You can get silent room air filters for cheap.. here's one for $40 which has an AC-powered 41 cm fan.http://www.heartlandamerica.com/browse/ ... =WIS20001&
It would be as ugly as hell, but would it be a stretch to make a case mod which replaced a case side panel with such a filter unit? You'd get huge airflow with the fan (seriously, it's over 5 times larger than even a 18 cm fan!) , far beyond any current case, yet still silent. It would even blow dust-free air since it's actually an air filter!
Any downsides? Would the AC motor cause any interference?
The mod might not even be that hard (just ugly) by cutting appropriate holes into a case's side panel.. leaving the actual case untouched.
Silent 41cm side-blowing fan case mod brainstorm..
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Devonavar
Yes, but cheap and silent. The tradeoff just seems to be that it'd be big and ugly.Vicotnik wrote:What would be the point? Extreme air cooling for an overclocked rig?
Admittedly I am an extreme case, since I am trying to cool a PC which draws 1040 watts under load (GPU computing on 3 high end boards.) Silent and GPUs are not very complementary, but I'm trying my best.
How about this http://www.frozencpu.com/cat/l3/g36/c15 ... lAodpCd2OQ and it's only $24.95. There are/were PC cases using a similar fan, such as the XClio Propellor. You may be able to find a review on the web.
I don't think that fan could ever be silent. Not even at a very low RPM. It might give a lot of airflow considering the relative low noise, but I cannot see what kind of system would benefit from such a fan. It would blow over the whole motherboard and give great ventilation on the whole case, but would it be the only fan needed? And if it would, why wouldn't a smaller fan do the job?
I don't mean to be condescending but I really don't see the point of using such a fan for a normal PC.
edit: This was meant as a response to the OP
I don't mean to be condescending but I really don't see the point of using such a fan for a normal PC.
edit: This was meant as a response to the OP
Re: Silent 41cm side-blowing fan case mod brainstorm..
What I see at this link doesn't seem to be consistent with what you describe. I can't visualize where the airt current comes from or goes.spworley wrote:You can get silent room air filters for cheap.. here's one for $40 which has an AC-powered 41 cm fan.http://www.heartlandamerica.com/browse/ ... =WIS20001&
Re: Silent 41cm side-blowing fan case mod brainstorm..
It's not a terrible idea, just not one frequently used.spworley wrote:You can get silent room air filters for cheap.. here's one for $40 which has an AC-powered 41 cm fan.http://www.heartlandamerica.com/browse/ ... =WIS20001&
It would be as ugly as hell, but would it be a stretch to make a case mod which replaced a case side panel with such a filter unit?...
Two points however-
1) Many cheaper air filters don't really filter much of anything at all. They'll get dusty if you leave them running a few days, but you can't see the 80%-90%-95% that got through. Don't be fooled by a big name or a big price tag (Sharper Image Ionic Breeze). Look around online at forums for allergy sufferers; there are independent performance reviews online of air purifiers.
It's easy for companies to sell POS air purifiers, because most people do not have the equipment to test them at home. Look for reviews done by well-known medical associations, or info lifted from Consumer Reports.
2) This is just my opinion,,,,, but anything that Heartland America sells is very likely to be a pretty low-quality item. My guess is you wouldn't even be able to find any independent performance reviews of it at all.
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Wow, thanks for all the feedback... this is why SPCR is the best!
@Lubb, thanks for the thoughts about the air filter itself. You're right quality could be an issue. And cleaning the filter could indeed be annoying.. but then again the alternative is to be UNfiltered, which means you'd be cleaning the same amount of gunk but this time from all the nooks and crannies of your case interior.
@lodestar, thanks for the frozenCPU link to the fan! That'd be roughly the same! And more easily mod-able.
I never realized such large fans were available.
And even more, thanks for showing me those crazy Aerocool cases! I never knew those existed either! That's in fact roughly what I thought I wanted to do in fact.
