Blocking air vents on the Solo?

crispyfish · Post by **crispyfish** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:55 pm

I know some people have tried blocking vents on the Solo to direct airflow. I think I've also seen some examples of blocking unused drive bays. What I'm wondering is, what temperature differences (if any) have people gotten from these mods?

josephclemente · Post by **josephclemente** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 7:56 pm

I went to extremes and blocked just about every hole on my Solo. The bottom, front, rear... Even the tiniest holes. Air comes in through the lower front hard drive bay area, plus I have a slot bracket removed just above my video card for help over there.

Unfortunately, I can't measure any difference. CPU and motherboard temps were the same. I assume the hard drive and video card get some help, but I'm not sure how much since I'm not sure what the temperatures are of those devices. If there is a difference, probably not a measurable difference anyway...

Das_Saunamies · Post by **Das_Saunamies** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 1:37 am

To measure HDD temps you'd need a program that can read the SMART data off those drives. Everest Home Edition(discontinued but very useful) or HDTune(easy&fast) are a couple I've used. Most if not all modern graphics cards can read GPU temperatures. Just open up the manufacturer-specific driver settings tabs and look for a reading. For Nvidia it's Properties->Settings->Advanced->[Card name]->Temperature. Not sure if you need CoolBits to activate it, but it's there. ATITool(works with both Nvidia and ATI cards despite the name) can read temperatures as well.

Too busy to link you up, but Google will help.

Towermax · Post by **Towermax** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:16 am

josephclemente wrote:I assume the hard drive and video card get some help, but I'm not sure how much since I'm not sure what the temperatures are of those devices. If there is a difference, probably not a measurable difference anyway...

If you're using Speedfan, it can monitor drive temperature via SMART. It's watching three drives right now in my Solo . . .

josephclemente · Post by **josephclemente** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 9:00 pm

Thanks for the tips. During the before and after, I was using an Intel D975XBX motherboard. I had Speedfan running, but my drive temperature didn't show, I was thinking maybe it was because I had SATA set to AHCI mode in BIOS.

For video, I don't think my drivers support temperature monitoring yet. I have an EVGA 7950 GT KO, but have been using Windows Vista 64 bit. At one time I had XP installed and the drivers showed me the temperature...

But now that I have the case holes plugged so well, it wouldn't be worth it to undo the effort and try for comparison pictures... Hopefully someone has their monitoring software configured and will do this mod while recording temperatures (along with ambient)...