Old Skewl Air Cooling

[Detale]

I wish I could give it a try, I gotta get my hands on a case like that

[clocker]

Decided to change things up a bit.

Broke out the old DFI Expert board and a passive 7300 SE nVidia card.

Kaiweiler asked me to see what watercooling stuff I might be willing to sell so I've been scrounging in boxes that have lain unexamined for months and keep coming across things I didn't remember I even had, much less why I got them in the first place.
One item is a 92 to 120mm fan adaptor, particularly odd since I can't remember ever using a 92mm fan on anything.

Whilst marveling at the serendipity of this find I unearthed a stock AMD heatpiped HS- a quite nice piece that AMD shipped willy-nilly with some dual core chips.
Turns out I have two of 'em actually.

Out of the box these sinks have an 80mm fan- admittedly, a great improvement over the old, impossible to find 70mm's of yore but not really on par with truly modern sinks.

Miraculously though, due to the fan mount shroud on the sink, the adaptor fits it perfectly, requiring but four new mount holes.
Here's the sink with the adaptor already mounted...


And with a fan installed...


This swap results in a far quieter unit- the larger fan moves more air at a lower RPM, moving the fan off the heatsink reduces noise from turbulance and also minimizes the effect of the hub's dead spot.
Pretty much, win-win.
In the case...


It also struck me that as long as the PC had two 250GB SATAII drives, why not RAID 'em?
RAID0, naturally.

*If it isn't already obvious, I couldn't care less about "data integrity"...this PC is just a toy, not a mission critical machine. Besides, with all my nLite install disks and Ghost images, I can be up and running in a matter of minutes (about 20 minutes in this case) anyway.*

Sadly, moving the drives into an array precludes gathering SMART info so I can no longer monitor the drive's temp but I'm confident from past data that they are running quite cool so that's not really a concern.
Naturally, I have an new idea for the drive mounts and they'll be changing again so all bets are off anyway.

There is also a wild hair concept for the heatsink that I'm going to explore as well, so keep tuned...

[Detale]

"Wild Hair"!??? Dude you know you need to speak to me like im 6.

Also did you perm remove the fan from the southbridge or will it be making a comeback?

[lynx]

You got me thinking with that one, clocker.

I too have one of the AMD heatpipe HS, but I don't have a 92-120mm adapter. However, I do have an 80-120mm adapter and an ultra-quiet 120mm fan which will be pressed into service rather soon I suspect. No need for new mount points either.

Bang goes my uptime though.

[clocker]

...did you perm remove the fan from the southbridge or will it be making a comeback?

See following...

Heatsink with 120mm adaptor in place...


Operating under the theory that bigger is better (quintessentially American thinking here), here's the 120mm adaptor topped with a 120 to 140mm adaptor...


140mm fan installed...


Since I have more of these supersized fans and the vid card and northbridge are both running passive, gee...let's add a second one...


Don't forget the front of the case...gotta be room up there too...


The hard drives have been relocated to a CoolerMaster Stacker drive module...


*Note the silicon bushings on the module's side.
Two plates fit into these and serve as the real mounts.
This isolates the drives from the case's drive bay and helps quiet the drives.

Naturally, there is a fan on the front of the unit as well...


With the drive module installed, this is how the front of the case (under the bezel) looks...


With the bezel...


Finally, full enclosure...


Final fan total:
-3 x 120mm (includes the PSU fan)
-3 x 140mm

Preliminary (very preliminary) results show the GPU/Northbridge temp lowered by @7°C and the CPU the same as the previous 120mm fan.
It's actually possible that the CPU is slightly worse than before but ambient temps today are higher (right around 70°F/21°C) and the machine has little run time as yet, so I'm reserving judgement.

I may cut a piece of mesh to finish off the front bezel where the HDDs are but other than that, this particular odyssey is just about over.

[Detale]

AWWW but I don't want it to be over.
I have a question about fan direction here. It apperars to me that the the Top and middle fan are blowing out and the lower fan is blowing in. I was under the impression that the front fans are all supposed to be intake am I misled in thinking this?

EDIT: Is that the Mad Dog external case I see? IF so I got one yesterday

[clocker]

All fans are intakes, D.

No, that is a Vantec NexStar3 external SATA exclosure.

[kaiweiler]

AWWW but I don't want it to be over.

If you know clocker, you know that it is never over.

[Detale]

I certainly hope not ;P

What kind of fan is the top one Clocker, it sure is snappy looking like a bomber engine.
Also do you know of a way to add fans like you did here if you dont have a cross brace?

Also Clocker I think you need your own sticky called " What awesome project Clocker is up to now"
Hows the G5 case coming?? I'm dying to see it

[clocker]

If you know clocker, you know that it is never over.

This is true.

BTW, K., so far I've found 3 rads, various chipset/CPU blocks and a cherry reservoir.
Will PM you with pics, probably Sat.

What kind of fan is the top one Clocker, it sure is snappy looking like a bomber engine.
Also do you know of a way to add fans like you did here if you dont have a cross brace?

All the case fans are from Aerocool and feature lots of blades, blue LED lighting (which we all know, makes things run cooler...) and the 120's have that "bomber nosecone" thingie.
It's removeable if space or aesthetics are an issue.

How to add side fans would depend on the case.
Note that in this last configuration none of the fans are attached to the crossbrace so it's just in the way mostly.
In the past though, I've used round aluminum rod (usually 1/2" diameter) to serve as structural/mounting elements.

Here's a hard drive mount I made a few years ago in another Gateway server case...




You can tell that's old by the SATA converter on an IDE drive...back when SATA drives were a rarity and few boards supported it.

One server case had drives and motherboard suspended like that...








Ah, the memories.