SPCR

I believe it can cool the hard disk pretty well, however the temperature of my GreenPower disk is not a big problem (40C in system load & in summer). I have a passively cooled VGA card (AC S1 on HD3650) which can bump to ~80C in GPU burn.

The first question is: Does the front fan improve the cooling of both disk and VGA card with a decent rotation rate (e.g. 800rpm~1000rpm)? The second question is: What's the rate setting of the front fan for Solo users without adding extra noise? There are few choices of 9cm fan on market and generally they have a very high speed by default (1000rpm~2000rpm).

netmask254 wrote:which can bump to ~80C in GPU burn.

I don't think it's such an high temp.

I used to have two NF-B9 (with U.L.N.A.) in the front of my SOLO. However, I removed them, but the temps of all component remained the same. The exception was the HDD (a SP2504C); its temp rose from 35-40 to 45-50.

Unless your system suffers from overheating, you don't need any intake fans.

netmask254 wrote:I have a passively cooled VGA card (AC S1 on HD3650) which can bump to ~80C in GPU burn.

Iirc, SPCR found out that the case exhaust fan is more important for keeping a passive VGA heatsink cool.

Have you tried removing a few expansion slot covers? Since airflow takes the easiest path, the rear case fan will draw air through those open slots, past the VGA heatsink.

flemeister wrote:Iirc, SPCR found out that the case exhaust fan is more important for keeping a passive VGA heatsink cool.

I personally have had fanless video cards get very hot (90-100C) with just a rear exhaust fan. Since I generally have a big HS on the CPU, I don't have much airflow from the CPU and the rear fan runs very slow because the temps of everything else is fine. So having a slow-moving fan at the front of the case blowing air over the GPU can help keep it at a more reasonable temp without being noticeable.

Also, keep in mind you can have a 120mm fan in there instead of the 2 92mm ones.

As previously stated by the other posters, I found that the 92mm fans are good for local HD airflow. If you want serious GPU airflow, stick a 120mm behind those bays and you'll be in business !

Your GPU is only getting to 80C while in GPU Burn? Does it even get to 70C while running games or other graphics intensive programs? The temp on the gpu chip is fine....the more important question is: how hot are your VRM chips getting with no airflow?

I agree with your opinions. According to my previous experience, the front ingress fan, even if it's 12cm, is not cost effective (cooling versus noise) and difficult to notice the difference. The 80C is definitely not high for GPU core, but the VRM temperature is unknown.

However, I was also impressed by the front fan mounted behind hard disk cube in Puget Serenity i7 PC System, which can cool the passive VGA card very well. I will move on find some similar solutions on Solo.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1052-page3.html

Exactly what I meant !! Stick the 120mm fan BEHIND the hard drive bays.

You can try suspending the fan in the rear hard drive elastics like I did.

The OP's 80C GPU temp at long 100% load requires no action -- it's not even hot for a GPU. If it was 100C, then I might worry... but only if it reached that temp in real apps, not an artificial burn. Bottom line: Leave it, man!