Case Design

[clocker]

Bob,

It has never occured to me to check...do you think that the back of the mainboard gets hot as well?

Terminal,

Exactly along the lines that I've been thinking...modular.Isolate and deal with each heat source separately.


Does anyone know if the length of the IDE cables makes a significant impact on the performance of the component? Is there a practical limit to how far my HDD/CD/DVD can be from the motherboard?

[SciManAl]

the back of the mobo should only be hot near areas that are hot on top... (like the cpu)

other wise you are looking at ok temps...

as for distance clocker i give you 2 feet before you start lsing enough spped that it becomes noticable...

[clocker]

Originally posted by SciManAl@29 November 2003 - 08:47


as for distance clocker i give you 2 feet before you start lsing enough spped that it becomes noticable...

That's very generous of you Al, thanks.

Is that a guess?

[SciManAl]

nope
that is facts

[SciManAl]

if you want to be exact though to not have any speed decreasements no longer than 21 inches... but up to 24 will be ok... that is a latency issue, i had a run in with that problem and i researched it and fixed it so i know what i am saying is pretty acurate...

also look at the G5 case... it looks kinda like what you may be wanting to go for... it has temperate zones and it blows out the front... cray stuff..

[SciManAl]

also for easy access if you mader a desktop (or flat computer for you younger poeple) you could make the top simply lay on top , and get an air seal by running rubberaroiund the edges, and then gravity could replace screws.... and opening up da case could be easy as hell... things cpould just "fall into place" vie ridges and slots, and so removale/moding is easy to do... just an idea to throw your way...

[lynx]

How about putting hard drives on the other side of the mobo backplane?

You could have very short cables from the mobo to a connector on the backplane, and on the other side have a fixed hd power and data connection, or again have very short connectors.

Also, completely isolate the optical drives etc from the mobo area, using the ps fan to cool these devices (and possibly the hard drives). Similar short connectors through the bulkhead as described for hd. And because you already know (within reason) the distance from the bulkhead to the drive's data socket, you could have custom length cables for each drive bay.

The main bay now just has mobo and cards. No drives at the front so it can be shortened by quite a bit too. This may give some loss of stability, but you would gain this back because the case would be slightly wider.

Btw, the trick of screwless card mounting has already been done (by HP/Compaq and possibly others) but I don't see it as such a big issue. How often do you add/remove cards in real life (unless you are doing one of clocker's case modding experiments).

[SciManAl]

well i open my case about 4 times a day while i am messing with that and this etc... i think it IS sn issue or at least to make it easy to get into etc...

[bob_the_alien]

Originally posted by clocker@29 November 2003 - 09:23
Bob,

It has never occured to me to check...do you think that the back of the mainboard gets hot as well?

I've never checked either, but I just thought if your going to build your own, it
can't hurt.

I think the cpu is located on the bottom of a laptop though, now that i think of it, so it would cool those allot better.

[SciManAl]

try to make it quiet, in my mind clocker i am thinking of every thing that doesn't require high performance cooling, ie normally just has a heatsink on it... should be cooled by a system of heatpipes(quiet self sustaining, and get pretty good performance...) and the rest to be cooled by water, that way less case fans=quiet qand high performance... also try to make more effective passive cooling systems... that could go idle, or things like net surfing with out any fans running at all, just have vents at the top for heat to migrate out of... (or 120 mm fans at very very low rpm) i think that would put a smile on a llot of poeples faces...