless it isnt included with the P150. Or so i´ve understood, but in any case it wont do much good. I´ve blocked mine as i did in the P180.

[spolitta]

I blocked mine in SLK3000b, P180 and P150 with piece of foam. No temp difference.

[Silenator]

Ok, great. Then I'll block it. A bit strange that Antec makes an obsolete feature on this otherwise great case. It is apparently difficult to make the perfect case.

[Dirty-Harry]

It is apparently difficult to make the perfect case.

You are learning well Grass Hopper.

The perfect case will never exist, however, you can build your case to suit your needs and/or your vision of perfection. When you are complete others may find flaws or have better/different ideas for your case.

We all have varied opinions of the perfect case.

The perfect case for us ALL can only exist in utopia.

[zhenya]

Hello,
Regarding noise level, I am not sure which intake produce the more noise: the muffled, but more physically close, front intake, or the back intake. Maybe someone has done some empirical studies?

My empirical study lead me to discover that the front intake was the source of most of my remaining noise. (Not surprising, as the drives are right there practically in the open!) I run a very similar setup as yours (celeron 1.4ghz, suspended spinpoint), and with a 5v fan in my PSU and a soft-mounted 120mm nexus at 5v in the rear, my spinpoint was the loudest thing left in my case by far. With lots of experimentation I ended up blocking the front intake. Temperatures rose somewhat, but are still quite safe, and the system is now silent. I posted pictures in the gallery recently. You can find them here:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=28152

[vertigo]

The holes by the PCI slots are (generally) there so that hot air doesn't collect below the video card. It's a precautionary thing, many cases have them.

[Silenator]

Thanks for the info vertigo. So, we should be able to conclude that everyone with a low-power grapics card - which would be most people at this forum - can close up such back air intakes to increase front airflow around the harddrive.