It would be good for little fans but an optical is I think 42mm high so they would be very small whiney fans barely doing anything creating to much noise. I think a slim fan like this http://specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/product.php?productid=10543 This would be optimal taking air from above & sweeping onto the heatsinks, but it's not good news for the top piece paint job. I'm not too sure how well this would work but you wouldn't have to mess the top piece, you could instead add vents in the side or if extracting air then just the fan hole with maybe a couple of holes near the front on the sides.
The zalman heatsinks won't get too hot unless you nearly overload them They're fine, have 2 of the controllers myself, and a scythe kaze master, now those are hot sinks.
In a normal case layout where fan controllers have air circulating near or around them & are not enclosed things are usually fine, whereas this what dubs is doing is shutting off any air to the heatsinks so I'd expect temps to just rise & rise & maybe fail when they have gotten too hot, a nice slim fan would eliminate that potential problem. The zalman ones do seem good solid quality & if only hooking 1 low power fan to each channel it probably would be ok in an enclosed space, probably just me overreacting like I do to temperature control because I had a bad experience with fan controllers, but still it's probably not a bad idea to make sure they stay an ok temperature & don't overheat if using contollers, I could have cooked bacon on my cpu heatsink the time it stopped the fans , I'm just amazed how my components didn't die .
To vent or not to vent, that is the question. Nows a good time to make alterations if i have to, and i'm not that fussed but would rather not unless its essential. Also i dont want spoil the look of the box, although a top down fan would be kinda iin keeping with the skelly itself. failing that i could always mount underneath blowing in to the box. do you think with a set up like this there would be enough air moving over the sinks? or is it more a matter of just making sure hot air gets out of the box?
I'd take a gamble on bottom exhausting air so you don't have to change the aesthetics where it would be seen, maybe small vents on the side close to the front, should be enough to get a slight vacuum of air over the sinks & would be good for stopping heat building up .
Hoping to have a little play over the weekend. I have quite a few old CD rom drives (know a place that sells em for 50p each so it's not a disaster if it goes norks up. I've had a little look at the sinks again tonight and they are pretty substantial things so must assume they're there for a reason. As they're located at the very bottom of the PCB they're going to be very close to the bottom part of the box. So much so i'm thinking of thermally coupling them and using the box itself as a heatsink What do you think? Hope to post a few pics later of the fan braiding etc.
If you can make that happen that would be pretty awesome Dubs, I've got the same zalman fan controller but not at hand so don't know if it's doable, would be great if it is though .
still undecided whether i need to put a fan in, but will try to couple to the box. the gap is quite small, and although i could order up some thermal pads i'm giving thought to what other materials i could use. i'm thinkink tin foil squares made by folding tin foil so its the right size and thickness bad idea?
Maybe you could consider adding little foot to the fan controller case and opening the back thid should help venting without adding fan nor changing design a lot.
Or then again it could be worth running a test by having it run as you originally planned, load it up with fans trying to simulate how it would be in the build but keep a close check on the temps of the sinks, if they get to an average temp & don't keep rising maybe it'll be fine but if it keeps rising you know it needs a little extra help cooling, could very well be it'll be fine but it's well worth checking out .
cheers, the back of the box will be open anyway so i'm hoping that will be sufficient. I think i'm going to suck it and see keeping a close eye on the temp of the sinks.
Got a fair bit done today, but not as much as I'd hoped as Mrs Dubs wanted to go shopping for a cocktail dress for a "do" were off to at the end of November. That and me being full of cold (me and half the country) Anyway, got to grips with wiring the fan controller. I've shortened all the internal leads and will be attaching them to the rear edge of the controller effectively to make fixed sockets. Test fit of the PCB and face plate into the box. Should be able to pack the small space between the sinks and the box with a thermal coupler to aid heat transfer. Also made a Molex extension to give power to the unit. Didn't have the same colour wires, but as long as you remember what colour = what new colour you're ok as it all gets braided anyway.
Thank you. The fan controller is now essentially finished, just got to source some little feet for it. Sockets mounted in rear using the very handy 3m extra strong bond double sided tape. How strong is this stuff? Well if you stick something down with it you'd better be sure you want it there forever as you can't get it off even if you want to. Also braided the cables coming from the pump. Mrs Dubs is getting a bit fed up with the state of the kitchen table now as it's been like this for a few weeks.
many thanks for alerting me. I post on several sites so copy paste a deal of the text. Must have hit paste twice. Glad you like the work. The top "arch" section is now removed from the Skelly to enable me to lengthen and braid up some of the other wires. Great thing about this design is you can still use it while you work on it (like now). Fan controller is essentially finished, as is the braiding. Last thing is the big step to take off the Titan and attach the water block. Brown trousers time.
That's the easy part after all the work you've put in Fella Enjoy the lower temps and purr of the lower running fan speeds
Fingers crossed all will be ok, but always that concern that when it goes back together it won't work. Had it a while back with another build, in the end sussed that I must have borked the mobo somewhere along the line although I was a good boy in paying homage to the god of Static electricity
Oh I hear you on that, oh did I have fun and games with an X58 Gigabyte board and some G Skill memory, I eventually had to change the board for an Asus...
