Planning 480 Feser Woody, 23 March. Design phase done

Folks, Feel free to read through the posts for results on noise/position using 2 Feser 480's.

Post 30 has my finalized design: A mash of late Victorian, early Greene and Greene, with a little flair of steampunk... hidden compartments... and a stealthed PC


Good day Bit-tech followers.

Project goals: Ultimate silence, with current Overclock while reusing as much gear as possible. Unobtrusive Furniture Case for Office/Home Theater. Must fit under desk next to my media rack.

Parts (current PC): P6T Deluxe, i920, OCZ SSD, D5, Feser 480, Silenx Fans, nvidia 285: Waterblocks on cpu,gpu, full coverage mobo-block, mosfets, 2TB storage drive.

New Parts: GROW UP JAPAN SMART DRIVE Classic Hard Drive Silencer, 2nd Feser 480, 5 Feser Triebwerk TK-122 120mm x 55mm fans.

Donor Case: Antec P160 (mobo tray, PSU plate).

As I've spent a good deal of money on this so far, it will happen, however I have not yet begun to chop as I'd like feedback on the design.

Current Idea: The top/Bottom/Front/Back will be solid mahogany. The side panels will be smoked Acrylic, held into place with neo magnets glued onto the back of the panels.

Cooling: The System will use a side flow FESER 480/fans/480 sandwich. Very little info is out concerning this setup. Most of the testing has been on cheaper rads with thin fans. This is using 2 60mm thick rads with 55mm thick fans. Hopefully I'll be able to turn the fan speed down very slow, then use a single Feser top mount Fan to cool the case air (with a bottom intake next to the D5).

Idea Pic:

Current Room:
Note: The desk is being rebuilt to the same height/dimensions as the media rack. The current black cabinet in the desk will just be oak spindle legs. The new PC case will roll back into this location.

And the theater position:

 

now thats alot of speakers
did you make/wire them all yourself?
and what do you have in that media box?

 

I'm not certain why the idea pic didn't take. Here it is again:


I wired and built the 4' tall cabinets myself. The front speakers are a kit from clearwaveloudspeaker. The rear speakers and sub I fully constructed myself. The media rack contains Emotiva's XPA-5 and UMC-1.

What I'm really hoping for is some case idea feedback

 

Case looks ok, few things:

- Do you have some other views of it?
- Is that front plexi? I think if it were wood like the top, it'd look better.

Otherwise it looks pretty good, I shall watch.

 

Would you get better results with a single rad and 8 fans in push/pull? I'm assuming you're referring to this http://www.xtremesystems.org/Forums/showthread.php?t=220874 for the tests you've looked at but I would think the principle remains the same despite thicker rads and fans.

If I'm reading the results correctly the Treibwerk T122 fans have a fraction more airflow and static pressure than the Scythe GT 1850's http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showpost.php?p=4637558&postcount=216

 

+1 for GT's over Treibwerk's, push pull GT's in less space than single Treibwerk would be a big plus, and if you're planning on having those radiators stacked then you'll need all the static pressure and CFM you can get, looks like you'd have space for fan-rad-fan-rad-fan, which should produce considerably better results than just rad-fan-rad, and only be 20mm thicker.

What would give you even better temps is what many have dubbed a contra-flow set-up each radiator having fresh air pushed into it, one from each side of the case and sufficient space between the radiators to allow half a doubly convex barrier to be placed between them... that's a bit difficult to put into words...

 

Thanks again everyone!

Big Elf and Asura. I currently have a single 480 and it is overkill with 4 fans on medium speed cooling everything on my board. By adding 4 more fans It would have even better performance. By going with the 'contra' flow it would again increase the performance even more. I purchased the Tribeworks for their insane static pressure at relatively low speed levels. Keep in mind that I've already used the scythe fans: too noisy.

Big Elf, that is one of the testing links I saw too, thank you.

My hopefull plan is to 1) keep noise down to nothing (I'm even encasing the storage drive in a $75 enclosure to this end). 2) use 2 480s with minimal count of fans and SLOW fans, again to reduce all possible noise and 3) remove as much heat as possible from the enclosure for longevity sake (hence the side flow design).

Since the 480's are designed to work best with low-med speed/low pressure fans, it is my hope that a sandwich using low speed high pressure fans will be sufficient, even when throttled down. Again, a single 480 is overkill with medium speed fans cooling all my components.

