Ultra-D and Antec P180 cooling modifications

[Fast Hot Rod]

The intake is easily resolved temporarily by taking the side panel off. More exhaust always helps the intake draw in, blowholes are easy mods.

 

Sounds like the trusty Zalman FB123 bracket would work for you, put a 120mm right over your vid and chipset. Would have room for another too.

 

A PCI slot exhaust you mean? Hmmm, never seen one in action, but if they are quiet and move air then t'is enough.

 

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True... except that I want to maintain positive pressure in my case to prevent a vaccum that will suck dust into my rig. (I'm anal like that! :shake: ) I got really good cooling with the 120mm TT intake fan... I just gotta buy another and stick that sucker in to get the flow numbers back up. :cool:

 

I made up some brackets and directed an 80mm over the chipset fan and at the video card. It dropped temps about 3-5 degrees C but I think I still need to exhaust hot air in that area... which leads to my latest idea about cooling that area.

 

I am going to make a plate that covers the four unused PCI slots, and mount an 80mm fan there to pull the hot air out of that area and out the bak of the case. Then, I am going to install another 120mm fan in the bottom and duct air towards my chipset and GPU. The 80mm fan I put over the PWMIC is helping in that area... so I think I am getting closer to where I want to be. :nod:

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Mark

[Guest LithoTech]

True... except that I want to maintain positive pressure in my case to prevent a vaccum that will suck dust into my rig. (I'm anal like that! :shake: )

 

I was going to mention that princible, I'm so glad you know it! I've tried to achieve the same thing in a few other cases I've worked in. Effective concept, and really does work.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Mark

 

Looking forward to seeing some pics of the work in progress.

[Fast Hot Rod]

Looking forward to seeing some pics of the work in progress.

 

Ask, and ye shall receive! :shake:

 

Here is my rig before I swapped out the chipset fan, the GPU fan, and the CPU fan... I was playing with the 80mm fan to get some airflow over the chipset fan.

 

 

This is with the Accelero X1 and Evercool VC-RE installed:

 

 

I don't yet have pictures of the new TT fan on the CPU... but it looks lust like the one on the rear of my case. That stock one pictured on the CPU is the one I slapped into the front of my rig... and will soon be replacing. I moved that 80mm fan up beside the 120mm CPU fan (to the right of it) to cool the PWMIC. It does a good job... but I need more airflow! :nod:

 

More pictures to come!

 

Mark

[Guest LithoTech]

I'm resurrecting this thread for a couple reasons.

 

Firstly, I pretty near gutted my P180 last night as I reconfigured the fans and cooling, relocated a front panel display/controller that has way too much wire to deal with, and nearly completed prototype version 1.1a of the Ram Guardian Wind Tunnel P180 mod.

 

Secondly, in testing I was running without a couple of fans, particularly the one I had on the ram and 3v-5v voltage jumper, and in ragards to a comment Osen made about the temps of the heatsink on the chip next to the jumper, I found out first hand, errr finger, just how HOT it gets!

 

I remembered to check the temps when I flipped the jumper, and there was no significant change in the sessions that followed. That heatsink was always just good and warm, and I verified it by measuring it with two of the three sensors. Averaged about 39C when overclocked (2.7ghz, 3.5v vdimm), under load, case open, fans high.

 

As I finished up reconfiging the fans last night, starting the system up progressively with more and more stuff hooked up, the FPD high temp alarm went off during one session, I remember being mixed up which sensor it was, and fearing that I broke one of the thermistors because no way it could be reading 50C! I bumped up the alarm tolerance and as I did that the temperature kept climbing! I was about to hit the power when it settled at about 55C. I let it idle a bit to be sure, then shut it down.

 

Tracing the wires (I have stripes drawn with a sharpie near the sensor to identify which sensor is which), I found the hot one on the heatsink beside the voltage jumper, and went ahead and tapped it with a finger. Yup, hot. Ouch.

 

So at this point I hadn't put the top intake fan back in, the one I rigged into the 5.25 drive bays. I was making changes there, more permanent fixtures, and was hoping I could run the system a day or two without that fan. Maybe longer, give me some time to do it proper.

 

I suppose I could have pulled out the BH-5 and put in some UTT. Nuh-uh, not meh! I looked at putting that zalman NB47J on it, and still might do that as soon as I find what I need to fasten it, but it wasn't going to work fast or easy, I'd be better off completing the fan bracket I was making.

 

Basically what I did was take an old 3.5 to 5.25 drive adapter and some L-shape hardware with some nuts and bolts and sort of like a mechano set got that fan back in there rigid as ever, actually pointed towards the ram and heatsink, and it's only held with one wingnut for easy removal. All the L-shape pieces are adjustable, so the fan can actually be redirected, raised or lowered a bit. It's really quite simple, although not too pretty -- I'll keep my eye out for some nicer hardware should dress it up a bit and I'll be painting the rest eventually.

 

Putting a decent amount of air past that heatsink takes a lot of temp off of it. When I first fired up the new fan, I was shocked that it was still hitting 50C!! But then I realised the fan was on low! lol.

 

Cranked the fan up, and holy .!!! :eek: 50... 45C... 40C... 39C... 35C!! Amazing, at low speed the fan hardly helped at all. :mad: But once it was moving decent air it took temp off immediately and fast!

 

35-37C idle and 39-40C load. No fan, 55C+ :cool:

 

I dub this new fan mounting the Ram Guardian Wind Tunnel ver 1.1a from Hell.

