- Joined
- Jul 14, 2001
- Location
- Hutchinson, KS
This is one way to do so, anyway. One side panel of these cases has a large circular vent (about 300mm wide) with a dust filter. It’s fairly easy to modify it to accommodate this fan, or another of similar dimensions. In addition, I’m going to give a review of the fan itself.
I was browsing FrozenCPU for some other parts and came across “250mm x 30mm LED fans.” The specifications of the fan caught my eye: 105 CFM, 19 dBA. There’s also one with no LEDs, which is a couple bucks cheaper and is the one that I bought. The fan includes a plastic ring that mounts to the side panel and a honeycomb grill that fits inside it. You could cut a rough hole in the side panel and the mounting hardware would cover it up. No patterns are included, so if you go that route you’ll need to make all the measurements yourself.
This is what you get with your purchase: the fan, ring, honeycomb grill and a bag of screws. The screws are of two sizes: large ones that attach the fan to the ring, and small ones that attach the ring to the case. I have no way of verifying the noise and airflow figures given above, but they may be accurate. This fan moves a lot of air, and I can’t hear it unless I put my head about a foot away from it. There is no means of monitoring fan RPM, since the fan is powered by a 4-pin molex connector. It’s a pass-through variety, so you don’t actually lose any molexes by using the fan.
To give you an idea of how big this fan is, I placed a 120mm fan next to it. The blade area is about four times that of your average 120mm fan, which means this fan can spin at very low RPM and still move a lot of air. I have no idea how fast it actually turns, but I’d guess it’s less than 1000 RPM since the sticker isn’t a complete blur when the fan is turning.
This is what it looks like when it’s put together. You can’t really see it in these pictures, but the screws are too big for the posts that they screw into. All four posts cracked when I attached the fan. Also, the honeycomb has a notch in it for reasons I cannot determine. This notch is visible from the outside when the fan is mounted. Lastly, I may have mounted it wrong, but the fan blades scraped noisily against the grill unless I held the fan flat, grill side up. I don’t know if this is typical or if I got a defective mount, but it’s not an issue for me since I’m not using the included mounting hardware.
Meet the recipient.
All this vent area and Cooler Master only put an 80mm fan here! The cage accepts 80mm x 25mm fans, though thicker ones can be mounted since the fan cage uses the same screw spacing as an 80mm fan.
The new fan fills much more of the space. It’s easy enough to line up two of the fan’s screw holes with the bars, though a bit of metalwork is needed for the other two. While this fan could probably work fine mounted with only two screws, I’m not going to leave it that way.
I decided to remove the metal that supported the original fan cage, since it was no longer necessary and blocked airflow. The silver strips are some scrap aluminum I had lying around. I trimmed them to fit and then attached them to the side panel. Now I can mount the fan using all four holes. I put spacers on the bolts because the fan only has mounting ears on one side. The spacers are held on with nuts, which both lifts the fan a little more and makes it easier to mount the fan. This way I don’t have to have three hands to attach it.
This is what it looks like with the fan in place. I bent up the bars to make sure the filter doesn’t touch the blades.
Bending the bars seems to have done the trick, since I can't hear the fan blades scraping against the filter.
Furthermore, it’s almost impossible to tell from the outside that anything has changed. I could probably paint the aluminum strips black to hide them further.
Overall, this modification was fairly simple to do. It took me about an hour. Both the old fan and the new one are virtually silent, but airflow has improved dramatically. My conclusion is that the fan is very good – it’s virtually inaudible and moves a lot of air. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the mounting system. It looks decent, but is hampered by mismatched screws and a complete lack of instructions. That said, I still recommend the fan. The flaws in the mounting system could probably be overcome, and if you have a case like mine the mounting system might not even be an issue.
I was browsing FrozenCPU for some other parts and came across “250mm x 30mm LED fans.” The specifications of the fan caught my eye: 105 CFM, 19 dBA. There’s also one with no LEDs, which is a couple bucks cheaper and is the one that I bought. The fan includes a plastic ring that mounts to the side panel and a honeycomb grill that fits inside it. You could cut a rough hole in the side panel and the mounting hardware would cover it up. No patterns are included, so if you go that route you’ll need to make all the measurements yourself.
This is what you get with your purchase: the fan, ring, honeycomb grill and a bag of screws. The screws are of two sizes: large ones that attach the fan to the ring, and small ones that attach the ring to the case. I have no way of verifying the noise and airflow figures given above, but they may be accurate. This fan moves a lot of air, and I can’t hear it unless I put my head about a foot away from it. There is no means of monitoring fan RPM, since the fan is powered by a 4-pin molex connector. It’s a pass-through variety, so you don’t actually lose any molexes by using the fan.
To give you an idea of how big this fan is, I placed a 120mm fan next to it. The blade area is about four times that of your average 120mm fan, which means this fan can spin at very low RPM and still move a lot of air. I have no idea how fast it actually turns, but I’d guess it’s less than 1000 RPM since the sticker isn’t a complete blur when the fan is turning.
This is what it looks like when it’s put together. You can’t really see it in these pictures, but the screws are too big for the posts that they screw into. All four posts cracked when I attached the fan. Also, the honeycomb has a notch in it for reasons I cannot determine. This notch is visible from the outside when the fan is mounted. Lastly, I may have mounted it wrong, but the fan blades scraped noisily against the grill unless I held the fan flat, grill side up. I don’t know if this is typical or if I got a defective mount, but it’s not an issue for me since I’m not using the included mounting hardware.
Meet the recipient.
All this vent area and Cooler Master only put an 80mm fan here! The cage accepts 80mm x 25mm fans, though thicker ones can be mounted since the fan cage uses the same screw spacing as an 80mm fan.
The new fan fills much more of the space. It’s easy enough to line up two of the fan’s screw holes with the bars, though a bit of metalwork is needed for the other two. While this fan could probably work fine mounted with only two screws, I’m not going to leave it that way.
I decided to remove the metal that supported the original fan cage, since it was no longer necessary and blocked airflow. The silver strips are some scrap aluminum I had lying around. I trimmed them to fit and then attached them to the side panel. Now I can mount the fan using all four holes. I put spacers on the bolts because the fan only has mounting ears on one side. The spacers are held on with nuts, which both lifts the fan a little more and makes it easier to mount the fan. This way I don’t have to have three hands to attach it.
This is what it looks like with the fan in place. I bent up the bars to make sure the filter doesn’t touch the blades.
Bending the bars seems to have done the trick, since I can't hear the fan blades scraping against the filter.
Furthermore, it’s almost impossible to tell from the outside that anything has changed. I could probably paint the aluminum strips black to hide them further.
Overall, this modification was fairly simple to do. It took me about an hour. Both the old fan and the new one are virtually silent, but airflow has improved dramatically. My conclusion is that the fan is very good – it’s virtually inaudible and moves a lot of air. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the mounting system. It looks decent, but is hampered by mismatched screws and a complete lack of instructions. That said, I still recommend the fan. The flaws in the mounting system could probably be overcome, and if you have a case like mine the mounting system might not even be an issue.
![[OC]Lucifer](/forums/data/avatars/m/4/4137.jpg?1626886256){kind=avatar}
