So I've had my shuttle system for 2 weeks now...
Mr holesaw, meet Mr case.
Decided to give my baby a bit of breathing room, so I've decided to mod it.
80mm intake for the radeon 9800pro, and 80mm blowhole with an exhaust fan. 37 cfm @ 3000rpm @ 27db, so it's not intrusive at all. While running F@H, cpu temp is about 55°c, which is not too bad for an A64 in a tiny system with a radeon 9800pro and 10k raptor.
Decided to give my baby a bit of breathing room, so I've decided to mod it.
80mm intake for the radeon 9800pro, and 80mm blowhole with an exhaust fan. 37 cfm @ 3000rpm @ 27db, so it's not intrusive at all. While running F@H, cpu temp is about 55°c, which is not too bad for an A64 in a tiny system with a radeon 9800pro and 10k raptor.
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Tex
It's currently the stock heat pipe cooler. Is there something better out there that won't make my ears bleed?
I have some questions for you...
How did you go about cutting teh holes? What size do they need to be? and what tools did you use?
Also what kind of USB device do you have plugged in thurr? Its a purty cable.
Also can anyone suggest a better fan to use in teh shuttle than teh stock 1?
Thanks in advance.
Hopefully this pic shows how it sets up inside. I'm pretty sure I understand what you wanted, and I think this shows how it wouldn't really work with the existing setup, but if I missed something, let me know and I will give it a shot.
I'm gonna run it this way for a while and see how it goes, then switch it up, probably on the weekend to see if it makes any difference.
Formfactor, just an 80mm metal hole saw and a drill. The edges were kind of rough when the holesaw finished, so a dremel with a round sanding bit worked like a charm. I didn't have access to a drill press, so I had to so it with a hand drill which was a bit more difficult. The usb cable is supposed to light up, but the led inside seems to have stopped working. It's from the startech mutant mods, usb 2, they come in blue, red and yellow.
Right. Ideally, in and out should be about equal. If cannot do this, intake can be a tib under outblowing\exhausting fan.
If temps go higher than what you have, if 55 C is CPU temp, then try unplugging intake fan, turn so it blows in, leave unplugged, see if it rotates fast or slow or not at all. IF not at all, then you might want a hole and an unpowered flourescent glow-fin fan. JUST the hole will ventilate and balance pressure itself some, though I understand for looks you might want the fan LED lit if it has one.
Actually, ideally, you should have somewhat higher exhaust airflow than intake, in general.
However, general rules go out the window under certain circumstances, too. Like in my SLK-3700AMB. The only way to get decent cooling out of it was to put 2 120mm fans on the side panel and 2 80mm fans in the top. So, it has 3 120mm intake fans (2 90cfm, 1 131cfm), and 2 80mm exhaust fans. And that's it. And it works just fine.
//Edit
If the fan is not powered, it won't rotate at all. There is no way there's enough airflow through that case in one direction or another to make it move at all.
As far as his question of a better fan... It all depends on how much room you have in there. A stock fan will give you good temps anjd they are very low noise. I have a 3200+ athlon 64 with a hugfe round all copper zalman iwth a 92mm fan and its very quiet and my temps are in the low 40's I think the model number was 7000A but I might be off. All depends on how much room you actually have over the cpu. That stock cooler is a major compremize as far as serious cooling though.
Tex
Dual Ball bearing and hydrowave bearing fans sure will, if there is significant air flow in the direction the fan is oriented toward. Depends on how good the bearings are, and how big a motor winding set is needed to run them. MAGLEV fans, different story, no mag field, no rise of spinlde-blade assembly into magfield bearings enough to be efficient unless they have power to them to gen the bearing field effect.
As to more exhaust, how can you do that without inducing a semi-vacuum, in amounts enough to make it worth doing???? either you will get a pressure drop, or air will be pulled through intake fan openings and push fans up on bearings toward exhaust side. With equal pressure, my intake fasn wear out first. When I put lower volume fans in front, total airflow out exhaust dropped, and the fans's bearings decayed much faster. Now I run almost totally equal input and output for the fans I install, let PSU fannign exhaust make a small additonal exhaust-- and the side hole in side panel on one side of the Prescott box is sucking air IN. With no fan. IF case were vacuum tight and no air leaks, yes, Geeky-- not gonna happen with most cases, you will get air bleeding in from here and there to equalize pressure inside.
Tex
There are some rules of thumb (as have been already mentioned).
1) You want greater exhaust flow than intake flow. Air will find its way into the case from everywhere.
2) In a typical tower PC case the best configuration, in order of adding, is Top rear exhaust...then a top blowhole...Sometimes adding side intakes and front intakes can do nothing more than add to the looks rather than the cooling effectiveness.
Now SFF changes the dynamics a bit.
The top blowhole is a good idea but I may suggest trying it as an exhaust rather than an intake. The side intake to the GPU is probably a good idea and I would think a low RPM (and low noise) fan would be best. Having high CFM there wouldn't make too much of a difference.
Ambient air temperature plays a big part. With air cooling you can only get to that level...not lower.
Best to look at exhausting the warm air as a priority.
Perhaps ducting the CPU heatsink directly from the top blowhole will take the edge off the CPU temps. Simply the act of a direct path to the "outside air" is going to help.
I remember how tight it is in the video card area. Barely room to fart. Have you got room for another hole ahead of behind that top blowhole? I'm not saying to do it but maybe an intake pipe to the heatsink and then just a blowhole to exhaust warm air from the case.
Modding for thought.
The top part of the heat pipe just sits there, the fan shroud has 4 holes on the back that holds the rad in place via 4 thumb screws.
We'll see this weekend how things go with the duct directing air down and through the rad.
Dan, the reason I asked about how the rad is held in place is that I just had a really good idea.
Two fans. One on the inside of the case pushing air through the radiator, the other on the outside pulling it through.
Key word: significant. You won't get enough directed airflow through a case that just unplugging a fan will allow it to spin. The only way to get a fan to spin with just air pressure is to use relatively focused, high-velocity jets, such as what you get when you stack a running fan on top of an unpowered one, or using compressed air to spin the blades.
I took my tv tuner out because I don't use it, so I'm gonna throw my pci slot blower fan to see if 42cfm makes a difference. I'll probably keep the blowhole fan on blow then and see how that works.