On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 12:16 PM, John Aldrich <[email protected]> wrote: > I have to have a powerful fan pointed almost directly at the CPU > in order to keep it from overheating. That’s with a couple 80mm > fans in the back!
That seems like it should be adequate for most anything but a moderately serious gaming rig. What have you got in there? What's ambient temperature? What's the airflow like? Ideally, you want a straight-through path, all front to back, with coverage from top to bottom, and no dead spaces which don't get airflow. Basically a big wind tunnel. You want vents which allow air in from selected locations, leading to good air flow across all components. I've seen a lot of cases where the vents seemed to be placed either (1) randomly or (2) for aesthetics. That can lead to situations where the airflow actually bypasses some components. One can often improve cooling by *blocking* vents in such cases. If you have both intake an exhaust fans, you want all the intakes on one side and all the exhaust fans on the other side. Otherwise you tend to get air current loops which leave dead spaces. And, of course, you can always hack in space for a new fan if that's what's needed. Before they started marketing cases with fan mounts in the side panels, I did that to a case I had, to keep the video card cool. Of course, due to limited space, the fan was mounted on the *outside* of the panel. :) You mentioned budget, so I figured a DIY approach might suit. :) If you want to buy new: For a vendor, NewEgg. For a case mfg brand, I like Antec. The good ones are expensive, though. Good cases usually are. :) I have an Antec "Professional" (no longer sold) full-tower at home. Six fan mounts, 5 5.25" bays, 2 3.5" bays, 6 internal 3.5" HDD bays, mostly no tools needed. Cost me around $200 though. Without PSU. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
