Positive Pressure P180

[andyb]

Has anyone tried the P180 using a positive pressure design with very low airflow.

I currently have my P180 with a 5v Nexus at the back, and the top hole covered over and another 5v Nexus on the Ninja.

However I have been having some technical issues with my Chipset overheating, putting a slow running fan in the front (no bay or HDD's) solves the problem, but this has added to the noise level (Tri-Cool on low).

Does anyone think that a positive pressure P180 is feasible with the specs of my system using 1 nexus @ 5v and no fans in the back and top of the case (top hole uncovered) or will I be the ginnea-pig

I am also considering a couple of other options, and thoughts are welcome.

Other options include cutting a small hole in the side of my VGA-Coolers fan shroud which sits directly over the Chipset heatsink, this will of course blow air straight over the chipset when the fan starts up (currently 60C). This option has a few possible issues, such as it could make my GPU hotter thus making the fan spin faster - creating more noise.

I could also swap the heatsink for a larger one and bend/cut fins so that they dont foul the VGA Cooler, and the last option is just to make my VGA Silencer spin faster once it hits a certain temp, therefore removing more hot air from the local area.

Of all of the options the positive pressure is the most elegant solution, and requires little work and no expense, the question is will it work.???

If it is possible, but requires higher airflow, I could cut out the metal grill, and remove the dust filter, but the door would stay closed. Replacing the fan with a Noctua would also be worth consideration as the noise level would be the same but it would provide far more (nearly double) the amount of airflow.


Andy

[Felger Carbon]

I am also considering a couple of other options, and thoughts are welcome.

My reaction is that the P180 is a carefully planned negative-pressure case, with preplanned airflow. If you buy a P180, that's what you get, and apparently it works very well the way it was designed. But it isn't designed for positive pressure. Not at all!

While positive pressure does indeed work and work well, it requires a fundamentally different approach - a big inlet fan, which has to be mounted somewhere, and the left side panel appears to be the concensus choice. That's not a P180.

[Tzupy]

First of all, when you are asking for advice on a difficult problem like this one - very low airflow and not so cool components, you should provide a picture of your current setup. I tried to find your motherboard's picture, and had a hard time finding one. I seems to be nForce3 AGP and the CPU socket is close to the AGP slot, while the memory is in the upper part of the PCB.
My only advice is to put a HR-05 SLI on your nForce3 chipset. It's too bad the CPU is so close to the AGP, because it prevents you from using a HR-03 mounted towards the back of the card.
Uncovering the upper fan hole would increase the noise that reaches your ears. Maybe a duct from (and around) the Ninja to the back fan hole would help if you move the back fan to the front, for possitive pressure, but I wouldn't expect it to work better than your current setup, except for the AC Silencer's operation.
PS. Your 4 HDDs should make a lot more noise than 3 Nexii @5V.

[Bluefront]

Everything I have running right now uses positive pressure.....so I know it works. And it doesn't require a big fan on the side panel. And it doesn't require any openings at the front. But it does require an upper vent hole big enough to let the rising hot air travel upward, and out the case. I'm not certain if the stock upper hole in your p-180 is big enough. Perhaps a quiet 120mm fan blowing upward at that location would do the trick.

But why not try it anyway? Blow all the fans inward, and close off all the vent holes except the one at the top. Let the PSU blow outward normally. Might do the trick. IMHO.....a Nexus at 5v is not blowing enough air to cool anything.

[andyb]

Thanks guys, what ytou have all said is pretty much what I expected, a mixed response and no much possitive feedback.

The heatsink that you mentioned Tzupy looks to be a winner, I will look into that, I wasnt planning on spending any money If I can get away with it, but that can be re-used in the future.

BTW I have removed 2 of my HDD's, leaving me with the 2 very quiet Samsungs, the noisier P120 spends most of its time off anyway.

I can hear either drive over the 3 Nexii @ 5v at all.

I will give the positive pressure a good testing (not right away, I am way too busy) and let you know how my system fares, I can also move the Nexus on my Ninja so it is on the top blowing upwards which will aid natural convection.


