Advice with possible air intakes on chest-PC

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:09 am

Hi,

I will be eventually building a PC into a wooden chest that I bought from local antique-warehouse. It's nicely sized, so that i can fit proper ATX mobo and PSU on the bottom of the chest with few centimeters to spare. It has also some room in height being ~23cm top to base.

Problem is that I really don't want to open any visible sides for intakes. Also I really like to have some sort of filtering in intake. In my current setup I have half of a car fresh air filter in my intake duct.

Do any of you have any idea, would it be feasible to create the intake to the bottom of the chest, between the MB stands? According to ATX MB-specs, there should be space for ~13*20cm opening under there. If I would lift MB higher than normally, let's say to 2cm, would it be enough for intake of a "normal" computer? This way I can still fit a 80mm fan over the videocard(s), if required. This I plan to build in there anyway, for later (hotter) purposes. As main exhaust I plan to use 120mm fan, propably a Nexus.

I plan to use it as our main computer, but it will also act as as HTPC as it will be close our LCD projector. All the normal SPCR requirements are of cource there: cool CPU, GPU, lownoise HDD&PSU etc. Those will be decided on later date, when I have all the design specs done.

Main problems are the optical drive location and this intake issue. I just don't want to screw that up, as It will make or brake the lownoise characteristics. Any insights and ideas are welcomed.

Thanks in advance...

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:04 am

Sounds feasible, though it's hard to judge without better numbers or pictures. There are a lot of impressive micro-ATX mobos these days, and one of those would allow an unobstructed intake of roughly 75mm by 240mm. How much heat are you planning to make?

Le_Gritche · Post by **Le_Gritche** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 4:35 pm

Marvin wrote:Problem is that I really don't want to open any visible sides for intakes. Also I really like to have some sort of filtering in intake. In my current setup I have half of a car fresh air filter in my intake duct.

Maybe you could put both the intake and the exhaust on the same side of the wooden chest (the side facing a wall). There as been some exemples of setup with a similar U-shapped airpath posted in the gallery.

Gorsnak · Post by **Gorsnak** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 8:37 pm

So long as the air pathways around the edges of the motherboard are reasonably unrestricted, I don't see any reason why a bottom intake beneath the mobo wouldn't work. Sounds like a good way to have a large intake without leaving a direct pathway for sound to escape.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:56 pm

HammerSandwich wrote:Sounds feasible, though it's hard to judge without better numbers or pictures. There are a lot of impressive micro-ATX mobos these days, and one of those would allow an unobstructed intake of roughly 75mm by 240mm. How much heat are you planning to make?

Thanks to all replies,

I plan to put fullsize ATX-MB, as that still would allow me to have about 1-2cm airpath around the edges on all sides. Front edge might have even bit more room. And full ATX will give me more space to expand/upgrade HW.

Plans are to put either 35W AMD or Conroe, depending what is best bang for buck at the time of purchace. Videocard will be passively cooled, 7600GS seems to fit the bill ATM. About biggest SATA drive will be there, as far as it gets approval from this community

Depending on MB, soundcard, and TV-tuner, DVD-burner and also maybe WLAN, if I'm too lazy to put another LAN-cable through the wall. It won't be used for gaming that much, but I'd think that it will be playing lots of movies.

The Chest has internal dimensions of W43*D28*H23cm.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 6:26 am

Go for it: that should be plenty of room for all your hardware. Sounds like a cool project.

silentsouth · Post by **silentsouth** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 8:00 am

This is one of those annoying "that's not what I'm asking" type replies, but I'm about to do the same thing, and I just decided to build my computer in a standard enclosure THEN put that box inside my furniture.

Your furniture may not be big enough, but I'm doing it so that I 1) can move the thing if I want and 2) have no clearance issues etc.

On that note: what do y'all suggest as a fan outside my enclosure P180b yet inside the furniture? It would probably be difficult to power it from inside the case (conveniently), so I might just have to plug it into the wall. (Don't let this hijack the post.)

Advice with possible air intakes on chest-PC

Advice with possible air intakes on chest-PC

Re: Advice with possible air intakes on chest-PC