'ello all.. I just bought a new case recently that has a power/reset button setup right where the front fan should go. (It does have a poor little ventilation system for that fan, but it's going to be trying to suck up rug due to the fact that my room is carpetted.) Anyway, I've decided to keep the case.. but what is the best way to set up fans in the side as an alternative to the front end fan? I was thinking about putting one or two 120mms on the bottom of the left panel, in either: a) the bottom right corner (so it's basically in the same area the other fan would have been, except facing another way.. perhaps I should add a little piece of ducting to change the angle it blows?) or, b) both the bottom right and bottom left corners (Not sure how useful the second fan would be, as it would pretty much be blowing into my PCI cards) In addition to these I was considering a blow-hole in the top piece of the case, centered. Sound levels are sort of an issue here, I don't want a jet plane next to my desk.. so I wonder how well it would perform with just one 120 mm. [edit: to clarify, I mean one 120 mm intake, as well as the blow hole on the top] Which option would you choose if you needed to set up intakes for a case with no front bezel fan options?
your best bet would be to try to center one 120mm over/near your cpu and video card area, of course blowing in (unless you've got an alpha heatsink or one that ha a fan that sucks air through heatsink), and to have a blowhole in the top of the case, if you get a decent 120mm fan, you can move large quantites of air with about the same amount of noise as a smaller case fan... for instance a 120mm sunon can move 69cfm@35dba at around 3000rpmish, while a 80mm sunon moves 35cfm@33dba at the same 3000rpmish.... thats about what a regular cpu or video card fan will make (depending on your cpu and video cards) btw.... welcome to the forums
Hmm.. okay. If I was to position one in the mid-back area (around CPU and video card) and a blow hole in the top will I, overall, have good airflow? The front bezel fan is so common you'd think it was necessary, but I don't quite see why it is.. if it is, can someone explain to me why? Also, I'm considering rigging up some sort of little vent system in the front bezel that leads from the fan down to an opening in the front (there's currently a front-USB hookup in the spot I'm considering, I don't have any use for this, all I have is a USB mouse, which I have no problem connecting to the back) so basically I was thinking about making a little duct that goes from the fan to this area, and dremeling out the plastic to make an opening about 2.5-3 inches wide and 1-1.5 inches tall.. would this be worth the effort overall? Thanks for the post and the welcome cderalow
I decided to go ahead and attempt the fan duct idea.. it came out very nice.. only problem I have with it is you can see the chassis through the hole.. I'll have to figure out something to go in there to make it look better.. basically what you can see is half fan-hole and half chassis area below it. I was thinking about a simple filter (which would be good anyway, as I'd like to keep all the dog hair out..) but if I did that, I'm not sure what I'd do about the chassis area below the fan. Another idea would be to get a filter and shape it in an L shape so it could fit over the hole in the bezel instead.. (the hole in the bezel goes under as well, about an inch, so I'd have to sort of bend a filter in half and probably cut it some to make it fit right) And yes, I know none of this makes much sense without pictures. but my webcam is awful and not hooked up, heh.
as the thermodynamics are very different for every case the best thing to do is experiment with your case and see for yourself how it works... just rember that your cpu will never be cooler then ambient temperature, therefore in the aim for a cooler cpu rember that it aint all that brilliant if you blow loads and loads of cold air onto the cpu without the hot air getting taken away....thus for every input of air have at least one output of air....that way your system will also be more stable as the other components such as ram and your gfx card wont be as hot... if you want nice and quiet buildyourself a nice fanbus and that should sort that out....
Welp, I decided to take some shots of my handi-work with duct tape and cardboard.. I know, I know, ghetto mod.. but there's nothing wrong with ghetto-mod if it isn't visible, right? I included a shot of the front of the bezel after the mod to show that you can't see any of the duct tape or cardboard, heh.. http://shade.swoo.net/junk/duct_mod.jpg When the bezel is on the case, the upper portion of the duct goes right up against the fan hole snug, thus, hopefully, creating a nice duct from the hole at the bottom of the case to the fan.