Andy

[laserred]

Wow, I must be tone-deaf at the frequency of my hard drives, because I can never "tell" that I am hearing them, even on seek. Anyways, the HR-05 should help with NB temps, and another tool to add to your arsenal of cooling with this case depending on your CPU socket's distance from the rear fan, one of Thermalright's HR-01 fan ducts. They have 2 lengths, one is orange (shorter, usually fits S775), and longer (blue, everything else). This snaps over your 120mm fan, and relatively well fits over the Ninja too. You can use it for either positive or negative case pressure, although I am pretty sure the Ninja works better with a negative flow. I will take a pic of mine, I used some metal tape to get the best fit I could onto the Ninja. In my setup, both 120s suck out, and I have a Kama Bay installed in the upper 3 drive spots, and a lone TriCool (I really don't like it's noise signature, it's much more noticeable than the two Arctic Cooling 120s I have, at any speed) in the upper HDD cage. This keeps my Opty 165@2800MHz <106*F running dual Prime95, which should be chilly enough for just about anybody. I don't have a hi-quality recording solution, but subjectively, any noise at all in the room, even breathing with my congested sinuses, covers up the fan noise under the desk. I'd imagine it's probably 24-26dB, but a very smooth noise signature. I use SmartGuardian to control the AC120s and NB fan, but I am going to put an HR-05 and VF900 in sometime this month, which should help quiet it even more. The Kama Bay fan is inaudible unless I put my ear right up to the grille, and I will likely replace the AC120s with the same model Scythe fans. I don't know about positive pressure with the 180, I tried the upper fan blowing in with the TriCool blowing in also (before the Kama Bay), but it didn't drop my CPU temps at all, it lowered my PWMIC temps by around 5*F. Good luck! I will post the pics of my setup in a bit.

[laserred]

OK, here are my pics. I'm no cable-freak, so don't make fun of my routing Anyways, I had read an article somewhere about putting the Kama Bay in, and the author talked about drilling holes and stuff into the drive mounts, but I knew with a little ingenuity and a couple cuss words I could get it done with what I had :p Anyways, to make it short, I used the normal Kama Bay mounts, and then mounted the P180 drive rails in the upper holes on the Kama Bay so that they would line up properly. When I was installing it, however, I noticed the back of the drive rails kinda bent in on their own since there was no drive body holding them outwards into the case rails. What to do? Well, I had an epiphany that the metal drive bay covers that I had just removed were obviously the same width as the rail I was trying to brace, so I bent off the little triangle-shaped tab so it would slide through the opening, and voila! the cover tabs fit right into the slots for the screws on the drive rails, and perfectly reinforced the rails to the proper width! So I kinda felt great about accomplishing that, however menial it might seem. This should help with your positive pressure task, especially with a fan that moves more air than the Scythe. Anyways, here are the pics of the Kama Bay and the HR-01 fan duct installed.

http://www.swansonsperformance.com/images/kama1.jpg
http://www.swansonsperformance.com/images/kama2.jpg
http://www.swansonsperformance.com/images/kama3.jpg
http://www.swansonsperformance.com/images/duct4.jpg
http://www.swansonsperformance.com/images/duct3.jpg
http://www.swansonsperformance.com/images/duct2.jpg

[andyb]

Update:

It seems not to be my chipset overheating after all It has started causing me problems again from a cold boot, I expect I am going to have to do a full re-install....... I am really looking forward to that

I have just realised that it could be my SB Live! wich is pretty ancient and has been in constant use since it was first available on the market (January 2000), I will try swapping that, and in a few days/weeks time I will let you know whether that has solved the issue. I am totally screwed if its my motherboard though.


Andy

[Kremmit]

I'm in the middle of building a positive pressure P180. I'm short on time, though, so progress is slow.

I'm using 3 120mm Yate Loon fans on the front panel and that's all, except for the power supply fan. Processor, vid card, and all non-PSU exhausts will be fanless. I'm considering removing the PSU fans as well, and just letting the bottom intake fan push the air through the PSU- but that's an experiment that'll have to wait until everything else is working.

I've been taking pics; and apparently my wife has been dumping the memory card on the digital camera "somewhere, on one of the computers". I may have to kill her.

[laserred]

Kremmit, do you have an old-style P180? I have one of the new ones, and my lower chamber front 120mm mount in front of the HDD cage is riveted in, preventing anything at all from going in its place. I know it's not a huge deal in the big scheme of things, but there are like 8 rivets, like Antec never wanted anybody to put a fan in front of the lower chamber. I removed the lower chamber fan, to ease routing the octopus of PSU wiring, and to make it possible to power the HDDs in the lower cage without further cluttering the main chamber with wires that just popped up and then back down again. It makes a clear shot from the PSU intake to the back of both HDDs, and DTemp reports the drives at 98*F. So, I guess it works, but I would have liked to have a 120 in front of the HDDs just to balance the airflow. Just another project on the list....

[Kremmit]

I seem to have a hybrid P180, it came with a VGA duct, but a new-style 3-layer front door and the new-style bottom padding on the PSU cage. I'm guessing it was an old-style case that was retrofit before it left Antec's hands, but who knows?

