Coolermaster RC330 - Worth adding a roof fan?

[gcwebbyuk]

I have a Coolermaster RC330 case, which is currently running two Scythe SF21E fans in a in at front, out at back configuration.

I have been reading up on case modding, and I know my case is not designed really for that kinda thing, as its a fairly small one, I did wonder wether fitting a roof fan might benefit the air flow in the case at all?

The CPU etc doesn't get overly hot, its more a "case" of having two Coolermaster 120mm fans lying around, and the fact there is enough space to dremel out a hole big enough for one fan in between the PSU and the back of the DVD-RW drive.

However, would this affect airflow in a negative way, as the case wasn't designed to work like this.

I would probably have the fan pulling air into the case, which should pull it in directly over the RAM and just before the CPU.

Any thoughts? Good idea or not worth it?

 

[Dooms101]

Lol... well my case had the same airflow as yours before I did any modding. It had an 80mm and 120mm intake fan at the front, and a 120mm exhaust out the back. The airflow was kinda sucky. So... I did exactly what you want to do, and I put a 120mm exhaust on the top and my temperatures went down about 3-5C. I wouldn't recommend making it an intake fan since it's at the top and hot air rises. What I did in my case was: 2 80mm intake fans on the very bottom of my side panel, an 80mm and 120mm intake on the very bottom of the front of the case, and then the 120mm exhaust on top and 120mm exhaust on the back. This way airflow comes from the bottom and moves up naturally to the top and back. So... if I were you I'd put an 80mm or 120mm intake on the very bottom towards the back of your case and a 120mm exhaust on top.

You can check how my case came out, the link is in my sig

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Nice work!

I have just been doing some experimenting with fan speeds/temps with my current setup, and have not really had the results I expected.

I had both of the Scythes running at 870rpm which made them nice and quiet. I also strapped a 80mm fan in the 5.25mm bays beneath my Scythe Kaze Server (had tried it with a 120mm fan before, but no room now I have the fan controller), and after running prime95 small FFT test, the max temp was 55c.

I have just turned off the 80mm fan and the temps are 1c higher! If I turn the 120mms up to 1020rpm (hardly any difference in noise), I get back that 1c and am back to 55c. So I can tell that the 80mm wasn't really doing much, apart from maybe even blocking off some passive airflow through the mesh front of the case? I will remove it completely and retest in a mo.

As for the roof fan, I am concerned that if I make it an exhaust fan, it might suck all the air out of the case before it gets to the cpu cooler. My case seems quite a bit smaller than yours (oh er missus!)



Since that photo, I have added three Nexus vented PCI slot covers to allow a little airflow from the graphics card fan out through the back of the case.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Also, in the past I had dabbled with an 80mm exhaust fan mounted where the GPU fan vent sits, and found it made no difference to system temps. Am wondering if this is all due to the size issue of the case, ie. not much room for air to flow?

 

[Dooms101]

Well it's hard to tell, but you're case is actually the same size as mine, I just have a smaller board so it looks different. I was thinking the same thing about the airflow not reaching my CPU cooler if the top was exhaust. That's why I put those 2 80mm intakes on the side near the bottom. It sorta looks like that top HDD is blocking airflow from the front intake to the CPU cooler, have you tested temps with it's position moved? You could just try having the top 120mm as exhaust and intake. You'd just make the cut and test temps in both situations. It's pretty easy to turn it around if it's not working well.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Thanks - good idea about swapping fan round to confirm.

If you compare the two pics you will see I originally had it so that the hard drives were well apart, I thought it would keep them cooler, but now they are at the bottom of the case in the bottom two bays.

I think one issue I have too is that my 4870 is so long, especially with the power cables on the end that it kinda splits the case, which was why I tried the fan in the 5.25mm bay.

Well just done another 10 min prime test with the 80mm fan totally removed, and max temp was again 55c, although it seemed to be 54c most of the time with just a quick peak to 55c.

Going to run the test again, but this time with the side off just to see the difference.

So far in all configs the CPU idles at 29/30c but thats in a Cool'N'Quiet state (use PhenomMSRTweaker) running 800MHz (x4) and 0.85v, full speed is 3600MHz (x18) and 1.375v

Also you will see the area around my front intake fan is a little messy due to me not having a dremel (buying one tomorrow) and cutting the grill away with a pair of snips:


I did the same with the read fan, but at the front I have the problem of power/reset buttons sitting on a piece of metal right in front of the fan - any ideas how I can get around that?

