My P180 Chopped and Ducted

[Raygers]

It was a question of necessity that forced me to construct a new system. My daughters were complaining that they weren’t able to install the latest Sims game on the PIII machine that they inherited from me. So that gave me an excuse to give them my P4 and build a new one, and best of all, my wife agreed (women tend to stick together).

I already had an Antec Sonata and was very impressed with it, so when I was case shopping I looked at what Antec had to offer. The P180 looked very interesting, and a Google search brought me to SilentPc. What a lot of nuts I thought, they’re crazy, who goes to these lengths to silence Pc’s? Well now I know. . . . I do, and you know what, I’m loving it.

After a horrible nightmare of getting components I was ready to build. Starting with stock fans on the CPU and Video card and all fans in the case running, I could see where that would be very annoying, noise wise.

So the Scythe Ninja and the Arctic Cooler Silencer were installed, the Ninja had a Yate Loon clipped to the side facing the upper drive cage. Temperatures were good and the system was quiet, or so I thought.

I started looking at ways to lose some of the fans, reading the forum I saw that people had good performance with using ducting. So my fate was sealed. I spent the next several months with pieces of cardboard and duct tape (wonderful stuff) experimenting with different setups. My goal was, and still is, to make it as quiet as possible but still maintain good cooling and I think I have achieved that goal in the main. There are still tweaks to do that will bring the noise level down some more, but I think that the main part of my work is done.




An early attempt at ducting, CPU ducted out the rear fan, a ramp at the top hole to direct airflow to the “intakeâ€

[GamingGod]

looks really good, how did you construct the ducts?

[fmriguy]

Nice work Raygers! I'll admit, you've gotta have balls to break out the dremel on a new P180

I had a similar duct on my Ninja, but found that under load the power circuitry on the motherboard was getting way too hot for my comfort. As many have pointed out, the ninja really limits the air running across the mobo. My power temps were hovering around 56*C. I actually ended up dumping the duct and just positioned a 120mm fan (@7 volts) in the 5.25" drive area aimed kind of down towards the ram and power circuitry (but some airflow likely blows through the ninja as well). This dropped power temps to the mid forties (but I obviously lost a bit of cpu cooling in the process). At least the ninja lets me idle at ~32*C most of the time.

Just out of curiosity, what are your motherboard temps like? Does your motherboard measure temp of the power management circuitry?

[JimX]

Good job!

Hey! What else can I chop?

[Thomas]

Ray

Nice work, and nice build with new ideas.

I'm interested in that cardboard thing at the rear on this picture. It seems there's a fan on it? Does it blows air into the Silencer?

I was thinking of mounting a fan at the rear, to exhaust VGA heat.

[Raygers]

Thanks everyone for your comments:

GamingGod; how did you construct the ducts?

I used Styrene, or at least that's what I thought I was using, it turns out that the clear plastic is polypropylene, and that is just about impossible to glue. I ended up sanding the edges, gluing with Testors and then running a bead of silicon around. I handle them very gently.

fmriguy; Just out of curiosity, what are your motherboard temps like?

Right now I'm folding and temps are; CPU 41C, MB 36C
The side near the motherboard is open so there is a good flow across the ram and the board itself.
I left an opening under the VGA duct and diverted air toward the MB to avoid any "dead" areas, I could have achieved the same by opening a slot.

Thomas; I'm interested in that cardboard thing at the rear on this picture. It seems there's a fan on it? Does it blows air into the Silencer?

Yes it does, I never developed this idea any further, but I do think it has merits and could work quite well. There's a couple of ways to keep it contained within the case that I can think of, one would be to use an inline fan, I'm wondering about those bay fans you can buy
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... &CatId=805
The other way would be to open a hole in the case side and put in a 120mm fan to a duct.

[cmthomson]

The simplest mod of all will improve your airflow: remove the slatted front doors. Just pop them open and depress the tab by the top hinge. The filters remain in place, and look okay.

It looks like you have two single-bay air filters/inlets in the bottom 5" bays. What are those?

[Raygers]

The simplest mod of all will improve your airflow: remove the slatted front doors. Just pop them open and depress the tab by the top hinge. The filters remain in place, and look okay.

It looks like you have two single-bay air filters/inlets in the bottom 5" bays. What are those?

Thanks, been there, done that. Even opening the front door makes a degree or two difference. The intake and exhaust are pretty well balanced now.

The front bays, I just took a couple of bay covers, cut the centre out and glued a piece of expanded metal grid in. I do have a foam dust filter behind them.

[Dr. Gonzo]

I wouldn't have the balls to take a Dremel or a pair of tin snips to my new P180!