Modding What todo or not todo before you actually do it?

Well, I got a CM Stacker with a upsidedown PSU in bottom of it, sucking air out of the case but since it is a Corsair HX520 which has its own fanspeed controller in it, it always hums along in a very quiet and slow pace and some heat seems to rise through the fan up on XFX 8800 GTS 320mb Fatal1ty graphic-card.



I was thinking of making a hole in bottom, underneath the PSU, of the case and then flip the PSU and make it more like my other case a CM HAF 932.

Since I'm not much of a modder and hate gutting the computer out of all hardware, motherboard etc

I was thinking of doing the unthinkable and take out the PSU and the cover up the inside around the area, with plastics and duct tape, where the hole will be dremeled out, keeping the motherboard in place just removing the two 4-in-3 harddisks bays


Is this possible without getting some metaldust in the wrong places?

 

I don't like the high temps that the Fatal1ty has during gameplay of 82C with all but the door fan att 100% . That is all the fans that I can control, the Fatal1ty is on automatic and the PSU has its own automatic fancontrol

If I turn up the 80mm doorfan to 100% that's blowing into the Fatal1ty fan area it goes down to 3-5C to about 77C

From what I read in other forums it seems that the Fatal1ty fan stays at about 60% until it reaches higher temps like 90C, is this the case?

I read that you can do your own fanprofiles with Rivatuner etc but haven't tried it yet.

Anyway the "case mod" would lessen the need to run the fans at 100% all the time

 

if i understand correctly..
couldnt you just flip the psu over? the psu backplate has a tab that will fit into a slot on the case, which leads me to believe that they intended for the psu to be mounted either way the user wants, the mesh will let some air in for the psu fan..
im running a coolermaster psu in the same case you have with the fan pulling air in through the mesh on the bottom of the case and it seems fine to me.
if you are worried the psu might not be getting enough air and you want to make a hole for some more ventilation you can take the psu out, then unscrew about 6 screws holding the silver mesh in place. allowing you to remove the mesh and cut some holes in it without the risk getting metal shavings on your hardware.
i would not recommed trying to cut the metal inside the case with the hardware installed.

 

You know yourself its a bad idea, stop being lazy, strip it out, cut it, wash it then re-build it.

 

I agree with Burnout21.
If you don't remove the hardware inside before cutting, then metal shards from the case will scratch the circuit board and can damage it. Also, it can conduct electricity which can damage components and damage fan motors.

I am not convinced that a bottom fan will do anything other than add more dust in your case, which will end up blocking heatsink, which will increase temperature at the long run.

 

Yeah I know it is a lazy approach, but if its done properly wouldn't it work?

Just wondering if this way to cut corners and if others done it has any experiece of similiar case mods?

I have done some lazy mods before but it was a small one on my Aopen HX-08 case
...but it was many many years ago and I forgot which one it was, trying to recall it, but it's blank, think it was the top twin 80mm fans on it, that I covered up it.

It worked great that time, didn't have any issues after that case mod


Still I have to move the quite heavy CM Stacker down to the "celler" hobby-room with the TRUE etc in place

I will think about it some more

 

The Idea is to
1) isolate the motherboard-area first with a big motherboard-antistatic-bag
2) put a plasticbag of some sort, covering a pretty small area around the PSU area, thus as dremel-cutter will heat up the metal pretty hot it needs some more area to allow it to air cool some before it hits the plastic bag or several layers of plasticbags
and they har ducttaped to the case

Well my other case the CM HAF 932 has the PSU a Corsair HX620 in the bottom sucking air from the floor and I vacuum it from time to time, that case has no airfilters whatsoever so it collects more dust anyway and it seem to work fine with much lower temps on the air coming out from it's PSU. That computer is an old Pentium 3 with 1GHz and does not put so much stress on the PSU.

My plan original plan, plan A, was to put my Pentium Q6600 etc, which is in the CM stacker, into the CM HAF 932 but after I got it and tested it out it is much noisier than the CM Stacker so plan B is to swap the PSU:s but first dremel out a hole in the bottom the the CM Stacker.

As the two PSU:s are very similar and uses modular cabling I can use the same cables, without actually redraw the cables with the PSU:s own cables.

That can also be a bad Idea as PSU cables probably show some wear after some years.

 

believe it or not removing the motherboard and all other hardware is quicker then masking off areas of the case.

 

It's also a lot quicker than having to buy all your parts again if it goes belly up!

 

That's a good point, though I got a custom fancontrollers, Two T-Balancer XL, one in the top and one i the bottom of the case, which has it's own digital temp sensors and all fans going to them.

It is a cabling nightmare

Had my old Pentium 3 in the CM Stacker some years ago

Before picture


After picture (swapped the PSU from top to bottom also)


This was purely a testing face of the fancontrollers, but as you can see there are alot of cablemanagement that has been done

I know it is a hassle to take out the motherboard as I had it done some month ago when I sent it for a RMA.