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Max temp with side off is 52c - so only 3c in it.

Should I try the top fan or shouldn't I - hmmmmmm......

 

[Dooms101]

Well that's quite a difference with the side off compared to on. I usually see only 1C difference and sometime it makes it worse with it off... And you might not need a dremel to clean up the cuts, I used a regular flat metal file and just filed them down until they didn't look dumb. As for the front I/O console, you might be able to just glue it to the front fascia, and have it so it's always attached to that instead of the metal in front of it.

I really think that a fan in the drive area or a 'core' fan would be really beneficial in your case. If you put a 120mm fan behind the Kaze controller it would be able to move alot more air into the little vacuum created by your vid card where your cpu is. From looking at the pictures, it appears that your Kaze controller doesn't reach all the way to the back of your drive cage. So putting a 120mm fan there should work. I suggest you try that before cutting any holes in your case.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

At one point, I did run a second coolermaster fan in that bay (before I had the fan controller) but it didnt seem to help much at all with the airflow:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=627872

 

[Dooms101]

Well you said it dropped temps by 5C in that thread? Or was that just the new TIM?

If you feel really ambitious and have the patience and steady hands I say cut out the fan hole on top! That's what I eventually did, I just went with it and it turned out awesome.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

It was mainly based on the new TIM. I think the fan gave only 1-2c at most.

I think I will invest in a dremmel and give a bit of cutting up a go!

 

[Dooms101]

Awesome! Nothing like some Dremel moddin' fun. remel:
Maybe you could try and do a design on it like I did instead of just a big boring hole.

See, looks cooler with a design =)

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Yeah I do like that design, and also the optical drive window!

In the meantime I have added some sound deadening material.

I originally found a bargain, which wife was collecting for me:
http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/...uctId_551087_langId_-1_categoryId_165626#dtab

http://www.dynamat.com/zooms_common_speaker_kit_xtreme.html

It's not for pcs, but its pretty much the same contents as the dynamat extreme computer kit, just in two 10"x10" squares rather than six 4"x10" strips: http://www.dynamat.com/zooms_computers_computer_kit.html

And for £5.00 instead of £15 its a bargain!

But unfortuantely they were out of stock of the Dynamat so gave us this at the same price: http://www.vibeaudio.co.uk/products/antivibe/

Fitted it in a few areas where I guessed it would be best, mainly the two side panels.



I also fitted it to the other panel, but only where the cables were not hanging to avoid any shorting out! I also covered the backs of the motherboard mounting screws with electrical tape just to be sure. I didn't get chance to take a pic, and don't want to take the side of as it was a :twisted: to get on. I will take more pics when I maybe add the roof fan...

I then used the couple of off-cuts to put on bare parts of metal that may rattle, namely above the PCI slots:

And then under and to the side of the front fan.

Just need to see if it affects temps / noise now. I have heard good and bad things about the reflectiveness of the material affecting temps - time will tell.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Well I was going to have a lay down and listen to some music on my quieter pc (am recovering from spine surgery so should really be resting! ) but couldn't stop till I had it finished as much as I could today...

...Inside Right panel, the bulge near the back is where the case has a recess on the outside to help you grip it to remove:


Small offcut added below front fan:


Small offcut next to front fan:


Finally, rather than take a dremel to the roof of the case, I followed Dooms101's advice to try once more and fit a fan in the 5.25" bays - so I have used the fan from the CNPS10x Quiet CPU cooler which I bought and then wouldn't fit. It is zip strapped in place, and has two blobs of Blu-Tack underneath to add some vibration absorbtion! Will see how it works:


Right that really is it now for a while - off to have a rest before dinner...

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Had another moment of madness with the snips and increased the PSU cable tidy hole as it was too small to get my cables through.

It was done with snips so not very "clean" so covered it with some electrical tape just to make it a bit less sharp, and also to shield it.

