Finaly moved my system into a P182

[psymanproductions]

Hi, So i finally bought myself a P182 for crimbo! moved my current system into it and decided it was time to take some pics for the gallery.

Here it is - low RPM noctuas and s-flexes are my weapons of choice. Notice the "passive" HD4850 from gigabyte needs a slow 80mm fan to keep it below 95.c. I will know to go straight for the accelero S1 next time. Even in a well ventilated case it reaches 110.c + with out that fan.

And yes it is mounted with elastic bands

The fan on the GPU is a Noctua NF-R8, i added a 50 ohm resistor to the provided U.L.N.A bringing it down to ~600RPM but it still gave audible "rumble". Mounting with elastic bands solved this and it is now almost noiseless, audible only when my ear is next to it.

Hard drive suspension - perhaps a little more ghetto that those who drill holes then use stretch magic but just as functional. I don't really want to go drilling holes in something i just paid £100 for unless absolutely necessary.


The yellow zip ties dont hold any weight, they are loose and are there just incase an elastic band snaps to save my hard drive.


Taped up the grille around PSU to aid hard drive cooling with no fan in the middle section.


Modded the front grilles removing half the slats and got rid of the dust filters. This brought the hard drive down form around 42.c to 38.c but didn't have a noticeable effect on GPU/CPU.


The usual cable spaghetti spattered round the back, the side panel now has a bulge (only slight).


I actually think the P182 is quite handsome now i can see it in the flesh.


Noise – The 3 12cm Noctuas run at between 380 – 500 RPM (estimated) and are totally inaudible, even when sat next to the system. The GPU fan Is running at 500-700 RPM (estimated) and is inaudible. The S-flex 1600 CPU fan is at 760 RPM via a U.L.N.A and is audible only when the hard drive is spun down. PSU fan idles at ~ 480 RPM and is inaudible, under 2x prime 95 and rthdribl it reaches a “wooshingâ€

[bonestonne]

looks good, i'm just surprised you went for S-Flex over Slipstream.

I like the sound card, a lot, and that tube amp you've got, a magnificent choice, have quite a few lying around my school's radio station.

i have the same thing in my rig, but i'm curious as to why you haven't moved to a SATA optical drive. i'm waiting to burn out the old one first, but at 4 years old, it's reaching it's last legs...right when the DVD encoding programs enter the freeware stage.

oh, and just a nit-picky question, but does flipping the PSU over kill too much slack on the cables? i'd personally have the fan at the bottom just so the heat doesn't knock out the bearing after the rig is off, over time of course.

[psymanproductions]

looks good, i'm just surprised you went for S-Flex over Slipstream.

I like the sound card, a lot, and that tube amp you've got, a magnificent choice, have quite a few lying around my school's radio station.

i have the same thing in my rig, but i'm curious as to why you haven't moved to a SATA optical drive. i'm waiting to burn out the old one first, but at 4 years old, it's reaching it's last legs...right when the DVD encoding programs enter the freeware stage.

oh, and just a nit-picky question, but does flipping the PSU over kill too much slack on the cables? i'd personally have the fan at the bottom just so the heat doesn't knock out the bearing after the rig is off, over time of course.

Thanks, i went s-flex simply 'cos i couldnt find any slipstreams, according to reviews the differences arent huge.

i kept my IDE Drive, just 'cos i could really. mine still works fine so other than the thinner cables i havnt really got much to gain.

as for the psu, flipping it gives me more cable length, i could not get the ATX 12V round the back of the mobo with its fan facing down so had no choice but to flip it

edit: Yep that pre amp has served me well, would buy another 1 in a flash

[psymanproductions]

just a little update, after many hours of swapping fans and stresstesting, ive found that flipping the rear fan so it faces in towards the cpu reduces the cpu temp by a whopping 10 - 12.c!!

not only that but other temps seem virtually untouched.

it seemed unlikely that this would improve temps but it did, odd but ture

[LodeHacker]

You mean by using the top fan as an intake instead of an exhaust you have lower CPU temps? I must try this too!

[pixel]

Hello,

You have moved into the case of my dreams... This case is very popular in the forums from what I see; and for good reason.

I like the tidyness and the fans.. I'm surprised that the "passive" GPU needs a fan over it to run below 100 C; the manufacturer should have thought of this (and this is not a case where there's no airflow in the case).

