Need Case Cooling Advice

[l33t]

Sketch I did of my case with stuff

Picture I later found of the actual case

As you can see, the case I have DOES comes with a front mounted 80mm fan. (Forgot when I drew sketch oops)

Now, look closely at the newegg pictures that show the front case cover.

You see those small holes?

Those holes aren't infront of where the front mounted fan actually is. I wish I had a camera to show you this but those hole are only infront of the bottom HALF the front fan sucking air in.

In other words, the top half of the fan is completely covered and the bottom half of the fan has those tiny holes from where to suck air into the case.

My questions:

1)Should I drill more holes in the front cover of the case so the intake fan isn't covered?

2)Should I add an 80mm fan at the back near the power supply? If so, any recommended sub $10?

3)Notice from my drawing that I have a voodoo3 pci card (those get very hot). Were would I get best exposure to airflow to it since it only has a passive heat sink? At the highest (relative to the ground) PCI slot near the CPU? or at the bottom of the case the way I have it now?

4) Should I round all my IDE cables? In my hand drawing, that nice "gap" where I labled the mobo is flooded with floppy and ide ribbons as well as power supply cables.

 

[BSEagle1]

Hmmm, well, if you're careful and mark everything out first, go ahead and drill a few holes. It can only do good, unless you don't take your hardware out first, hehe

A fan at the rear would be good. From my experience, a lot of heat builds up in the rear of the machine, because thats where pci/agp ports are, the powersupply is there, etc. Newegg has some decent prices on fans, especially from thermaltake, go check em out.

Stick the voodoo up topside. It will more than likely get the best cooling up there with your setup.

There are two ways to round IDE cables: Buy the cables pre-rounded, or do what I would do:
Take out all your IDE's and the rest of the ribbon cables, get a roll of duct tape and wrap em up.

Also, if you have the time, mess around with fan placement and intake/outtake configurations to see what delivers the best cooling. For instance, maybe stick in a blowhole or two for outtake, and have the rear and front fans on intake. Careful with the blowhole thing though- can't really be undone, and sometimes it can entirely ruin your airflow. A good way to test your airflow is to get your fans and such up and running, and while the system is on, let a little smoke from say a ciggarette or some burning paper in through an intake fan. If you have a window, watch where it goes. If you don't have a window, take off the case side panel and put seran wrap over it.
But, as we all know, smoke is bad for electronics. Use this technique for only as long as needed, and do so at your own risk. I will not be held responsible for damages.

 

[jarsoffart]

Your drawing is not sketched correctly. The PSU's axes are different from the drive bay's axes, but this is totally irrelevant.

 

[l33t]

Please excuse my half assed use off perspective drawing. I'll use a ruler next time

 

[OulOat]

You should cut open some more air slots in the front. Even if the holes did extend up to the entire fan, they are so small they won't work very well. If you don't care about looks, you can just cut a 80mm hole in front, stick a fan grill on it, and there you go, your front fan will love you for that. If you are artisitic, you can make it look better than how it is right now. And you don't need to go through all that trouble to orient fans, the general rule is that front and side are intake, back and top is exhaust. But before you do all of this, you should first look at your case temp through either your bios or MBM. If your case temp is fine (20-40) why go through all this trouble? However, if your temps are higher than that or you feel uncomfortable with it, you should get a rear exhaust fan for your comp. Basically any fan will work, it just depend on how much money you are willing to spend and how quiet you want it to be. Most people here will recommend panaflos cause they are silent and cheap, but just buy whatever that suits your needs. Just remember, unless you are looking for an certain feature (silence, power, etc) in your fans, a good standard 80mm fan shouldn't cost more than 3 bucks.

 

[BSEagle1]

Howcome practically everyone seems so concerned with how much noise their PC makes? It's just a little fan noise, and it's easily ignored. I'm sorry, but, I just don't get it

 

[FlowerMan]

Very nice drawing

1)Should I drill more holes in the front cover of the case so the intake fan isn't covered?

- Cut a hole to accomdate the 80mm. Don't just perforate the case.

2)Should I add an 80mm fan at the back near the power supply? If so, any recommended sub $10?

-Add the fan. Replace the front one too, with an identical one. Newegg sells the Sunon 40CFM 80mm fan for $5 each.

3)Notice from my drawing that I have a voodoo3 pci card (those get very hot). Were would I get best exposure to airflow to it since it only has a passive heat sink? At the highest (relative to the ground) PCI slot near the CPU? or at the bottom of the case the way I have it now?

-Upgrade the cooling on your Voodoo3. You can take its stock heatsink and with some thermal tape, attach it to the rear of the GPU on the back of the card. Get a cheapo (or spare) socket 370/A CPU heatsink and again use thermal tape or thermal epoxy to attach the heatsink to the GPU. Position the V3 in the top-most PCI slot and try to put all the other PCI devices lower on the mobo. I realize the V3 doesn't have a GPU, but you get the point

4) Should I round all my IDE cables? In my hand drawing, that nice "gap" where I labled the mobo is flooded with floppy and ide ribbons as well as power supply cables.

-Round them. I simply fold them with 2 folds (cutting them down to 1/4 their original width) and use some tape (www.tommytape) to secure them. You could just use electrical tape, but they'll get messy after a few months

 

[l33t]

Here's the catch: The slot1 cpu has 2 min fans on it. Each one taking up a fan connector on my motherboard. I have all the molex plugs in use so if I bought an extra 80mm fan, I wouldn't have anywhere to stick the 3 pin connector.

Is there an adapter to let me feed a 3 pin fan off a used molex plug?

Something similar to this

 

[FlowerMan]

http://2cooltek.safeshopper.com/58/cat58.htm?987

The Sunon 80mm fans come in 4-pin molex connector versions too

 

[OulOat]

Originally posted by: FlowerMan
http://2cooltek.safeshopper.com/58/cat58.htm?987

The Sunon 80mm fans come in 4-pin molex connector versions too

What a rip. Cool-Mod has it for a third of the price.

 

[godmare]

1) yes, as has been the concensus, do something to open up airflow on the front.
2) yes, as has also been the concensus, and there's plenty of info in this thread for fans already
3) have you considered a slot cooler adjacent to your video card. Those work very well with agp cards, although that appears to be pci....
4) It has been my understanding that when 'rounding' ide cables, you have to match ground wires with data wires, so I'm not sure 'wrapping them with wv chrome' is going to be the best solution.....

I must add, however, before you rearrange your cards, that the way they are set up now is conducive to good cooling, ie largest at the bottom, smallest at the top. That let's the heat rise as opposed to getting trapped by your smaller cards at the bottom of the case.

 

[Dan]

l33t: I have essentially the same case (an Enlight 7237). You can see photos, etc. of mods I did to improve cooling here.

 

[FlowerMan]

Originally posted by: OulOat

Originally posted by: FlowerMan
http://2cooltek.safeshopper.com/58/cat58.htm?987

The Sunon 80mm fans come in 4-pin molex connector versions too

What a rip. Cool-Mod has it for a third of the price.

Does Coolmod have the same quality of service as 2cooltek?

 

[OulOat]

A 9.36 in resellers convinces me, and what service would you need on 6 pieces of wires?

 

[FlowerMan]

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller2096.html

~250 reviews compared to the ~50 reviews of cool-mod. An order is an order. A late or DOA shipment is bad, even if it is just a few wires. If you were really worried about the price, you would DIY for free