This review of the XClio shows that such a large fan can be silent (20db, anyway).
http://www.futurelooks.com/xclio-propel ... e-review/3
So again my situation is admittedly extreme.. with a system with 3x GTX480 GPUs running at full load 24/7 . It's surprisingly tolerable now, but I hope to both reduce noise and also be prepared for the summer temperatures.
I guess I can run an experiment by pointing a box fan at it with the case side removed. If it works, then a modded case side would likely be even better because of the pressurization and quieter because of the physical barrier.
@Lubb, thanks for the thoughts about the air filter itself. You're right quality could be an issue. And cleaning the filter could indeed be annoying.. but then again the alternative is to be UNfiltered, which means you'd be cleaning the same amount of gunk but this time from all the nooks and crannies of your case interior.
@lodestar, thanks for the frozenCPU link to the fan! That'd be roughly the same! And more easily mod-able.
I never realized such large fans were available.
And even more, thanks for showing me those crazy Aerocool cases! I never knew those existed either! That's in fact roughly what I thought I wanted to do in fact.
This review of the XClio shows that such a large fan can be silent (20db, anyway).
http://www.futurelooks.com/xclio-propel ... e-review/3
So again my situation is admittedly extreme.. with a system with 3x GTX480 GPUs running at full load 24/7 . It's surprisingly tolerable now, but I hope to both reduce noise and also be prepared for the summer temperatures.
I guess I can run an experiment by pointing a box fan at it with the case side removed. If it works, then a modded case side would likely be even better because of the pressurization and quieter because of the physical barrier.
Electrostatic-only air filters seem to be a great idea--there's no filter to clog and impede airflow, so they can be silent (by not requiring much air pressure) yet they can capture ALL non-gasses that pass through them.
All of that is true in theory, but there are practical problems involved with using them in many situations.
The voltages necessary for them to work well are well into the hundreds of thousands of volts. This is so high that the grids inside them generate corona discharge and give off relatively huge amounts of ozone and nitrogen oxides. Electrostatic filters are often used for industrial settings where the corona by-products won't harm anything and [more importantly!] where nobody has to breathe what comes out of them, but they're never used in living or working spaces that people frequent.
The better home air purifiers may use a electrostatic stage as the first stage, but always use a paper or foam barrier filter after that. The electrostatic stage is just there to try to prolong the lifespan or cleaning intervals of the other filter, and the second filter is the one that ends up catching most of what gets caught. Places that do scientific reviews of air purifiers (like Consumer Reports) always test the air purifiers for ozone and nitrogen oxides, and purifiers that put out more of either two get rated much lower due to the health problems that these gasses are known to cause. And not only that.... ozone and nitrogen oxides can damage equipment as well.
Short version:
Any air purifier that is an electrostatic-only filter will either-
1) be unhealthy (due to high voltages creating lots of ozone and nitrogen oxide),,, or-
2) will not filter dust very well (due to lower voltages not attracting dust as well).
~
All of that is true in theory, but there are practical problems involved with using them in many situations.
The voltages necessary for them to work well are well into the hundreds of thousands of volts. This is so high that the grids inside them generate corona discharge and give off relatively huge amounts of ozone and nitrogen oxides. Electrostatic filters are often used for industrial settings where the corona by-products won't harm anything and [more importantly!] where nobody has to breathe what comes out of them, but they're never used in living or working spaces that people frequent.
The better home air purifiers may use a electrostatic stage as the first stage, but always use a paper or foam barrier filter after that. The electrostatic stage is just there to try to prolong the lifespan or cleaning intervals of the other filter, and the second filter is the one that ends up catching most of what gets caught. Places that do scientific reviews of air purifiers (like Consumer Reports) always test the air purifiers for ozone and nitrogen oxides, and purifiers that put out more of either two get rated much lower due to the health problems that these gasses are known to cause. And not only that.... ozone and nitrogen oxides can damage equipment as well.
Short version:
Any air purifier that is an electrostatic-only filter will either-
1) be unhealthy (due to high voltages creating lots of ozone and nitrogen oxide),,, or-
2) will not filter dust very well (due to lower voltages not attracting dust as well).
~
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BlackWhizz
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