Antec clearly wasn't planning on a front panel fan in the lower chamber, but danged if I know WHY. It would have been a trivial change in the manufacturing process, and cleaned up the airflow and cable routing in the lower chamber. My only guess is that they wanted the fan to be mid-mounted in order to keep it's noise away from the front door- but if that's so, why isn't the stock fan mount in the middle chamber set up that way? Besides, making front-mounting an option wouldn't have made it impossible to mid-mount it anyway.

Anyway, I found my pictures- here's what I've done in the lower chamber. BTW, a huge shout out to Google for providing Picassa and their web album service for free. I put this together while I was writing this post, would've taken me days the old-fashioned way.

Slideshow (Neat, but higher bandwidth):
http://picasaweb.google.com/Kremmit/P18 ... 8712216562

Gallery (thumbnails for you dial-up types):
http://picasaweb.google.com/Kremmit/P18 ... hamberMods

[s_xero]

Why would one want a positive pressure case, I don't understand.

and as Felgor has posted, the P180 is definetly at it's best when used with negative pressure - which of I think is far superior to positive pressure.

Only in very small (read: costum) cases positive pressure could be better through extensive ducting.
And yeah, I know, it positive should be able to work as well as negative, isn't it?

[Bluefront]

s_xero......you are absolutely wrong about positive pressure. I suspect this common attitude comes from not having tried a positive pressure case, and the fact that most OEM setups are mostly negative pressure.

If you have a dust concern, a completely positive pressure case, with the fans drawing through good filters, is far superior to a negative pressure case. There are a large number of positive pressure benefits....but you have to construct your setup properly to gain those benefits. It's mostly DIY....if you can't do it, you'll be stuck with a common, dust prone computer.

[andyb]

Everything is on hold at the moment until I get my new 500GB Samsung (I have run out of space), and my PC is flaky at the moment. The front fan has not helped so the problem is not the north/southbridge overheating.

All plans are on-hold until I get my new drive, and totall re-install my system.

The possible causes of my computer problem are:

HDD's becoming faulty (I cant do anything until I have a new drive).
Motherboard becoming faulty - often a bastard to test.
North/southbridge overheating - unlikely as a tri-cool on high doesnt fix the problem.
Virus - ruled out.
OS/drivers - Driver have been re-installed waiting for new HDD to re-install OS.
Other hardware - SB Live not tested, Mouse tested, keyboard replaced.

As you can tell I really cant figure out the problem (and thats my job), but that is not part of the positive pressure idea. I will try my case possitive once I have fixed my intermittent problem (becoming worse - mobo most likely).


Andy

[andyb]

I am 90% certian I know my fault, but I still need to tear out my SB Live, and re-seat the RAM (why not).

I see motherboard faults every week (one of the most common), but I have never seen what I "appear to have wrong" with my mobo, my USB has gone pear shaped.!!! Yes USB. My quite fantastic Logitech G7 has been getting more glitchy and jumpy for a few weeks, I have also re-connected my "Cordless MouseMan" and my system seems to be fine. Whilst I had my PS/2 mouse attached and copying some drivers from a USB pen drive my mouse was "glitchy".


Andy

PS: New Samsung HD501HJ 15-minute install of windows to the desktop, that drive is damned quick on the desktop as well (on quiet using the Samsung tools).

[andyb]

I have ordered myself a really nasty shit board made by that scummy company ECS because I just cant live with my PC the way it is.

On the plus side it has the CPU socket near the top left corner, the NB chip passively cooled below that, and the AGP sockted below that so no modification needed, and its only £35 inc VAT.

On the negative side, its made by ECS, it only has 100meg LAN, it only supports 2 SATA devices, and its only SATA150, and I will probably have to re-install windows.


Andy

[jhhoffma]

s_xero......you are absolutely wrong about positive pressure. I suspect this common attitude comes from not having tried a positive pressure case, and the fact that most OEM setups are mostly negative pressure.

There are a large number of positive pressure benefits....but you have to construct your setup properly to gain those benefits.

I think this attitude comes from the complexity of building positive pressure cases quietly. With a negative pressure case, it's easy, put one (or two) fans exhausting air at the upper rear of the case and an inlet in front and watch physics do the rest. Easy for everyone and cheap for OEMs to design.

With positive pressure, things need to be thought out much more. Back when we didn't account for quietness (late 90's/early 00's) we had a lot of positive pressure cases that worked, we just didn't know that's what they were. And when we needed more cooling, we just added another fan and didn't give it a second thought. Stupid as this was, it was the simple way of doing then.

Now were are smarter about this sort of thing and realize, "hey, we want quiet too!" That rules out the "lots of fans" approach, and for some people PP cases are harder to understand. That and with most of the discussions of quiet fans goes to removing backpressure/resistance, a PP case might seem counter-intuitive.

