Low profile fan opinions.

[uberlad]

Due to a sudden rabid need to get a less loud, less huge case I have recently bought an Aspire X-QPACK and a really cheap 754 motherboard to keep my current machine going until I have enough money to upgrade to S939 / M2 and PCI-E some point after the wedding. (Case info ).

Putting it together last night I have run into a snaggette with my heatsink ( A thermaltake XP-120). As you can see from the image I have about 12mm clearance on top of the heatsink for a fan before it fouls with a support bar on the case.

As far as I see it I have three options:

1. Use the Standard cooler
2. Build some kind of home-grown ducting connecting the rear 120mm fan with the heatsink
3. Find a low profile 120mm fan

What do people think? the case does have clear side panels so any ducting would need to be clear, ideally. Am I going to have trouble getting such a low fan that will push decent air without sounding like a jet (and thus ruining the point of the gigantic heatsink)

Uberlad

[GNEP]

Duct it. You could probably get away with shiny metal flexible air-con duct-hose type stuff (not sure of the proper term but I'm sure you get my drift) that would look good in a sci-fi kinda way and is probably available in the right diameter. You would however need to ensure that there is still enough airflow going past the graphics card.

If that works OK, then go the next step by undervolting the exhaust fan to 5V (or I suppose 7) by swapping the pins in the molex around.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/ for further ideas.

[uberlad]

GFX card is fine, it has an arctic cooling cooler on it ducting out of a PCI slot. Although it's quite old so I should probabaly dismantle it and clean all the crap out of it.

I suppose a slightly messy join with the heatsink (it needs to get around the support bar to get a half decent seal and suck all the air off ok) will be worth the lack of increase in noise of having a third fan.

I was having a lot of trouble finding a 15mm high or less fan as well

I'll check at B&Q for 120mm ducting.

Uberlad

[gt40]

at 15mm, the only fan I could find was 80mm diameter.

[uberlad]

Yeah, I was having the same kind of problem. I'll see how ducting works out - I can always go abck to the boxed heatsink as a fallback.

Uberlad

[az]

Be careful that you don't short out anything with the flexible metal duct.

[uberlad]

I've tried to fit ducting in and it just isn't gong to fit. the cross-beam obscures more of the heatsink than I thought it did and there isn't enough space to get a 120mm duct down to the heatsink.


I have installed the AMD boxed cooler so I'm stuck trying to work out a use for the XP-120.

Ah well. worth a try. At least I have a spare quiet fan if the 120mm in the case turns out to be loud.

I can always grab a slightly shorter cooler if heat or noise becomes an issue.

Uberlad