Teasers inside... Cooling upgrade!

I received the centrifugal blower in the mail from Hoot about a week or so ago, and I got her preliminarily set up. It's very rough and sloppy but one thing is already obvious - She's definetly a force to be reckoned with and a site to be seen! Temps are already better AND QUIETER than they were before.

I'm in the process of taking pictures, and will be posting them tonight or tomorow. Almost completely per chance, I have worked a sound reactive lighting mod into the blower that looks almost like it was made for it.

If someone would like to volunteer hosting I would appreciate it, otherwise I know of a couple people I could PM.

Thanks go out to Hoot for making this part of my project MUCH easier than it would have been without him.

cant wait to see teh finished pics =d keep us posted

nice

cant wait for pics

How big is this blower. Lemme see some pics

I'm willing to host some pics for ya if neccesary. This should look pretty neat .

fsarfino said:

How big is this blower. Lemme see some pics

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Show us the blower bro!!!!


I am getting ready to install a 172mm Rotron fan in my Vapo!!

Is it the one shown in his article here?

Maxvla would probably host them for you.

Thanks go out to Krag for hosting these images for me! Thanks again to Hoot also for making this project such an easy one - yes this is the blower from his good air/bad air article. Now, without further ado...



Here's the blower with the plasma ball. You can notice the voltage regulator sitting between the ball and the side of the case - it lets me turn the blower up to full blast (~175CFM) or all the way down to almost completely silent with acceptable temps. The best part about this? The duct on the inside of the case is not even lined up well with the heatsink - the air only directly hits about half of the sink. I placed the blower in an already existing ghetto-hole for an axial fan, so when I actually place the blower in it's permanent position it should perform better yet. What really blows my mind is how quiet it is compared to before, AND I get better temps.



Here are the best shots I could get in the dark to show off the plasma ball. It looks sweeter than it does in the pictures, but it's a pretty difficult image to capture with the lighting. I got the ball for $15 off of EBay including S/H. It was made for a car cigarette lighter so I just cut off the adapter and plugged the wires up to my PSU - worked like a charm. As a special bonus, the ball has an off off switch on it's base - ON, of course, constantly lights the ball; OFF however, turns the ball off until I turn up my speakers. I'm not sure why, but when I play music and the light is off it responds to the music - It's beat detection is virtually perfect. It also does a nice job of covering the ugly part of the blower motor.

This is a preliminary setup, as I plan to fix up the wiring first of all, correctly align the blower, paint the case or build a new one, and so on. Not bad though for about 15 minutes of setup time total.

LOL

What are the temps like?

ah, I was gonna complain about the looks but I'm sure you already know that

The plasma ball is uber coool!!! I want one!!!!!

It looks a bit ackward right now, but I think that it'll be okay once you hide the wiring and paint the case

It sounded like a gale force wind blowing through the tree tops.

Admittedly, I could not hear the motor, but then I could not hear much of anything. Papers on my desk across the room were launched in a mad dance; I struggled to point it in a non-destructive direction while trying to get it unplugged. Okay, some taming was definitely in order here, but I was awe struck by the raw power of it.

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That was the funnies thing I read all day

Nice, what kinda temps do you get with that thing? The plasma ball is definitally a sweet addition

I've got one of those plasma balls in AC. Spencer gifts carries them... don't know about 12v ones though. Yeah. There IS no off. There is on and sound activated. Pot + sound activated + lights out = fun.

Temps, a few important points to remember and why I didn't bother mentioning temps right off the bat:

1) I have a soltek 75drv2 and I have no idea what the calibration of the insocket thermistor is.

2) I have a stock heatsink, for now.

3) The duct on the inside of the case lines up only hitting HALF of the heatsink - the blower just went right onto the hole that was already there in the side of the case.

Temps:

Fan at 12 volts, loaded by Toast for 15 minutes, temperature stable for 5+ minutes:

28C air in duct
42C CPU insocket thermistor reading under load
38C CPU insocket thermistor reading at idle

With stock HSF with a side case fan blowing directly onto the stock HSF, I idled at 43C before. This fan is now my only fan other than one fan in the bottom of the PSU, I took the other PSU fan out and other case fans aren't necessary either.

Aesthetically, yea very rough looking but I do most of my home computing in the dark and it looks great that way. On the upside however, I found the exact material I've been trying to find for the past three months - a 2 1/2" pile black troll hair fabric that I'm going to put on the new case I've wanted to build FOREVER. I'll be covering the monitor (with a fan cooling mod maybe so it doesn't get too hot) and anything else I can cover also. Anyways, I'm going to be putting this beastly fan inside an air filter compartment inside the case. That plan is what made me decide to go the centrifugal blower route.

Crazy what some people will do . Kudos for making that hang off the side without much support!

Yea, this poor 'ol gateway case has been through the war... The sturdiness of the case is the only thing I can compliment about the computer I bought from them 4 years ago.

Thanks for the compliment, I've gotten a lot of really good responses from this.