I for one will stick with negative pressure cases (despite the dust), because it's easiest for me to do and that's what my case is designed for. But when I have to clean out my case every month (which is a hassle to get it out of it's compartment), I do long for the day when I can go positive and rid myself of the vermin known as dustbunnies.

[jaganath]

OK, I buy the fact that PP cases are less prone to dust accumulation, but I still can't figure out why? Surely if dust is distributed evenly throughout the air, and both PP and NP move the same volume of air through the case, then hypothetically the level of dust deposition should be the same? Are the benefits of PP only fully realised with filtering?

[PopCorn]

mainly yes the idea is to get all the air going in the case to go though a filter to get rid of dust and hair and what not with negitive pressure the air is being sucked in though all openings, mainly the least restricted and that is why putting a filter in a negitive pressure case only helps the problem alittle because now the area that has the filter is more blocked causing the other fans to pull air from cracks open slots witch brings back ur dust... hope that helps

[nici]

You can block all the small holes, it's easy enough with some tape.

How is this for positive pressure P180?



Personally im starting to think that negative pressure is the way to go, unless my dual 120x38mm panaflo birdcage works.

[RAFH]

But will you get all the small holes and the slight gaps at the doors and the cracks between the drives and all the other little sources of leakage. That's why positive pressure is the easier method, you don't have to hunt down each and every little leak.

A big advantage with positive pressure is you are putting the fans deep inside the case, behind bezels and filters. This is especially true with the SOLO as its intake vent is around the perimeter of the front panel and has a lip that deflects noise coming out the in slots back away from the front. So the main source of noise is down in there and its well muffled by everything else.

If you want absolute silence, put the hot parts in a separate room and have just the on/off switch, whatever indicators you need, your input devices and an external ODD in the room you are in. If the wall is concrete you aren't going to hear anything.

[tibetan mod king]

But will you get all the small holes and the slight gaps at the doors and the cracks between the drives and all the other little sources of leakage. That's why positive pressure is the easier method, you don't have to hunt down each and every little leak.

A big advantage with positive pressure is you are putting the fans deep inside the case, behind bezels and filters. This is especially true with the SOLO as its intake vent is around the perimeter of the front panel and has a lip that deflects noise coming out the in slots back away from the front. So the main source of noise is down in there and its well muffled by everything else.

If you want absolute silence, put the hot parts in a separate room and have just the on/off switch, whatever indicators you need, your input devices and an external ODD in the room you are in. If the wall is concrete you aren't going to hear anything.

Along the lines of your good idea of the concrete wall, you can construct a DIY sound isolation box that will give you a very quiet computer.

Isolation chambers have been used for decades to quiet/silence industrial machinery. They offer filtered air passages, so you get a quiet, low/no dust computer with a minimum of fuss. The other advantage of the iso box approach is that you can use the best sound reduction technologies, not what is limited to fitting/working in a PC case. It is fully possible to build an iso box where you cannot hear any noise beyond the ambient.

It does require some space and time to build, but in the end gives you the bliss of quiet. Alternatively for those who buy vs. build, there are many excellent isolation boxes available such as the gCab:



You can check out various models here:
http://www.proaudiosolutions.com/IsoRaxx-s/116.htm

Keep in mind there are many additional options available, some cheaper some more expensive.

DIY will pretty much always save you a lot of money as iso boxes have considerable labor and shipping costs.

[sjschwinn]

I'm in the middle of building a positive pressure P180. I'm short on time, though, so progress is slow.

I'm using 3 120mm Yate Loon fans on the front panel and that's all, except for the power supply fan. Processor, vid card, and all non-PSU exhausts will be fanless. I'm considering removing the PSU fans as well, and just letting the bottom intake fan push the air through the PSU- but that's an experiment that'll have to wait until everything else is working.

I've been taking pics; and apparently my wife has been dumping the memory card on the digital camera "somewhere, on one of the computers". I may have to kill her.

I'm doing something similar, except I have completely isolated the lower PSU/HDD bay from the others, and it works on the push-pull principle of the mid-mounted fan. I have pics, but am going to wait to post until I get it closer to finished and have some temp data.

Oh, and to say I've got a "purist" positive-pressure setup is not really correct. It is a managed slightly-positive-pressure setup with directed exhaust and automatic fan controllers. It may not be silient, but when you see what's packed inside you'll see why it can't be!

[born2code]

You can block all the small holes, it's easy enough with some tape.

How is this for positive pressure P180?



Personally im starting to think that negative pressure is the way to go, unless my dual 120x38mm panaflo birdcage works.

Nici,

How did you make those holes?

[nici]

I made them with a hole saw.