Fresh Cold Air & Filters

Since its winter and we got some free cold temps outside, its time to use the little window ducting mod. I just used a piece of plywood with a dryer vent that fits in the window and I can close it down on it, the hose fits on a piece of plastic with a piece of the dryer vent in the front of the comp. The front stays in place with just the pressure of the tubing and the suction of the fans. I can take it out and put in a regular grill I made from a vent register if I want. I used some vent register filters from home depot and placed one in the front to keep out all the cat hair, dust, cigarrette butts and empty beer cans from being sucked in. Cleaning the interior is a lot less frequent and my heatsinks dont get clogged nearly as often. (If you got a lot of fans you know its just a vacuum cleaner and every little bit of dust gets sucked in)
I sealed the area between the case front and the fan with some stick on door insulation and it gets a pretty tight seal so most of the air is drawn thru the filter. Just toss it out and put in another one. This is an Antech case that I cut out the grill area with a dremel and works nice!
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/s/commu...rid=46016&groupid=86294&folderview=thumbs&ck=

Looks nice

Good Idea!

Nice idea, does it work well? I bet it does.

oh wow, I forgot about ducting. And I was just gonna but my computer in the garage, lol. Well, its a cold winter so far.....today was about 25F......by christmas it might be at 5F. I'll have to try that ducting.....

I suppose to avoid freezing the room, It wouldnt be a bad idea to have an exhaust going back to the outside.

kool

Wow that looks pretty cool (no pun intended). What are your temps running at now?

That's the first ducting job I've seen that looks pretty good. Nice job.

Decius said:

Wow that looks pretty cool (no pun intended). What are your temps running at now?

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Kinda depends on the outside temp, the colder out side the colder inside!
Right now:
CPU 78 F
ambient 61 F
I guess you could run an exhaust duct if ya wanted but I like working on the comp with a ski jacket and sweatpants on. The good side is we got a few months of this free air coming up, give er a shot. The piece of plywood in the window is small and I just take it out and close window when I am finished. I'll get a couple more pics of the detail on that part too.

OK, I added a couple more pics of the ducting assembly and grills.

nice, very nice. Here in texas, the temperature fluctuates so rapidly that I couldn't do anything like that. Some years, it's been 80 degrees on Christmas day, with tulips blooming. Some years, its been frozen solid. Mostly, on christmas day, it's probably around 40 or 50. I like my room. It's got its own built in central heating and air. We've got like three freaking air conditioners for the house. Beats living in a barracks room, we'd open the window and put the fan right in front of it, pull all the air out. This was a great idea, good job. You gonna write up a how to?
Doc

Looks very nice, I had a idea simlar to this but I don't think it will currently work.

I toyed with the exhaust idea during summer, when I was running at about 65C on my Tbird 1.0...heh....of course it never left my head. But now that I realize the masses of cold air waiting outside....I think I might just try it. Hey, 2 weeks until winter break....then I got almost an entire month to play with the idea. w00t.

See, the problem for me is my window is huge....its like 4.5 feet on each edge, and it opens horizontally rather than vertically....so I need a really tall piece of wood, heh. Anyhow, that's my next project, i've decided.

DaveSauce said:

I toyed with the exhaust idea during summer, when I was running at about 65C on my Tbird 1.0...heh....of course it never left my head. But now that I realize the masses of cold air waiting outside....I think I might just try it. Hey, 2 weeks until winter break....then I got almost an entire month to play with the idea. w00t.

See, the problem for me is my window is huge....its like 4.5 feet on each edge, and it opens horizontally rather than vertically....so I need a really tall piece of wood, heh. Anyhow, that's my next project, i've decided.

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Just get you a 1 by 6 at the local home depot or what ever, about a 6 foot one is only a couple of bucks if you get it in pine. Its actually 3/4 inch by 5 1/2 inches. Its plenty wide enuff to hold the 4 inch vent tube and you only gotta cut a hole in it and saw it off to length, easy enuff!!

i did something like that but hooked it up to my a/c then i planed to move it to my window... but geez.. im to lazy =X

mw521 said:

Just get you a 1 by 6 at the local home depot or what ever, about a 6 foot one is only a couple of bucks if you get it in pine. Its actually 3/4 inch by 5 1/2 inches. Its plenty wide enuff to hold the 4 inch vent tube and you only gotta cut a hole in it and saw it off to length, easy enuff!!

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Yea, but that doesnt eliminate the giant 4 foot piece of wood in my window...rofl. My concern is insulation......I wouldnt mind so much if the window were smaller, but a piece of wood that large will let a lot of unwanted cold air in as well....

heh, I should do this soon....were already down to 10F.....got down to 0F last night, w00t!

Hm, and i dont feel like chopping out my front grill on my comp....so it looks like I'm up for some creative metal bending....yay.

How about

Two pieces of plywood with insulation between them to put in your window?

hm, perhaps. If I sat down and did a lot of measuring and planning, I could really get this done well.....

Damn....brainard....dude, you should get this duct thing going, lol. Aren't you guys getting sub-zero temps up there? Should be...we got down to 0 last night here in the cities...

Yea..

Its supposed to get down to like -5 tonight.. bUt Id rather keep the heat in (cuz the heat bill is expensive!) besides with this AX& and Vantec Tornado running at half speed my temps never go over 100 degrees F, which what little heat that comes out my case is cheap heating

Ummm! CPU temp 70 F, Ambient 50F!
There is an alternative to using a piece of wood, head over to home depot and pick you up a piece of styrofoam sheathing. Cut two pieces the same size, glue em together and thats it. This stuff is about 3/4 inch thick and 2 should give ya 1 1/2 of foam insulation. The bad part is it comes in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets unless you can find a chunk lying around a construction site. Its not expensive and should insulate quite well, you could paint it so it wont look too funky.

bah, i'm not concerned about the look on the outside, lol.

I just gotta say, those are some wicked temps....I REALLY need to get going on this, rofl.

Right now I'm debating whether or not I should make it hallow or not. I suppose it wouldnt hurt it much....

But I like the idea of using foam.....would be MUCH easier to work with......would be able to get essentially an exact fit for the hose shroud....