Awesome cooling setup...

Hi, all.

Just wanted to let you know about what I've done to cool my box.

First, I got really tired of dust build-up inside the box. I think the whole 'fans suck air out of the case' setup was flawed from its inception. It creates a situation in which dust is sucked in through every little hole, gumming everything up, from your CD-ROM and floppy to the card connectors in the back of the case.

I've got a 2.4GHz P4, and an Antec 550W dual-fan power supply (it's the one with the front panel that lets you tweak the 3.3V, 5V and 12V voltages and vary the fans speed.).

I dug into the power supply and switched the fans around so they're blowing air INTO the case, and soldered together a cage that mounts to the back of the power supply outside the case. This cage supports a nylon-hose (go get a pair of your girlfriend's or wife's nylons and cut them up) that filters out the dust, but doesn't offer a lot of restriction to airflow.

I then took the old (very large) fan that had been used to cool the old Athlon CPU and mounted it in the bottom of the case, blowing up toward the processor (to better mix the air in the case and cool off the motherboard components, as well. I hooked this into the power supply fan line, so I can vary its speed, as well.

I then got the Ultra Skt 478 Heatpipe CPU cooler (rated to cool 3.06GHz CPUs), and used silver-based thermal compound.

The result? Even after running the processor at 100% load for six hours (with the fans at max speed), my CPU temperature was only at 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40.55 degrees Celsius).

With the fans at minimum speed, temperature climbs to 125 degrees Fahrenheit (51.66 degrees Celsius).

With the CPU idling (no matter what the fan speed is), CPU temperature is around 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius).

No dust, quiet (very little fan noise), and cool-running. You can't ask for more than that.

let me first state that I like your ambition and enthusiasm about your rig, I know the feeling of rube goldbergin' something and it working as well as you'd hoped with no hitch.

on that note, you haven't done anything that wasn't done already, lol. Alot of computers these days are using 5 fans in the case. Your putting a fan on the bottom isn't different from putting one on the side, they're both blowing into the case to mix the airflow and get more direct cooling power onto your chipsets and PCI/AGP cards. I know what you mean about dust being a big issue though. Until recently I was using an old 1.2 HP Pavilion with a single case fan and the PS fan. I had to crack the case every so often to vaccum out the inside. Anyways, I digress, my point is that with my new antec case it actually came with an airfilter in front that is easy to remove and washable. Dust is no longer an issue. Anyways, cool to hear some new ideas, I'm sure I haven't heard of putting a fan on the bottom of the case...

The only question I have about that though is how does that improve the airflow? The way my mobo and pci slots are setup, the air wouldn't go very far after it hits my graphics card..

The fan sitting on the case bottom doesn't draw air into the case, it's only to mix the air up inside the case... it's a huge one, about the size of the old 5 1/4" floppy disks, and it blows huge amounts of air.

I added the big fan because of the unique airflow in this case... since the power supply fans push cool air into the case at the top, it tends to create a 'blanket' of air that pushes the hot air out the front bottom of the case. I noticed that the bottom part of the case was always warm, so I added the big fan to mix the air up (I was worried about overheating the components on the lower areas of my m/b, especially the video card).

Anyway, my hard drive cage hangs at the front of the tower, right below the CD/floppy cage. I mounted the big fan so it's half blowing on the hard drive cage, half blowing up toward the CPU cooler. I've got plenty of room in this case for airflow... it's a pretty big tower.

Eventually, I'll build the custom case I've drawn up... it'll be a sealed case that uses active cooling via a Peltier device, with thermostatically controlled case temperature regulation... it'll be completely dust-free and completely silent.