Last night I set out to buy a new PSU for my old Antec tower. Long story short I ended up with a new case instead of a new PSU. The case was of course the Antec Overture. I knew when I bought the case that it had air flow problems, but I thought with a little bit of extra thinking, they could be handled. I got home and gutted my old computer case and started putting everything into the Overture's case with no modifications. It was a little tough getting everthing in, like the squeezing the HD cage next to my heatsink and fan. I powered up the case and quickly installed MBM5. With the stock setup, my cpu was in the mid 50's and the case wasn't far behind. This really bothered me since I thought the 92mm fan in the back would help the cpu cool off. I popped off the case lid with the unit running and felt the heat rush. I felt some of the cords and the video card and they were much too hot for my liking. I turned off the computer and disconnected everything. Of course the problem was the air flow design. The PSU was the intake and blew really hot air into the case. The 80mm and 92mm fans that were blowing out, didn't really help the area around the video card and over the motherboard where there is pretty dead air. Plus, the crap load of cables around the PSU's fan pretty much blocked any air flow from the PSU. So I decided that I'd have to re-engineer the case for better air flow. I know some people said they just added and pci blower and that helped reduce the temps, but I had some goals in mind: 1 - No more fans. The case in "theory" is suppose to be quiet. It IS quiet and I wanted to keep it that way. 2 - No cutting or drilling. I didn't want to have to bust out the power tools to get better air flow. 3 - Everything was to be mounted in it's intended location. (More on this later) So the first and obvious thing I did was take a look at the PSU. I am not really sure was Antec was thinking with this. If you have never seen the PSU the normal "back" of it has the fan, power, and all the wires exiting the same side. I pulled off the 3.5" mount that covers the PSU and looked at how it was mounted. A few tabs hold it in place and four screws hold it to the bottom of the case. After removing the screws and a little bit of manuvering, I had the PSU out of the case. The only thing that kept the PSU from being turned around (so it blew OUT of the case) is one tab. Well I just bent that tab down and tried the PSU. It fit, but because of the wires, the holes for the screws no longer matched up. I was fine with this since the 3.5" bracket would keep the PSU down and the tabs on the side would keep in place. The pressure from the wires also kept the PSU pushed back. Side note: It seems to me with a little bit of thinking Antec could have easily used a standard PSU. The wires would exit opposite the fan and they could have easily made a small duct to vent the PSU to the side of the case. The minimal cost of the duct would easily be made up by using a standard PSU and not one with wires coming out of the "back". Also they routed the power to the back of the case with basically a modified power cable. If they went with a standard PSU they could have used a cable with a 90 degree elbow to save space. Not only would this very simple idea improve air flow, it would allow people that wanted a large watt PSU to install it without too much pain. Moving on, I reversed the air flow of the two supplied fans to allow fresh air to be brought into the case. My temps afer these rather simple modifications are 43 for the CPU and 39 for the case. I have a few more ideas that I think could really help things out, but I haven't messed with trying them out yet. The first is to junk HD cage. Its a good idea with the little rubber things to reduce vibration, but it blocks off half of my cpu's air flow. You could easily move the HD above the PSU and remove the cage which would open up a lot of area around the cpu. The second is to mess with the direction of the two supplied fans. I think with a little bit of testing, you could find a good working combination. Other overture owners, let me know if you have had any more luck with your case. I am happy with its looks and I was happy that a little bit of creative thinking went a long way.
u said no power tools, but this helped my dad's htpc alot....serious temp drop(went from 43 cpu to 36 cpu ) tape off the area directly over the cpu... write a cool logo or design on the tape drill many holes that are ~3mm in diameter to make the shape of the design...do not totally drill it out, just make small holes... put a couple LED's around it and the light will come shining out... unfortunately, he didnt llike thebright led's so i had to take em off, and fill the holes with soem body filler...now its back to it's silence it looked pimpin and it was a extremely effective mod!
I knew that putting a blow hole on top would help a lot, but like I said, I didn't want to use power tools. This is because I am in an apt and I don't have the area to do a proper mod, and the girlfriend would not be happy with the noise/mess.
