I decided to scrap my battered PC case, victim to many a mod, and try building a wooden one to replace it. My old one was noisy, didn't cool very well, and was pretty ugly. The new case is quieter, runs cooler, and .... well 2 of 3 isn't bad!
The first thing was to get better parts for cooling. I bought 3 yate loon 120mm fans, as well as Zalman CNPS 9500 from fellow SPCR member Masterwerk. As you can see, a big difference compared to the stock AMD cooler.
I used 3/4" square pieces to make a frame, and put 1/4" board on it for the outer shell. Here you can see the back panel and PSU being fitted. The outer framing was too close to the backpanel screw openings, and I had to shave the corner off to allow a screwdriver an angle at the screw for the video card.The motherboard was attached to a frame made of the 3/4" pieces, attached using standoffs and wood glue. Thanks to Bluefront for suggesting those mounts!
Here I'm test fitting the motherboard. Not having the new cooler on was a mistake; once I had all the new parts in place, I found it extremely tough to get the board into the case without bending anything. I didn't leave enough wiggle room in my quest to make the case's outer dimensions as small as I could.
I placed the new fans in the front of the case, 1 above the other, wedged into this angled opening at the front. The goal was to have a single point of entry for air, and make the case positive pressure. The front space was left for installing an air filter in front of the fans. With the outer pieces in place, it looks like this. The air is drawn from either side through the slots, through the optional filter and past the fans, and then to either side of the motherboard.
The PSU and HDD sit behind the MB, but I didn't build it with room for a CD drive. I rarely ever use it, and if the need were to arise I could access my wife's PC and CD drive. A future version will likely be self-contained though.
As far as temps go, I ran speedfan and cpuburn for a while on both the original machine and tonight with the unfiltered machine. While we have AC and therefore the room temps stay around 76F, I'm sure I have a decent margin of error. The original machine had a cpu temp of 50C and chip temp of 39C when running cpuburn, and was pretty noisy even inside a cabinet I have (with no back to it, just sides and a front door). The new machine ran at 39C cpu and 37C chip, and was almost as loud while sitting on the desk 2 feet from my head. For fun I unplugged the fan to the Zalman, to see how it would cool the cpu with just passive airflow. 54C cpu, 52C chip and 46C HDD was higher than I like, but that was 2 instances of cpuburn as well as a disk defrag, which it sorely needed. Under normal loads without a cpu fan, it's at 34C for both cpu and chip, and 33C for the HDD, so around 10C over ambient.
One issue I've encountered is a serious lack of fan headers on the ASrock 939 Sata2 board I have. There's just 2, for the cpu and chassis. My Antec PSU has a plug for a second fan built into it, and the pair of yate loon fans up front are running at full speed. The primary noise is from airflow, echoing off the wall right behind the case. Sounds like the central AC is running, a fairly low-pitched woosh.
The intakes appear to be large enough to allow all the air the intake fans need, it actually seems to be the PSU fan causing a good deal of noise. My next step is to get a fan controller which will let me adjust the voltage to the case fans, and then I can plug the PSU fan into the single header on the MB. I have a third yate loon not in use, which could be used with the Zalman HS for a quieter option than the stock fan. Then all 3 fans could be run at 7V instead of 12V, and hopefully maintain good airflow while dropping the noise.
I also have a Zalman VF900-cu in the mail to replace the stock cooler on the ATI X800 pro. I can hear that fan a bit despite the air woosh, and I expect it will become a serious noise source when I push the video card enough to ramp up the fan.
Future steps to take with this include finishing a filter (the angled pieces inside have made it very tough to make an airtight filter box to go over the fans), adding a fan controller to lower the voltages on the case fans, and possibly duct the fans some to improve airflow to the video card, or perhaps an exhaust vent to the rear. I might even start from scratch and try something else; if I could play current games with a mini-itx board I'd be all over it for making a small case.
Putting the PSU behind the MB to make the case shorter at the expense of width, has met with mixed results. I think I might rethink the airflow and try a new design in the future, time premitting.
It's certainly a new ball game when you go with wood. Nice...
