a slightly different approach to ducting

[Halbyrd]

In the quest to eliminate all sources of noise from my PC, I've run up against a bit of a snag. My interim CPU, a Celeron from the ancient days of the Pentium II, is being cooled by an aluminum HSF with a 40mm fan sitting atop it. As I'm sure you're aware, there's no such thing as a quiet 40mm fan, and in fact this one does a fair impression of a noisy hard drive.

I've got a Tt Tsunami Dream case, and the version I purchased includes a port for a 92mm fan in the side window.

As a stopgap measure, to quiet this thing down for the month or so it'll take me to get new CPU/mobo/RAM, I was thinking I'd run a duct from the exhaust of this fan over to the top of the HS, and thereby eliminate the need for the 40mm frankenfan.

My question is, what would be a good tube/duct material to use for this project? It needs to be able to hold a shallow l-bend, while being supported only by four screws into the back of the fan (I'll glue on a square mounting bracket, if needed). I can't hard-mount it to the HS, as I'll need to be able to remove the side panel without major surgery.

Sorry I can't post pics of the actual installed system (no digicam handy, boo), but from eyeballing, I'd say the space between the casefan and the HS is about 11 cm (just a bit narrower than the 12 cm fan mounted in back). The HS is centered vertically with regards to the fan, but barely overlapping the left edge of the fan (as seen from the above perspective. I can't use the dryer-exhaust-elbow ducting trick with the rear fan, as that would require a fugly homebrew adaptor to channel the air from a 120mm intake down to a 40mm HS--there's simply no room for anything that convoluted, and the HS is too close to the backplate for the elbow to fit, anyway.

Sorry if this question has been asked before, but a forum search turned up nada.

[echoes]

Hmm, your case has a window, do you care about aesthetics?

What I did in a similar situation was make the duct out of paper. Not normal paper, something slightly stiffer, and I used duct tape to attach it to the case. It's ugly, but it works.

You could make one out of paper just to test the idea first, before making the final product.

[frankgehry]

H,

I always thought this would be a good kit w/adapters to use.
http://www.sunbeamtech.com - FG

[Tibors]

Ducts that are only needed for a short time ask for the Pringles and duct tape solution. There is a thread somewhere on the forum about this, but the pictures expired.

[Halbyrd]

yeah, seeing as how this is a temp solution, I think I'll go with the posterboard and electrical tape solution.

Thanks for your input!