Need case cooling advise

[Scottike]

I did a few calculations and come up with this answer:

An unmodified fan grill port on my particular case had a total open surface area of 1.84605 sq. in.

The modified opening not including a wire grill has a open surface area 7.5479 sq. in.

That's a 400% increase in area for the fan to draw from!

That doesn't mean the fan will draw 400 % more air, but it does mean the fan can draw all the air it needs with little or no restriction.

I don't have a flow meter to check it with, but I'm guessing that the mod results in a 25 to 30% increase in airflow.

 

Photo of the fan ports

 

the math:

 

Modified Fan port: The hole was kept as small as possible and still remove all of the mesh holes.

3.1" dia.

 

Stock fan port:

175 holes of .115 dia., plus a center hole of .190" dia. ( overall mesh area diameter of 3.1")

 

formula: area of a circle = Pi x Radius squared

Edited October 29, 2009 by Scottike

[sack_patrol]

You do know that too many fans can make things worse. My case has 2 fans in front pulling air in, 1 in the back pushing it out and 1 200mm on top pulling it out as well. Putting another one in the mount on the side will mess everything up because it will simply make the hot air move around everywhere, going nowhere thus keeping hot air longer and not really cooling anything. I left the side panel empty so that air can come and go faster.

 

I'm not sure how you want your case works, and I don't know if this would apply to it as well. I think that if u want to cool individual parts more, you should use better cooler for each part respectively which would have a bigger impact than if u add a case fan anywhere else.

[Layback Bear]

A little trick I use on air cooled system. Use a infrared thermometer laser and get the temp of the wall of the room and then take the temp off of the side of your case. That will give you a way of checking the case temp change when you make changes. It will not tell you the temps of any thing running in your case. My wall temp now is 20.0c and the side of the case is 22.5c. Any changes in air flow in your case will show up compared in this way.

[pezcore]

I finally gave up on my Alienware P1 case and upgraded to an Antec P183. So far I'm seeing a 5-10 degree (celsius) drop in CPU core temps. I will use the Alienware case as a video server or something someday where it'd look cool next to a TV and won't get too hot from gaming.

 

I tried alot of things with that case regarding fans and it made little difference overall.