So many replies... where to start...
greenhorn wrote:If your case has feet, best thing you could do would be to snip out as much of the bottom of your case as possible and then cover it with 1/4" open cell foam(sold as intake filter material for room AC units).
Unfortunately, this case doesn't have feet, so there's no room for airflow from the bottom of the case. If I get really desperate, maybe I'll add wheels to the case, but I don't think I'm ready for such a time-consuming task yet (plus, I think feet/wheels would make the case ugly

).
NeilBlanchard wrote:Air "abhors" a vacuum and it will rush to fill it, and this means that pushing air into a case causes the air to leak back through the fan itself! You cannot use fans as pumps to presurize the case -- against the static pressure they loose their efficiency rather quickly.
Is this why sometimes I feel air coming out the
opposite way that a fan is mounted? E.g. I can put my hand close to the fan in my PSU, which is blowing towards the PSU, but I can still feel some air being pushed against my hand.
BTW, what's "static" pressure? I'm familiar with the terms positive and negative pressure... does static pressure have anything to do with that?
1398342003 wrote:Open the lower front of the case, use what ever tools you have access to. Several rectangular slots would do fine. If you have done this already, you could try to cut holes in the side panel. The grey areas in the following image are where you should add extra holes. Focus primarily on the front area near the HDDs, or in the area near the cardslots.
I'll consider that, thanks. I'd rather not have to cut more holes than I really have to, but again, if I'm desperate for airflow, I might just do that. It would certainly be easier than adding feet and cutting out the bottom of the case.
Unfortunately, I can't cut holes in the font of my case. The front is acrylic. It's got holes in the front for airflow, but I can't imagine much gets in. Another problem with this is that my HDs get scaldingly hot -- with my new fan configuration (see below!), my Seagate Barracuda IVs were up to 56C (using the internal sensor). I love the look of acrylic, but it ain't good for airflow.
acaurora wrote:If you must resort to removing all the bay covers, put some type of dust filter or something.
I've tested this before, and it does wonders for the case temp. Unfortunately, it also looks ugly, and like you said, it's not good for dust. What I'd like is something that looks like modder's mesh that could replace two of my 5 1/4" drive bay covers, but preferably with a filter. Can anyone recommend anything like this?
And now, for my new fan configuration:
It hit me like a ton of bricks -- I don't know why I didn't think about this before. To silence the PSU, I can just flip it upside down and cut another hole at the top of the case so that it gets fresh air! This way, I manage to isolate the PSU airflow from the rest of the system -- it's kind of like the
fresh air channel idea for PSUs with rear exhaust fans. The airflow would go something like this (red arrows indicate fans, green arrow indicates no fan but shows where the PSU would exhaust):
I guess I'm lucky that the PSU fits this way inside my case, though I haven't tried mounting the backplate that secures the PSU to the case... but that shouldn't be much of a problem.
The only thing I'm worried about is crap falling into the PSU. I'm already kind of worried about stuff falling into my existing 120mm blowhole... I'm loathe to think what might happen if a screw fell into the PSU while the computer was running. Maybe a filter will do the trick -- I really should filter dust anyways. Again, can anyone recommend a pretty filter?
I haven't actually cut the top hole yet, but I'll let you all know how it goes.