 

Already had a Raid 0 + 5 crash and sent the motherboard for RMA but they couldn't find anything wrong with it so I sent the 3 x Seagate Raid 0 + 5 to an analysis in computer repairshop, which specializes in data recovery, but after a week they said it would cost €1000 to recover some of the Raid 0 + 5, I took them back and replaced one of the three Seagate Baracuda 7200.10 that had failed after only a year, the RAID 0 had FAILED, and have the rest of the Raid 5 on REBUILD-status but it's not done yet as it needs windows to run, which was on the Raid 0.

I might need a completely new computer anyway.

 

Well that is because your computer case sucks.
I dont' care if it's a CoolerMaster, Lian-li, Antec... not all cases from these brands fits everyone needs, and not all are great/good/descent.

 

Ooooooh, harsh!



IMO, a case is what you make of it, and damn boy, removing everything would be a good thing! Start from scratch, and put some more effort into tidying those cables! Yeah there's a lot, but they could be organised better than that.

 

What do you mean?

I haven't seen any better overall design, beautiful and yet functional, of case than the CM Stacker.
The CM HAF 932 has some befits, better cablemanagement and aircooling and would probably handle 3-way SLI etc heavy duty heat much better but since lacks in other areas, the harddisks vibrate the whole chassis and no dustfilters and the 4-in-3 harddisk racks won't fit in it. And btw I hate small cramped chassis in general.

Still looking for a better case, but since this is way waaay off-topic, so I will stop now




Do any know of a good procedure to mask out and ducttape the computer case?

 

The two later pictures are quite old but it gives an idea what the two T-Balancer XL has alot of cables. The first picture is some year old but the cables are hard to hide in better way and still remain somewhat flexiable as to be able to swap out 4-in-3 harddisk bays.

Right now I have

top 4-in-3 harddisk bay
3 x 500 GB Seagate (SATA) Raid 0 + 5 (the crashed raid, not used right now)

bottom 4-in-3 harddisk bay
1 x 1TB Samsung (SATA) (have installed Windows XP on it and it works)
1 x 300 GB WD (PATA)


There are some cables I connect from time to time to so it is hard to have the cables superneat all the time.

The PSU cables are a little bit to short to do a really neat cablemanagement in this configuration, it might improve a little if I flip PSU, the motherboard cables might go behind the motherboard tray, but I think I have had a test try of it before I did this config and it wasn't long enough.


I could search for some newer photos, but many are on the crashed Raid 0 + 5 or take some new photos to show the current config.

 

In any case, it's too late for a new case... assuming that. I recommend to pull everything out. Study your case... see where there is holes where cable can pass... and redo your cable management.

Look at my computer. It's very quiet operation, the CPU heats more than a Core i7 920, it's a small case (Antec SOLO, where my GPU did not initially fit and had to cut a small part), I have a motherboard chipset that heats up (not nForce 680 style, but nor cool operation). How many case fans do I have? 2... and in fact, the front case fan is supposed to be a 92mm, I put a 80mm instead.

Sure it won't take SLI with a GTX 260.. but it sure shows no heat problem under heavy load. If I can do it.. you can too!

Let me show you my cable management:




How did I do it?


All the time you spent in this discussion, I think you could have removed all the inside hardware, do the mod, clean your case, put everything back, and have a great cable management.
Laziness NEVER pays, and in fact leads to ALWAYS more work. You have PUSH yourself and do it right! The more you push yourself, you'll get to used to it, then you'll be way more energetic (going at the gym or physical activity every day, helps a lot as well).
You see the line of paint of my wall and the bottom floor border on the second picture... see how perfect it is? Well that is because I painted my room with effort (precision and perfection as well), not laziness (oh, and that was the first time I paint a room)

 

just do it ! and do it properly

time and effort is all it takes , think about it , plan it out , remove EVERYTHING ! AND DON'T USE DUCT TAPE !

 

Well I need alot of time to prepare before I start gutting the computer, have to do some more backups too. I like to have a good plan A and B before I start

If I just jump in, it is a foolproof way to disaster for me


Nice cablemanagent but it is a much smaller case than the CM Stacker and HAF but how are the harddisks cables connected?

 

I opened the case now and the bottom 4-in-3 harddisk bay needs some better cablemanagement for the PATA harddisk, but the round PATA cable as I got is 90 cm long and in the current setup a 10-20 cm would do just fine.

The PSU is still a problem, if I hold my hand above the fan I feel the heat coming up through the automatic low spinning PSU fan.


I will probably gut the CM Stacker and do a proper dremel and clean it properly as I want the possibility to run the PSU with the fan sucking in fresh air frorom the floor. I will look into some custom dustfilter solution for it as I know it gathers alot of dust under the CM Stacker and I have a CAT ! ! !

maybe something like this car airfilter
http://www.streetperformance.com/ART/PRODUCTS/100478/56-9049.jpg

 

Could you not flip the PSU over? Looks like you have some mesh at the bottom of the case, surely that'll prevent your problem?