My "ghetto" case cooling mods

[Jon P. Inghram]

After getting sick and tired of the terrible whine from the CPU coolers little ginsu finger slicer 6800 RPM Delta 60mm fan I decided it was time to switch to something quieter. At the same time I wanted to reduce the amount of dust in the case.

Due to budgetary constraints my price target for a 60mm to 80mm adaptor worked out to be $0, which no local retailers were willing to match. I thus resorted to utilizing available materials to construct a suitable device, those materials being:

• 60x15mm fan, functional if a bit loud... until I tore the fan and motor out and clipped the the central frame out
• High output 80mm fan, much quieter than the Delta and moves a lot more air
• Three plastic scouring pads from Dollar General
• 12 small nuts
• Cardboard from a vegetable shipping container from Aldi
• Packaging tape
• Super glue

I started by using the 60 and 80mm fans to draw up a duct template on graph paper. Then I transfered the pattern onto the cardboard and cut out four identical pieces. Next I creased the cardboard in the proper spots to ease assembly, followed by gluing them onto the exterior of the 60mm fan's housing. I then inserted the 80mm fan into the end of the assembly and taped the corners of the cardboard together to form an air-tight and strong structure.

The 80mm fan simply press fits into the cardboard, the back of the fan seals quite well against the inside of the duct and holds it firmly enough that no securing devices are needed. The 60mm fan frame provides the mounting surface to attach the assembly to the heatsink, an Alpha PAL6035, while the 12 nuts were used as spacers on the original screws which were intended to fit the much thicker delta fan. The result is significantly less noise, and also quite a bit more CPU cooling.



For controlling dust I used a hint I found over on http://www.overclockers.com/ , good old scouring pads as filters. The front of my case originally had a filter for the front fan, but after I cut the metal intake grill off to improve airflow and reduce noise (it was just the cheap pressed steel grill that causes lots of turbulance) it would no longer fit. Due to the negative case pressure caused by a rear exhaust fan and the PSU fan I leave one of the 5-1/4" bay covers open to improve HD and DVD-ROM cooling, a scouring pad being taped onto the inside of the front cover filters that too. I also cut one pad up into narrower strips and taped it onto the inside of the side panel that had ventilation slots.

[Tempest]

Here's my patent from last weekend. Made two not-so-pretty 6 cm holes, took the two fans from my old VOS32 Slot-A cooler and bolted them onto the rear of my case at 7V. Might have to hack together some kind of fan duct for my PAL8045 still.

Did this because my full tower case is so old that it doesn't have any other air exits in the rear than the power supply fan (well it does have two for the hard disks, I have two Papsts there but they're located so far up that they are useless for CPU cooling).

Now my next problem is, now that all the air gets out of the case, how does cool air get INTO the case I think I'll bolt 1 or 2 of those 12 cm fans I have to the side of my case...

[Admiral]

Some fan duct adapters for anyone interested.

[Greebe]

Kuddo's on the cardboard fan ducts Jon

Tip of the day: Lightly oil the scouring pads and they'll work much better catching dust

[Technoid]

Used "cardboard fan adaptors" on my old Sk6

[DukeP]

Good work!

I especially like the "target price".


~~DukeP~~

[Tjalfe]

You should almost have turned this sleeve to get the air from the back of the case through the fan it is almost touching. Draw in cold air from the outside and straight on the CPU.C
hances are you could then use just the one fan instead of the two

[Claymonkey]

I did the cardboard fan adapter a few years ago when I got tired of my delta. The 80mm fan did move more air but the nature of shunts like this end up meaning you in fact get less air flow than you would under normal circumstances. THe air that hits the slants are just as likely to bounce back and cause turbulance as to funnel down onto you heatsink. I still think this is a great idea though. What kind of temperature difference are you seeing Jon? I'm hoping you're having more luck than I did.

[KvHagedorn]

perhaps a round cone would do better than a square funnel..

[KvHagedorn]

Originally posted by Greebe
Tip of the day: Lightly oil the scouring pads and they'll work much better catching dust

Excellent idea, Mike! Hadn't thought about scouring pads.. I use pieces of air conditioner filters cut to fit.. seems to work pretty well on everything but the finest dust. Spraying them with Pam or some such would probably eliminate even that.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Greebe: Not sure if I could just vacuum the filters to clean them if they had oil on them, plus I think I would want to avoid having oil fumes blown directly into the computer (works fine for internal combustion engines, but even then I've heard people claim that K&N filters can contaminate MAF sensors.)

tjalfe: I tried that once, but the geometry was far more complex due to the top of the heatsink extending past the side of the rear case fan. I could probably get some kind of flexible hose from a hardware store that'd make it far easier, when summer comes around again I might look into it.

dparadis: The fan is sucking up out of the heatsink in the Alpha recommended fashion, I think the fan works more efficently that way with the adaptor.

The CPU temperature dropped maybe 1 degree celsius tops, the point behind the adaptor was just to quiet the system down without reducing cooling or costing much, so it was a great success.

With my Celeron Tualatin 1.2 o/c'ed to 1.44 GHz (120 MHz FSB) 1.525v with a room temperature that's roughly 20c I get idle temperatures of 36c for the cpu and 27c for the case. Using cpuburn p6 the cpu heats up to 40c, no change in case temperature. I'm not sure where the TUSL2-C's case sensor is so I can't easily verifiy it's reading to check for accuracy. Here's a shot of Asus PCProbe, the case temperature goes up and drops at either end due to the furnace changing room temperature. I ran the test when things seemed to stabilize for a few minutes in the middle.

[Jon P. Inghram]

I suppose I could have tried to make a cone shaped adaptor, but I was aiming for simplicity more than anything (plus that cardboard would have been a pain to smoothly roll into a cone shape, it was hard enough just to put creases in for the fans.)

[Greebe]

Jon I've been doing the oil bit for the better part of 14 years now.. as long as you don't saturate it's a none issue (besides we're not talking about hundreds and hundreds of cfm per min like an auto intake

last few years I've been using deep pleted auto air filters (which are HEPA filters)... work quite well as long as you have enough surface area.

[Jon P. Inghram]

What kinda oil do you use?

[RedRed]

1 cal!

J/K (but it just might (ghetto wise) work!)
Re the card - I used simmilar (mine was a little sheet of PVC and a it of drain pipe) some time ago.... in ghetto fashon, I used 2 60 mm fans ripped from ATX cases. Used the 7V rail for power. Had the 2 fans gripped together with a couple of bits of wire and a felt 'sandwich'. Worked fine.

RedRed