Front:

Back:


I then worked through re-dressing the cables to give a bit better airflow from the top fan through to the CPU cooler.
Front: it doesn't look like much of a difference, but the cables are now well out of the way of the airflow from the new fan


And now the VERY messy rear, all held in place with electrical tape


Before doing all this messing I had left the system running a Prime95 small FFT - max temp is still 55c, but after leaving the system to idle it had dropped from 30ish to 26. This could be also due to the change to Artic 5 TIM yesterday and it starting to set, or the fan could be working...

 

[Dooms101]

Hmm... I like where this is going so far. The cables look a lot better then before, and you're airflow should be much better with that fan there. I like to file down every cut I make in my computer, doing that rather then taping would be just as safe for your cables. Although it's not really necessary. Is the computer alot quieter with that dampening material? And I like the use of the suspension using zip ties and sticky tack, should make for a quiet rig. Before you go adding any more fans or do anything else, I suggest you run Prime95 for 24hours to really get the AC5 'broken in'. AC5 requires around 200 hours of regular computer use before it is 100% broken in. Although running high load for 24 hours, then like 10 hours of normal use works as well. So, break it in, then record your temps and then you'll at least see if there's any change in temps.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Yeah my little plan for break is is this:

Have 2 copys of toast.exe one named as toastB.exe
Run toastB.exe 24/7 to give a 25% load on CPU
Have two scheduled tasks that run within half an hour of each other:
Task 1 - run toast.exe
Task 2 - use killtask to kill the toast.exe process

So basically, on the hour toast.exe starts, adding an extra 25% to CPU usage (now 50%) and warming up a little more, then after half an hour the task is killed, and takes the CPU back to 25% load. The CPU then has another half hour before the whole process starts again.

This keeps the PC quiet enough, and usable enough for me to carry on using it for other stuff like surfing the web, checking emails, listening to music or watching films

So far with that little lot running max CPU temp has been 51c and minimum 27c (which was before I started with toastB.exe - so idle).

I also noticed that with the side off last night while I was doing some more meddling with an extra GPU fan (details to follow if it works!) the temp hardly dropped at all with the side off maybe 1c if that. So I think the fact the fan is bigger and probably has a higher CFM than the 80mm I had there before has made a difference.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Final bit of case modding:

Extended the cut I made by the PSU to allow my modular cables through and did a little more messing about, you don't even wanna see the back, and I am not taking the panel off again to take a pic - thought it would never go on! It's basically covered in electrical tape to hold it tight to the case.

Well here is the front:


I also had to cut some of the anti-vibe stuff off the back panel as it wouldn't allow the panel to fit, so used the bits I had cut off on the roof and floor of the case.

Time to let the TIM set and see how low the temp gets and how quiet it gets....

 

[Dooms101]

Hmm... seems to be coming along quite well. Good to see your temps dropped from ~55C to ~51C. Hopefully it should drop another 1C-2C since your AC5 is probably just starting to break in. It always seems to me that it keeps decreasing temps for like a month until it finally stabilizes. So, you might even see 48C or better. I am interested to see what your side fan for the GPU is.

 

[gcwebbyuk]

Well it was nothing special

Basically I took a socket 775 backplate from my Zalman fan that I didn't have to use (AMD board). Screwed the 15mm screws in as far as they could go so they pointed up, then screwed the 1156 nuts onto the top of them, blu-tack on them, 80mm blowing upwards fan tacked to the top of them. I then used blu-tack again on the bottom of the 775 backplate to stick it to the case floor just below the GPU heatsink, so not in line with the GPU fan that would be blowing down.

Here are some pics of the "device" outside the case:




Comparing temps from HWmonitor and an OCCT test, it did save about 5c off the GPU temp with the fan running at 1200rpm (which was not noticeable over the other fans). However, since I added the sound deadening to the floor of the case, there is no room to mount it, without sticking it on top of the sound deadening. I may well add it again later, but at the mo it's staying out of the case.

I did consider getting 25mm screws to give the fan more height from the backplate to allow more air to pass underneath before it was blown onto the cooler, I will do this if I decide to re-mount the device.

At the moment though my GPU idles at 33c and peaks to about 69c when running an OCCT GPU test at 1920x1080@60Hz full screen with shader complexity set to 3. Not sure what the max temp should be for a 4870 (it's overclocked to GPU@780MHz RAM@1075MHz)?