 

Pics for your pleasure to follow. I pulled the Freezer Pro out and put in the XP-120. That allowed me to move the Zalman FB123 bracket back to the left, mounting a 120mm directly over the video and chipset. You can see the top of the bracket just touching the fan on the XP-120. The new RGWT is up top in the 5.25 drive bays. Lights, camera, action!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Guest LithoTech]

Views installed:

 

 

 

 

Front view:

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going to move the FPD down one, and get longer L-shape hardware to stretch down to the lower drive bay -- reverse the bays but fan stays where it is, like so:

 

 

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[Guest LithoTech]

Overall, I'm estimating the XP-120 is performing a couple degrees better than the Freezer Pro. It's hard to say at this point because the ambient temperature from most of my collected data from the freezer is a good couple degrees below what it is now. Taking that into consideration, it may be 1 or 2 degrees better under load.

 

However, my ram is now the same temperature for both sticks. With the freezer, it was always cooler for the stick closest to the Freezer which was blowing towards it. Even though I had active cooling in the area. Just shows how much wash there is from the xp-120 blasting down on the mobo.

 

I've definately lost intake power with this new config, due to all the crap I have loaded in the upper drive bays now, it is blocking at least 50% of the fan flow. But I don't care, because all that crap used to be down in the lower area crowding everything, a royal wiring nightmare. Much better now, most of the mess is hidden and absolutely out of the way. Once I flip the FPD back down a bay, it'll be much better.

 

More pics, just cuz I had them ready and kind of finish off the story. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Ganiscol]

Also good to know! Do you think that zalman with a fan on it outperforms the VC-RE? It probably should, based on the above physics it has much more surface area and a much larger more powerful fan. It may not be copper, but while copper conducts heat well throughout it's surface, it doesn't transfer it to air as well as aluminum.

 

I wonder where this urban myth came from. Not the first time I read this. There is no difference in how metals of different type transfer heat to air. :confused:

 

Besides that, nice thread (and pictures) with lots of fans. :eek:

[-CsA-TAZ]

WOW, lol a fan boy of fan's has to be a first, i have the same case and only four fans in top half none in the bottom! temps i have a Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Cooler no fan with AS5 which now idle's @ 41c max on a hot day and 35c on a normal, all my fans set to low, my full load temps are CPU @ 42c PWMIC @40c CHIPSET @ 41c! i think with all that cash on fans could have gone some way towards Water Cooling!!

[-CsA-TAZ]

I wonder where this urban myth came from. Not the first time I read this. There is no difference in how metals of different type transfer heat to air. :confused:

 

Besides that, nice thread (and pictures) with lots of fans. :eek:

 

Maybe not but the is a difference between how different metals cool down and conduct heat, Copper conducts more heat than aluminum, but aluminum cools down much quicker than copper!

[AsAs1n8eR]

Your system is so nice.I'm drooling all over.I personally think that the antec fans are pretty loud.But the arrangment and the way you settled all there is beautifull(I don't meen cable managment).Congratulations.

@-CsA-TAZ what do you think about the zalman?I have it to and I/m satisfied with it.

[Ganiscol]

Maybe not but the is a difference between how different metals cool down and conduct heat, Copper conducts more heat than aluminum, but aluminum cools down much quicker than copper!

 

Aluminum cools down quicker due to its lower density (and thus has lower thermal capacity), that doesnt affect the transfer of heat to air though since it cannot "suck up" as much heat as copper can in the first place.

 

Thermal capacity and conduction are the magic words here. Airflow and surface area are the other corner stones.

 

The only 2 factors in favor of aluminum is weight and cost. However, these two factors often outweight the advantages of copper in many applications.

[Guest LithoTech]

WOW, lol a fan boy of fan's has to be a first, i have the same case and only four fans in top half none in the bottom! temps i have a Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Cooler no fan with AS5 which now idle's @ 41c max on a hot day and 35c on a normal, all my fans set to low, my full load temps are CPU @ 42c PWMIC @40c CHIPSET @ 41c! i think with all that cash on fans could have gone some way towards Water Cooling!!

 

LOL, oh noooo, fan fan boy just doesn't ring well!

 

Outstanding temps, especially for a hot day! I have one of those zalman here unused, I might try it because I'm not happy with the 44C chipset temp I currently have under load with all the fans on low speed. I was hoping for more out of this VC-RE, and I'm sure it is mounted fine, AS5. Rest of the temps I'm pretty good with, biggest jump I see is when the house warms up.

 

Heh, I wish about the water cooling. Maybe one day, I dunno, it'd have to be rock solid so I could leave it unattended without worries of it springing a leak. And the good systems are bloody expensive. I could see going with a corsiar nautilus or something though.

 

These fans cost peanuts. I basically picked them up one at a time when they went on sale, so cheap you were only allowed one per customer. I think I paid $8 or $9 per. So it took a few sales till I had 3 or 4 of the tricool LED ones. I've tried tons of others, mostly in other peoples' systems. I know lots about nice quiet fans, not much about performance quiet fans. I went with these because they nearly match one of the panaflo in stats: 79cfm 30dB.

 

They aren't that loud, even on high. But when you have a few of them in a small area, yeah you can hear it man, lol. Glad I have the nice thick sides of the P180, with the case sealed up and fans on high, it's no noisier than any other computer. Fans on low, I can't hear it at all, too much other sounds here drown it out completely.

 

I'd like to get my hands on a panaflo H1BX, but no stock around here, really hard to get, expensive. I'm dying to see how much it will take off the CPU compared to the antec. Now that fan will be loud!