You have mentioned the "ghetto-ness" of the hard drive suspension; but no-one sees it, so I see no reason to worry. I'm planning to get a P183 when I upgrade to a Core i7 system later this year; and will have to think hard about how I can suspend two drives at RAID 0.

I would normally say a SATA drive is better than an IDE one since the cable doesn't block airflow that much; but in your case the cable is not restricting airflow at all. Still, I've gone "all-SATA" in my system (and disabled the floppy). My cheap ASUS case offers no way of routing cables.

I'd bet most of the bluge on the right side panel is coming from those Molex adapters.. It doesn't sound very "right" to me to have such a bulge, but I don't think it will cause any trouble either.

If you decide to get a larger drive in the future; you might want to go with WD's 640 GB drives. I've heard in this forum that they're great price/performance-wise, and they're quiet as well.

I'm surprised that reversing the rear fan has made such a dramatic effect on CPU temperature.. Keep in mind that you now have positive pressure inside the case (2 intakes, 1 exhaust), which can be a good thing to keep dust out. (I'm not really proficient enough to say how positive/negative pressure affects other things, in fact I would appreciate some info on this..)

Oh, by the way.. I would like to ask for one small favor. You're in music production, right? I would like to ask if you would prefer a Creative X-Fi or an ASUS Xonar for listening to music on your PC, and gaming. Some people say Creative is junk, but I've heard the ASUS isn't all a bed of roses either. Just a small PM will do, if you wish to reply.

Enjoy the new case! It looks like a job well done.

[psymanproductions]

You mean by using the top fan as an intake instead of an exhaust you have lower CPU temps? I must try this too!

not the very top fan, that one blows out, the rear fan blows in and the top fan blows out. The only downside is i get some hot air collecting around my optical bays that wasnt there, but i think the 10.c drop on cpu is worth it, try it please it would be interesting to see if it works for other peoples set-ups too

[psymanproductions]

Hello,

You have moved into the case of my dreams... This case is very popular in the forums from what I see; and for good reason.

I like the tidyness and the fans.. I'm surprised that the "passive" GPU needs a fan over it to run below 100 C; the manufacturer should have thought of this (and this is not a case where there's no airflow in the case).

You have mentioned the "ghetto-ness" of the hard drive suspension; but no-one sees it, so I see no reason to worry. I'm planning to get a P183 when I upgrade to a Core i7 system later this year; and will have to think hard about how I can suspend two drives at RAID 0.

I would normally say a SATA drive is better than an IDE one since the cable doesn't block airflow that much; but in your case the cable is not restricting airflow at all. Still, I've gone "all-SATA" in my system (and disabled the floppy). My cheap ASUS case offers no way of routing cables.

I'd bet most of the bluge on the right side panel is coming from those Molex adapters.. It doesn't sound very "right" to me to have such a bulge, but I don't think it will cause any trouble either.

If you decide to get a larger drive in the future; you might want to go with WD's 640 GB drives. I've heard in this forum that they're great price/performance-wise, and they're quiet as well.

I'm surprised that reversing the rear fan has made such a dramatic effect on CPU temperature.. Keep in mind that you now have positive pressure inside the case (2 intakes, 1 exhaust), which can be a good thing to keep dust out. (I'm not really proficient enough to say how positive/negative pressure affects other things, in fact I would appreciate some info on this..)

Oh, by the way.. I would like to ask for one small favor. You're in music production, right? I would like to ask if you would prefer a Creative X-Fi or an ASUS Xonar for listening to music on your PC, and gaming. Some people say Creative is junk, but I've heard the ASUS isn't all a bed of roses either. Just a small PM will do, if you wish to reply.

Enjoy the new case! It looks like a job well done.

