Using a blower in a system?

[Valk]

Ive been reading these forums a lot and more and more, people are suggesting, or have been using blowers in water cooled systems. I have to admit that i am most interested in useing a blower to cool my right when i go water sometime this spring, the extra pressure that a blower can generate over a axial fan seems perfect for a system that has a lot of inherent airflow resistance, such as a typical heatercore.

I Figure that i will use a chevette core as my first core simply because there is a lot of reading material on different modding techniques. that and i already have one. got it for $15 cdn out of somones old slag car.
ill be sure to leak test it quite extensively.

now. these are all possible flow designs based on a 435 cfm 24vdc blower. it is completly plastic built. i might swap it out since there might be some concerns about the motor generating too strong a magnetic field. might cook my system.

Placing the blower behind the core, sucking air through the core, through a duct and blown out the side of the case. only problem with this, is that with the heatercore placement in mind, i would have to place another fan in my side panel to feed the case with fresh air. that fan would be sucking in hot air.

THis one places the heater core on the other side. my other 120 mm fan mount. the air is blown out the case along with the hot psu air, keeping all the hot air in the rear of my pc. the only problem with this mounting meathod is its restrictivness of my cpu water cooling components. there coudl be a space problem.

This looks like th emost logical meathod. sucking air in from the side and blowing it out the front of my case.
the system is more self contrained in this design, but placement could get tricky due to my zalman heatpipe on radeon. however, if i go water, im going full water, so my gpu will also get a block for the loop.

I have also kind of toyed with placing the system in the top of my box, but that would mean cutting away all of my cdrom bays to make room.

im using a Antec super lanboy case, would be nice to keep at least one bay able to use a cd drive.
If i was willing to put my fan external, this wouldnt be a concern at all, but i want my system to be completly self contained. i should use a standard 120 mm axial fan, but if i can minimize the noise of my setup and not sacrifice that much airflow, blower would definatly be of beneficial use. im also thinking ahead because i might want to place a pelt in my system to enhance my cpu cooling performence further. this is more of a consideration for my GPU though as it is getting more of my attention now, playing more modern games.

what do you guys think? placement is a little irridating with the short case. i will already have to cut my internal drive cage out to make room if i have to place the radiator in the bottom. putting it in the top means more mods that comprosmise my case to a greater degree.
placing it in the top also precents me from hiding my atx cables away in the top of my tower. they are all sleeved now, but still.

I would like to not mod the main structure of this case if i can avoid it, but im not completly obtuse to it.
im going to do my setup as soon as i have some money to buy basic tools. any input form pro's would be greatly appreciated.

this is the blower i want to use:
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2004030103472365&item=16-1279&catname=electric
might be severely overpowered ha ha. but it looks about right. i just need to find a reliable way to power that thing. 10 amps even might be a stretch.
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2004030103472365&item=16-1257&catname=electric
this could work too, i could just bolt it snugly to my side window.

 

[vonkaar]

Pictures don't work.

However... I'll work with you =p.

You mentioned at least once about the blower 'sucking' in air from someplace. Maybe the pictures would make this more clear to me but as described it sounds bad. Centrifugal blowers *can* be shrouded in a way that would allow for a 'pull' configuration, although it's highly ineffective... especially when 'pressure' is a concern. The best way (imo) to design a cooling system that utilizes blowers is to picture a large volume of air that can ONLY blow in one direction. If the blower is too big to fit inside your case, the direction will be 'in'. Since you want your blower 'inside' your case, the air will move 'out'.

The 700cfm 48v blower I'm using is clearly too big to fit inside my case, so it's going up top. The huge amounts of air that it will move will be sufficient for my case cooling, provided I can ensure that it has a place to properly exhaust to. Since it is too big and must blow 'in' the case, I have as many mounting options as I do 'sides' for my case. Obviously the bottom of the case might pose problems... so look at all of the other sides of your 'cube'. Behind the motherboard... no. Up front? Behind the case by the i/o backplane? Too cluttered. Since you have to make room for not only your blower and its mount but the radiator and necessary tubing, your options are easily identified.

Put it on the top of your case, or in the front. Either way, it's blowing IN the case. Blowing 'down' from the top, or blowing 'in' from the front. I'm using caprice cores and wouldn't have room for them up front, so they go up top. Your smaller core and smaller blower might work well in the front.