Other Views: Only the side panels and some trim plates are plexi. All else is wood.

 

Is that one of those EK Spin bay res things? Is it really needed? I reckon a tube res would look much better here.

And the case looks much better with that wood front panel, was worried it was going to be plexi!

 

Mars,

Good catch. I currently use an EK tube res. That is what I'll be re-using along with a fillport. The EK Spin was something I was playing around with but have decided against. I'll want some form of electronic flow monitoring as it'll be under my desk, though I have yet to decide what.

And Agreed on the wood. Everything except the side panels will be solid mahogany. I had it set to transparent so that the cooling apparatus would be apparent.

 

Now I got ya!

Tube res will look good. Is the whole side panel going to be plexi? What about making a side panel of wood with a plexi window?

 

I'll be interested in the result as I doubt the setup you propose will be much different from a single rad and water temps will probably worse than a single rad with push/pull.

The paraflow idea suggested by asura would be a good one but it doesn't look as though you have enough space to do it.

 

Mars: The whole side panel will be black smoked plexi with the rad grill cut into it. The wood will be routed to with 1/4" of the edge to accept this. I sketched some with a wood side and a window, but kept coming back to the clean lines of an all plexi side.

Big Elf: I agree that a single rad with push/pull fans would result in better performance, however that would up the noise. Likely the higher pressure fans on a single rad would be able to offer comparable performance at a medium speed in comparison to my current fans at a high speed. I'm not looking for ultimate overclock performance, but rather lowest noise. 8 fans is simply too much even at a slow speed.

If using the sandwich allows me to run 4 fat fans at a slow in-audible speed and obtain comparable performance to my single rad running at med-high speed 4 thin and noisy fans, then I'll be very happy.

 

If it doesn't affect your overall design you could try it with one rad initially. In the system in my sig full load on the CPU results in temps of 57ºC at an ambient of 20ºC with the GT's at full speed. If I set them to run at 5V (around 800rpm) they're inaudible and the load temps only rise by 4ºC. If I run one GFX card at full load with the CPU also at load the overall temps rise by 3ºC. I haven't tested yet with both GFX cards and CPU at load.

If I were to add another quad rad it might decrease my water temps by maybe a degree or so but the overall CPU temps would still remain about the same. You get to a point where the limiting factor is the ability of the block to transfer heat into the water.

The biggest noise producers in my system are the F3's and even with hard disk silencers they were audible albeit a lot quieter. I didn't like the way the silencers heated up the disks though so removed them and went back to suspending the disks in an elastic lattice.

 

Big Elf: I already know what my temps are with a single rad. I plan on going to 2 (as I have the 2nd one in the closet already) and if that doesn't provide comparable cooling with less noise, then I'll go back down to 1 rad... and fill the void prior to the fans with sound deadening lined walls.

My current fans sit at ~1,200 RPM and are far too loud (they create an annoying high pitch sound). My temps are in-line with your observations. The fans on full decrease the temps by a few degrees and at minimum they increase by about 6*c.

I have moved all (but 1) storage hard drive to another room via a redundant NAS. The 1 storage drive is for constantly accessed files such as my large work files. I agree that it is NOISY. I tried a suspension on the disk and it helped a lot, however it still grates on my nerves. I'm OK with a single drive running a bit warm, as all of it's data is backed up via NTI-Shadow.

Thanks again!

 

Do you use a fan controller to adjust your fan speed, or direct voltage adjustment (using 5v rail, or 7v trick, or resistor) as several fan controllers have been known to produce a high pitched whine when in use, and this could be the cause of your problems.

If you've got all the parts, then it makes an interesting experiment, though I'd test it first on a bench/kitchen-worktop before I started work on the case. My money is on +3% vs single radiator with those same fans.

Rad stacking works best with high speed fans, as the copper to air exchange is dependant on the delta t between them, and the faster the fresh air is going in, the higher that difference will be, obviously to a limit. If we call fresh air aT1, the air at the fans aT2, the exhaust air aT3 and the water temp wT, then for rad stacking to work, wT>aT3-efficiency, further more, as aT2 approaches aT3 the effective cooling dramatical decreases. i.e. the air spends to much time in the thickness of the first radiator, absorbing a lot of heat, then by the time it's shifted on to the second radiator it's already so hot (the aT2 wT delta t are very low) that it can't accept very much more heat (making aT3 similar to aT2) and your effective efficiency goes down.. a lot.