Hi, thatnks for the reply, the hd4850 card being that hot really pissed me off i have now swapped the stock cooler on the gigabyte card for my old ac acelero s.1. The s1 was cooling my brothers hd3850 but i demanded he gave me the acelero s.1 back the gigabyte cooler didnt want to go on my bro's hd3850 at all but i forced it on there. the rear part of the cooler is now bent to a 45 degree angle. looks a mess but hey whos gonna know? with the acelero passive i got 78.c load - 14.c less than the stock cooler with a fan could acheive!! Gigabyte should bow their heads in shame.

its defo possible to get 3 or 4 3.5 inch drives suspended in a p182 if you use both the top and bottom drive spaces, look on the forums for some inspiration cos there are a few ways of doing it and people have thought of it all.

the effect reversing the rear fan had was a shock to me too, the only down side is that hot air collects around the optical drive bays, also i think the positive pressure may be forcing a tiny bit of hot air into the lower chamber 'cos my hdd went up by 1-2.c but both are insignificant i think when you consider the huge drop in cpu temp.

as for those soundcards, i cant really say as ive never used either. i would say they arent worth bothering with unless the onboard sound is noticably bad. onboard sound is fine for gaming and even critical listening on most newer mobos i would say. The only reason i got that m-audio card is that it has good A/D converters for recording and good ASIO low latency drivers. i would save the money and put it towards some good speakers as you will get a far bigger improvement, unless you already have some audiophile class speakers and amplifier ofcourse.

[sanse]

how's your brother after all this gpu-swapping?

[Engine]

just a little update, after many hours of swapping fans and stresstesting, ive found that flipping the rear fan so it faces in towards the cpu reduces the cpu temp by a whopping 10 - 12.c!!

I've been thinking of doing this, but with both the rear and top fans on the P182. This means cold air coming in over the MOSFET heatsink and the northbridge heatpipe terminator heatsink, which then blows out any open spaces elsewhere in the case. Should provide good cooling and low noise, but whether not not it'll work for any given person will depend on the video card in use. [I'll be using a 55nm GTX260, so everything that needs cooled will be on the "bottom" of the card, and the card's so long it'll be easy to put the whole VGA cooling solution in its own "duct" in the P182.]

Using only one of the rear fans as intake, and the other as exhaust, means the shortest circuit is in through the back [as in your case] and out the top; however, you may find, depending on how your northbridge cooling works [I can't see your pictures, unfortunately], that this doesn't adequately cool the north- or south-bridges, because most of the airflow is in that short circuit. Your RAM's not getting much airflow, either, I suspect. It's worth checking all your system temps with various fan setups, so you can make sure you're not cooling the CPU at the expense of the motherboard or VGA card.

[psymanproductions]

just a little update, after many hours of swapping fans and stresstesting, ive found that flipping the rear fan so it faces in towards the cpu reduces the cpu temp by a whopping 10 - 12.c!!

I've been thinking of doing this, but with both the rear and top fans on the P182. This means cold air coming in over the MOSFET heatsink and the northbridge heatpipe terminator heatsink, which then blows out any open spaces elsewhere in the case. Should provide good cooling and low noise, but whether not not it'll work for any given person will depend on the video card in use. [I'll be using a 55nm GTX260, so everything that needs cooled will be on the "bottom" of the card, and the card's so long it'll be easy to put the whole VGA cooling solution in its own "duct" in the P182.]

Using only one of the rear fans as intake, and the other as exhaust, means the shortest circuit is in through the back [as in your case] and out the top; however, you may find, depending on how your northbridge cooling works [I can't see your pictures, unfortunately], that this doesn't adequately cool the north- or south-bridges, because most of the airflow is in that short circuit. Your RAM's not getting much airflow, either, I suspect. It's worth checking all your system temps with various fan setups, so you can make sure you're not cooling the CPU at the expense of the motherboard or VGA card.

got to agree with you when you say my RAM may not be hetting much fresh air and yes it could be the same story with the north bridge. i cant get any temp readings for north bridge or RAM. The NB heatsink is defo hot to the touch but ive done plenty of stress testing and my system is stable.

i guess ive got away with it for now, maybe it will come back to haunt me in a couple of years in the form of early component failure but by then ill be ready for some upgrades anyway longevity isnt a high priority so i guess i am willing to risk it, how ever i wouldnt recommend my fan set up for every one considering what you pointed out.

[bozar]

ART Tube! Those things rule, I have one of my own to. A bit suprised to se that the videocard cooler couldn't manage to provide adequet cooling in P182, there aren't many cases with better cooling capability.

[ekerazha]

Did you test the passive hd4850 (stock heatsink) with or without the side panel closed?

[Nuller-Joe]

Nice gfx cooler