I guess my suggestion is to order the fan... get your rad... figure out how you are going to make your shroud... and then work around the dimensions that the final setup demands. The blower might be bigger in your hands than you are imagining... or you might be presently surprised at how little the final assembly is. Until you have them in your hands, there is only so much planning you can do.

 

[feyd83]

For your first choice, a good dedicated computer psu can usually put out around 20amps at 12vdc. (That sucker is 12vdc not 24vdc).

I had also considered your second choice a while back. But note that it comes like it is in the picture, no side panel. So you'd have to make one yourself.

For $50 you could get a blower like Vonkaar has plus a 48vdc power supply (I'm currently waiting for mine to come in off of ebay). Finding the 48vdc psu took some patience. The components themselves aren't expensive. Shipping was a killer for me (35lb psu =( ). Being in Canada might kill that route though, but it's an idea.

 

[vonkaar]

For the curious...

And, now that I have a nice Agilent 0-36vdc PSU, I can say this...

The blower I'm using will run all the way down to 12v. The manufacturer rates it at 36-56v, but it had no problem running at 12v. The rated specs might be a thermal issue... 12v might be too low to properly cool the motor, but that is usuall a bigger problem with AC motors than DC. So... I dunno. Even at 12v, the thing easily out performs my 220cfm 6" Papst or EBM fans =p.

Still... I doubt he'd be interested in the blower because it would be 'highly' doubtful that he could fit it in his case =p.

 

[BeerHunter]

As long as the only two holes in your case are the outtake on the blower, and the second, the hole in front of your rad the whole case will be your shroud. Ideally IMO this is a better solution than direct flow onto rad because as the air sucked though the rad then through the case to the blower intakes it will cool everything. The only place for the blower to draw air from is the rad and a few small gaps around drives and case gaps. I plan to do this with two of those smaller torin blowers. One blowing out of PS one where the 80mm fans were..all blowing out.

I don't understand how you guys are going to fit any of those larger blowers in any standard atx tower though. Perhaps a cube server would be better?

 

[vonkaar]

Mine sits on top ^_^

 

[BeerHunter]

Pics? I've been following your "chrome goat" thread and can't wait for completed project.

 

[vonkaar]

That's the thing I'm finishing right now... the rads, shroud, mounting pins, paint-job, tubing nightmare... Just imagine that the outlet of the blower is mounted to the top of a normal case, blowing 'down.'

 

[Valk]

There is the possibility that i can have the blower just feed air into the case, and place my rad at the only exit point. to be consistance with your using the case as a shroud comment. That wouldnt put the blower inside though, which is kind of counter productive. i want my system clean.

forgive me crappy 45 second sketches in paint.

this is also a possibility. would allow my system to work with slight convection. Would force me to sacrifice the cdrom drive "which really. is not that important.
I was considering doing this anyway, cutting out the top of my system for the rad, and placing the blower up there blowing straight out, a hole in my side window would feed the blower.

I could mount a smaller, longer rad on the other side of my pc, blowing out toward the non window side. wouldnt have to mod the front of my case too terribly much. the horizontal span of my case is a lot smaller though. not sure if this would work well.

I wonder how 436 cfm through a BIM would perform. nice small rad thats easy to mount.

I could also place my heatercore in the bottom, over my pci slots. i only ever use my radeon now with onboard audio. the blower would fit tehre too. so many possibilities. I should build a scale model just for sizing.

and i think i can run that 12vdc 436 blower on my antec. it says that the high speed requires 20 amps. my 12 volt line wont do that, but if i run the fan at 10 amps, my system shoudlnt choke from the load, and that will still be around, 200 cfm?

 

[BeerHunter]

forgive me crappy 45 second sketches in paint.
----------------------------------
Thats OK your pictures work as well this time as they did the first

I think you picked the best blower there. I really like it's large cage and low rpm and high cfm this should be very quiet.

 

[Valk]

IT should push a lot of air quietly at 10 amps. i think it will be perfect. its just a matter of mounting of course. and shrouding. sorry my pics were offline. i had to stip my box down to install a few tidbits and clean up the mess i made with sleeved cabling.
Im now under a sk7, tornado 92 mm package running 47º under prime load, 2500 mhz.

the images should show up now. sorry for the unclear description i gave ha ha.