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Airflow help

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rich.h

New Member
Joined
May 21, 2014
I'm in the process of building a new case which will be also a piece of furniture for the living room. My main consideration at this time is airflow, obviously this room may well be subject to high temperatures during winter time etc.

As such I am wondering if there is any design methods that can help with airflow. I will start out by saying I am going to be using the Corsair H105 for the cpu but everything else will be fan cooled. For this design my preferences are as follows in order of importance.

1. Performance
2. Ease of access
3. Sound

How the inside looks has zero impact as this will be a fully enclosed system that is only seen for cleaning and upgrades/maintenance. With all this in mind is the standard big open box design that most cases have really the best way to conduct airflow? Would it give better performance if I were to build the design more like a wind tunnel or with chambers around specific areas and forget about airflow over sections that have little or no components in them?

Any help offered is much appreciated.
 
The case is the biggest determination for air flow. Do you have a size preference or a budget??
 
What parts are going in the case?
That makes a big difference as to removing HDD bays and form factor of the case.
 
To start with this will be an almost entire wooden unit. Hopefully I will have it made as an upright system with 3 main sections as follows.

Bottom = 5.1 speaker sub
Middle = Main components + psu
Top = HDD + SSD

I will probably end up making a small fourth section that will encompass most of the wiring for things like usb hubs, card readers etc just so I can have those things out of sight with just the ports visable.
 
So....... you are putting a subwoofer inside the same box as a PC? Not sure I would do that, even partitioned as you have it...
 
So....... you are putting a subwoofer inside the same box as a PC? Not sure I would do that, even partitioned as you have it...

I have done some testing on that side of things and the three units will be isolated from each other along with more isolation for component mounting sections. Overall it will have no more effect than having a sub sat on a desk next to any standard case.
 
I suppose it depends on the size/wattage of the sub you are using... that said, make sure the area that the sub will be in is magnetically shielded. ;)
 
Fan size will be 120mm all round for all sections. I have taken the issue of interference into account and intend to line the top half of the bottom section with lead flashing, but the sub is from a Z-5500 so around 180w
 
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