A little better cooling...

[scriptasylum]

Just want to share a little bit of advice. I was trying to find ways to get my case (the one in my sig below) a little cooler when I felt the airflow from the two rear case fans; there was hardly any. So I pulled them off and noticed right away the difference: they don't make as much noise and the airflow was increased about 2X. So I decided to cut out the case grills which are just stamped from the case and removed the inner grills as well. Now the system is about 3 deg C cooler.

I might get some wire grills but might just leave it as-is. it's not like people are always sticking their fingers in the back of my PC

I've attached pics of the fans grills to show how crappy they were. So if anyone else has a Lian-li case, this is a fairly quick and easy way to improve cooling. Plus the system is a little bit quieter (but a bit hard to notice a difference with a Volcano 7+)

 

[Zedric]

The case had both those grills on to of eachother? That's bad. You can put back the square ones though, they don't stop the air much.

 

[scriptasylum]

Well, no. The ones that were cut out were on one side of the fan and the square ones were on the other side of the fan so both sides were protected from stray fingers.

I was going to put the square ones back on, but there is better airflow and quieter with them off. Plus I think it looks better.

I've attached another pic to show what the fans look like with the grills off.

And in case anyone is wondering what that strip is on the left side near the fans, its a "home-made" blue LED array.

 

[Zedric]

And those leds make a nice in-case glow? Like a cold cathod light? They are high intensive leds I bet.

 

[scriptasylum]

Actually, there are just normal blue LEDs leftover from another project. They are normal LEDs (not hi-intensity), but they provide a subtle glow. I originally had a cold cathode but thought it was too bright. I use my PC mostly at night and the bright light was too distracting

I've attached yet another pic showing what it looks like at night. Sorry the picture is poor quality, my camera usually needs a decent amount of light to work properly, but you get the idea.

 

[Ace123]

wow.. it almost looks like you have a four channel yamaha xwave sound card in there.... you also might get a lil better performance if you put another stick of memory in there.. doesnt matter how big just enables a lil dual memory access

 

[scriptasylum]

A Yamaha Xwave soundcard? Never heard of it. It's just a SB Live Value card.

I originally did have 2 256MB memory, but when I built the wife's PC using my old GA-7DX mobo, I had to give her one of mine. I want to buy some Corsair, but it will have to wait a bit until I can scrape up the $$$, which can be hard so close to Christmas and 4 kids