Post
by IsaacKuo » Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:45 am
Your layout looks almost exactly like a build someone did here before, where he mounted his PC on a wall (so the cables were dangling underneath, and bundled into a neat bundle). That build used fans, though.
Still, there will be some shared concerns. In particular, it is "fun" to get the power cables to reach all the way to the opposite end. Prototype this first; change the layout if necessary. This will save you much grief.
Second, consider putting the PSU and drives in the same chamber. Unfortunately, the best layout, thermally, would be to put the drives underneath the PSU. This is fine for the hard drive, but makes the optical drive less accessable. The reason is that you need heat to generate passive airflow, but a hard drive doesn't really generate all that much heat. By putting the PSU above the hard drive, you have the heat of the PSU to generate heat and airflow, pulling air up through the chamber.
Still, the amount of airflow generated by the chimney "stack effect" with such a short chimney is ridiculously small. I'd at least put in some mounting holes for fans, in case more airflow is needed. You could even put the fans in there, mounted at the bottom, along with a switch to turn them on when you want to do some power computing.
