Front to Back Airflow in an Antec Fusion

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ciz28
Posts: 141
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 12:17 am
Location: Redmond, WA

Front to Back Airflow in an Antec Fusion

Post by ciz28 » Sat Apr 05, 2008 8:29 pm

Given the constraints of the TV stand housing my HTPC, I had to figure out a way to create effective front to back airflow in my Antec Fusion. I created some ducts for my SilenX 80mm fans to exhaust air out the rear 70mm opening and the unused PCI slots. The ducts are made out of corrugated cardboard using super glue for the seams. The fans are taped in place using clear packing tape, which seems to have held up well enough after many hours of testing.

I am now sitting with a CPU temperature of 64c running one instance of Prime95. I figure this is more load than my HTPC will ever see anyways, so it should be a good enough test.

System specs:

Antec Fusion Black case
Abit NF-M2 nView motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ processor
2x 1GB PC2-5300 memory
GeForce 7300 LE 128MB video card
Hauppauge HVR-1600 tuner card
40GB Seagate Barracuda IV hard drive
500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive
16X Lite On DVD-ROM drive
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit
Scythe Ninja Mini CPU cooler
2x SilenX IXP-54-09 80mm case fans

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psyopper
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Post by psyopper » Sat Apr 05, 2008 8:57 pm

Interesting idea and it looks good too. Do you have any "before" stats to see of you are getting a benefit from the duct?

Have you thought about ducting the Minja intake to one of the 80mm ports on the side of the case? I would try the one towards the read and leave the other one open to the case for ventilating over the motherboard to the other fan.

ciz28
Posts: 141
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 12:17 am
Location: Redmond, WA

Post by ciz28 » Sat Apr 05, 2008 9:12 pm

psyopper wrote:Interesting idea and it looks good too. Do you have any "before" stats to see of you are getting a benefit from the duct?

Have you thought about ducting the Minja intake to one of the 80mm ports on the side of the case? I would try the one towards the read and leave the other one open to the case for ventilating over the motherboard to the other fan.
Thanks for the compliment. I have no real "before" stats for direct comparison as I tinkered with many different setups with and without the side 120mm fans before figuring this out. All I can say for certain is that several configurations ended up with CPU load temperatures over 100c :shock:

I wouldn't be able to do your idea of a ducted intake from the side because those side vents are blocked pretty well by the side of the TV stand it sits in. If there was more clearance I would just run the side 120mm fans like everyone else already does :)

kieran45
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Post by kieran45 » Sun Apr 06, 2008 2:25 am

This is good. I have the same problem you do, my TV stand is too narrow, and I don't get good ventilation through the sides. I have about 8mm or so on either side of the case. At the moment I am running both side fans into the case instead of out, and I have strapped an 80mm exhaust onto the back vent (like you have with the minja). No ducting though.

My CPU temps are ok, but the side fans make a bit too much noise for my liking due to the pressure of sucking through the limited space on the side. The biggest issue for me is I have two tuner cards, and they get pretty hot, as there is not much airflow on that side of the case. I want to stick a video card in, but I don't think there is enough airflow.

I really like the duct you have over your two PCI cards. This might give me enough air flow to stick a video card in too. :D

I think I will try the same setup you have going and see how I go. At least using the two 80mm fans should be quieter than the two 120mm and 80mm I have now.

Have you done anything to the side vents and the top vent? Closed them up or left them open?

Thanks for the ideas.

ciz28
Posts: 141
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 12:17 am
Location: Redmond, WA

Post by ciz28 » Sun Apr 06, 2008 1:16 pm

kieran45 wrote:This is good. I have the same problem you do, my TV stand is too narrow, and I don't get good ventilation through the sides. I have about 8mm or so on either side of the case. At the moment I am running both side fans into the case instead of out, and I have strapped an 80mm exhaust onto the back vent (like you have with the minja). No ducting though.
I had to figure that others would be running into the same side clearance issues I was having, so I'm glad I could provide some inspiration.
kieran45 wrote:My CPU temps are ok, but the side fans make a bit too much noise for my liking due to the pressure of sucking through the limited space on the side.
My original configuration had the same problem you had with the side 120mm fans causing a huge amount of noise from turbulance against the side of the TV stand. Now things are much quieter with the more free flowing 80mm fans in place.
kieran45 wrote:The biggest issue for me is I have two tuner cards, and they get pretty hot, as there is not much airflow on that side of the case. I want to stick a video card in, but I don't think there is enough airflow.

