PC Cooling - Some simple solutions

[SaSi]

Would like to contribute my recent experience with cooling my PC.

Until very recently, I had a mini tower box with 4 external 5.25" bays and 6 internal HD bays, all populated. To that, add 1 Gb or RAM and a P4/2.8GHz.

The system was getting rather hot (even touching the external enclosure gave a nice warm feeling), so did some surgery to add and replace fans inside.

Putting two 9cm fans to the front of the hard disks helped the disks a lot. Replacing an 8cm fan to the back with a 9cm high power fan also helped. I also added an expansion slot mounted fan to help some heat out. It also helped.

Basic problem was - the sound level produced by all the disks and fans was now intolerable. Measured at 65dB @ 1m. Something like a matrix printer printing.

I bought myself a new, full tower box. More space to put the disks in there and 3x9cm fans to be mounted in front of the disks. A single 12cm fan mounted to the back complements the cooling strategy.

The fans now run at low speed (they came with a nice cable extension with a large resistor in series with power that reduces the fan speed).

The enclosure is now cold (not just cooler) and the sound level comming out of it negligible compared to what I had to suffer. Practically, all I hear is the sound of the hard disks spinning and not of the fans or the air pressed through holes.

Must also point out that the new box is much heavier than the old one and that the sheet metal much thicker (almost twice as much).

Lessons learned:
The mass of the steel case helps remove heat - Acts like a huge heat sink.
The large space inside the box helps air circulation. Let's heat out faster.
More fans operating at lower rpm make almost negligible noise
The mass of the steel case absorbs part of the vibration caused by moving parts and now my desk no longer vibrates when the PC is on.

End lesson: Big and heavy PC cases are cooler and more quieter than small crammed ones.

[banger298]

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