Keeping the two radiators separate should lower your water temperature by 40-45%, putting them together should lower your water temperature by 3-7% (this second is a total guestimation) Something like Lang's current plan, or having one up front, and one on the bottom, or at the top, would be much better than stacking them together.

Test first, and prove me wrong. Please?

 

Asura: I'm a step ahead of you! I've been testing since last night and have been working on my backup computer. I have a correction to make... I have been using Scythe s-flex, not silenx fans.

As to noise... I am VERY sensitive to high pitched distortion type sounds... they cause me great fatigue after a given time in my one ear (due to an injury).

Currently I have been using the SilverStone Commander (I believe it is a PSM). I tried a resistor on each instead of the Commander and the high pitched grind continued.

Test scenario. Run prime 95 for 2 hours. Ambient remains at 68F during all testing.

These test all run via PWM

480 Scythe at 75% = 53* Noise = Nasty

480 Scythe at 50% = 62* Noise = Moderate

480 TFC 122 At 100% = 49* Noise = Noticeable, but just wind sound. Nothing Nasty

480 TFC 122 At 50% = 52* Noise = Imperceptible FANTASTIC

480 TFC Sandwich 122 At 50% = 49* Noise = Barely Audible. Odd, as I thought the additional radiator would muffle additional noise. Instead it appears that the additional radiator causes additional turbulence.

480 TFC with no fans next to but not blocking 480 TFC 122 At 50% = 48* Noise = Imperceptible FANTASTIC This is great.

480 TFC with Scythe using a 7 volt resistor next to but not blocking 480 TFC 122 At 50% = 46* Noise = Moderate grind

So with this being said... I too think the sandwich idea is a no go. The TFC fans are GREAT when turned down. So... I'm sketching a slightly wider Contra Flow unit. I plan on using the 4 TFC fans on one side, and nothing on the other. However I will purchase 4 more of the TFC-122s and add them to the other radiator WHEN and IF I need to as system upgrades dictate. Furthermore, the 122's sound much better when turned down using a resistor than they do via PWM.

I'll have an updated sketchup soon.

 

Take 2... Opinions on the Contra design?

The bottom has a 120*2 filter. The lower chamber is wall lined with sound deadening material.
The rear has a single 120mm fan on the MOBO side, and uses the PSU fan on the PSU side to cool the hard drive.

The fans blow towards the front from the sides. I will start with 4 122 fans on the right side and add fans to the left side when/if they are needed.

Front:

Right Side:

Left Side:

Sideless:

Angled Front:

Top Down:

Top (removed top panel for ease of viewing):

Back (rear plate removed for ease of viewing):

 

The push pull noise may be because those fans are designed to run best in push, the form of the fan body negates the need for a shroud on the exhaust side, but not on the intake side. 6% improvement at 50% fan speed... I was only out by 100%

Since porting plays such an important part in cab design, perhaps playing with those forms might be interesting...

Something like This?


Oh yea, and great job with testing

 

Asura,

I haven't seen anyone do a 480 test with these guys via a sandwich yet... so your guess wasn't that far off. Plus these fans are rather unique critters. Hopefully others wanting to go the same route will find this useful!

In every test (sans sandwich) the fans were in a push config, so your theory makes sense. Good call.

What my Picture doesn't show is the center plate being covered in sound deadening foam. I would also have a full height sound deadening wedge on either side of the radiator/fan.

The whole reason for starting here pre-production is just for idea testing and refinment, and I thank everyone so far for doing just that!

I like bringing the 2 rads directly together as opposed to having the convex deflector... which do you believe would be better an noise reduction / performance though? It would decrease the overall width by nearly 3 inches. I think that some more testing is in order!

The porting is a cool looking concept. On an old build (no pics, sorry), I did something very similar (pre-radiator days). I found that the wind noise increased and that my fan rotation speed measured slightly lower. The fan noise however lowered in frequency which was nice. I can only attribute this to increased turbulence in the ports that I used. The big difference with your proposed design is that the ports change shape and are angled. My ports were straight cut PVC pipe (the old 80mm days) at about 3". The open box plenum (3 fans wide) was at a slight angle and contained foam sound deadening on the walls.

 

Ok I've just done a little bit of reading on port design visa noise reduction, and boy is it complex! If I've understood the basics of it then ideal port shape for your scenario is fat in the centre, thinnest at the input side with gentle curves at either end... something like this...



Which may be a bit complex to make...