I have a mod in mind, but I'm still getting used to Sketchup, so I'm not gonna start a proper thread about it until I have everything ready to rock, planning and parts-wise. But this mod would benefit from some dense, lasting fog that pretty much dribbles out from near the top of the case, and oozes its way down to the bottom of the case. It's more of a showy thing, than anything. The machine will be watercooled (Maybe even passively, using a Reserator if I can find one) so there won't be fans blowing too much air around inside the case. Typical smoke machines are either cheap, big and suck up huge amounts of power, and spurt fog everywhere, or are tiny, hyper expensive and still produce huge amounts of fog. What I am planning, therefore, is either buying a cheap fog machine and modding the hell out of it to run on far lower power and produce only a small amount of fog, or making my own. I have a few questions, though. I'm fairly certain dry ice and water vapour fog is out of the question for the inside of a case, as I value the life of my components, but I don't know much about the typical fog you get from fog machines. Is it safe to be around the electronics inside a PC? Next up is whether or not I can build a little smoke machine from scratch? I'd like to be able to control the fog output with a dial on the front of the case, to top up the fog as it spreads too thin. And finally: Assuming I can build a super low power one, is it possible/safe to be able to run it from the computer's power supply? That's all I was worried about. I'm new to PC modding, and after seeing some of the project logs here and elsewhere, I have basically been given the green light to build build build by my girlfriend. (By which I mean, she's letting me spend lots of money on computer parts, as long as we make a Companion Cube, a Batman mod and a LOTR mod.)
I've seen ' water feature ' indoor things that produce fog at garden centres. They'll be running off a mains plug, but could be converted to run internally. Not sure if the 'fog' is dry or wet ( if that makes sense ) Wet would be a non starter. Might be worth a look.
I had a look at those before, but they need to be submerged to work, don't they? I'll have a look at some though, thank you.
Most fog machines I've seen use either pure water or a water / glycol mixture - ie not that healthy for components =/ As for DIY they're basically just a heated block which vaporises the liquid with some attached plumbing - not too hard to make.
Hmm. I'm sure I could isolate all the components, even if it is a PITA. Another option is LN2, which would produce VAST amounts of fog, but it's not really a permanent option. I've seen a few (rather expensive: $80) "Mini Smoke" machines that are designed for magicians and the like. Could be worth finding one cheap and gutting it to see what's what?
Then again, we insulate components pretty well for LN2 overclocking, so it shouldn't be a big deal to do it for a smoke machine. Plus you get the benefit of bathing your components in ~ -100 degree vapour...
However it's normally just the area around cpu socket which gets exposed to condensation when overclocking with ln2 - in this the motherboard/memory/expansion cards would be exposed and would need insulated =/
Check with the model train hobby shops... all the 'older' trains that had a smoke stack feature, used a system that developed the small amounts of smoke. IIRC they used a consumable pellet, and ran off of the rail voltage for the train. If you could find one, and then mod it to fit your case, I think it might work out for you, well at least from what I can tell from your minimalist revelation of your mod design : )
If its the same as my Dad had in his garden its a very very fine mist that comes out and yes it would condense on your components so i wouldnt advice it, but it would look damn cool
I'd love to find something similar that could be used purely to show the airflow inside the case - a non-reactive smoke generator of some sort. Smoke in a can, if you will...