I really like the duct you have over your two PCI cards. This might give me enough air flow to stick a video card in too. :D
My passive GeForce 7300 LE was getting *really* hot when I tried just a single duct over the Ninja Mini. Those SilenX fans really don't move a whole lot of air, so things improved dramatically when I added the duct over the PCI slots.
kieran45 wrote:I think I will try the same setup you have going and see how I go. At least using the two 80mm fans should be quieter than the two 120mm and 80mm I have now.

Have you done anything to the side vents and the top vent? Closed them up or left them open?

Thanks for the ideas.
I played around with blocking off the PSU side vents, the top vent, and the 120mm side vents but none of them really did much good. I don't think the two SilenX fans move enough air to get much benefit from trying to run a real negative pressure setup pulling air in from the front. Now with all of the vents open I think it provides an opportunity for hot air to passively escape from the dead pockets that the fans can't pick up.

Nick Geraedts
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Post by Nick Geraedts » Sun Apr 06, 2008 2:37 pm

If you're willing to do so, I'd recommend taking a dremel (or any other rotary tool) to the rear grille behind your CPU duct. MikeC has an article somewhere around here outlining the effects of various grilles, and shows that with a simple wire grill still cuts down airflow by about 15% (IIRC). You'd probably see a bit more reduction in temperature due to the increased airflow.

ciz28
Posts: 141
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 12:17 am
Location: Redmond, WA

Post by ciz28 » Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:04 pm

Nick Geraedts wrote:If you're willing to do so, I'd recommend taking a dremel (or any other rotary tool) to the rear grille behind your CPU duct. MikeC has an article somewhere around here outlining the effects of various grilles, and shows that with a simple wire grill still cuts down airflow by about 15% (IIRC). You'd probably see a bit more reduction in temperature due to the increased airflow.
Good suggestion, though with my temperatures pretty well under control, I don't think it's really worth my time to tear apart the whole system to do that. Since the noise from my HTPC is well below the sound floor of my living room, I might consider putting another fan on the Ninja Mini in a push-pull configuration, but again, I'm not worried enough about my temperatures to do that yet.

Nick Geraedts
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Post by Nick Geraedts » Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:33 pm

60C+ on that CPU is the only thing that worries me, especially with only a single instance of Prime running. I can imagine a large HD video stream could put more load on the system than the single Prime test (especially with multi-threaded decoders coming out now).

Does the system run 24/7, or only when you're actually using it? If it's purely an HTPC? If it's the latter, then you can probably get away with increasing the fan speeds a little without sacrificing your entertainment experience. Chances are any movie/TV show that you watch will drown out the noise of the system. It's a simple fix that doesn't require removing everything from the case (unlike the dremel mod).

I've got an old XBox that I'm using as my el-cheapo HTPC, and with the fan on minimum, it's barely audible. That being said, being able to hear the fan when nothing else is running reminds me that the system is on, and reminds me to turn if off if I've forgotten to do so. :)

ciz28
Posts: 141
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 12:17 am
Location: Redmond, WA

Post by ciz28 » Sun Apr 06, 2008 5:28 pm

Nick Geraedts wrote:60C+ on that CPU is the only thing that worries me, especially with only a single instance of Prime running. I can imagine a large HD video stream could put more load on the system than the single Prime test (especially with multi-threaded decoders coming out now).

Does the system run 24/7, or only when you're actually using it? If it's purely an HTPC? If it's the latter, then you can probably get away with increasing the fan speeds a little without sacrificing your entertainment experience. Chances are any movie/TV show that you watch will drown out the noise of the system. It's a simple fix that doesn't require removing everything from the case (unlike the dremel mod).
My system runs 24/7, but not always at over 60c. It idles at 48c, plays DVR-MS recorded TV at 56c, and plays 1080p x264 videos at 62c. One thing worth noting is that all of these temperatures are at 2600MHz @ 1.35V with no Cool n Quiet. For some reason my motherboard only puts out 1.325V on the default setting, so I have to override the defaults to make things stable which disables Cool n Quiet.

I might consider replacing the SilenX fans to provide more cooling, but they are currently running at max speed of 1300rpm at 12V. Unfortunately they were the only reasonable choice at my local Fry's when I was putting this all together. Since my motherboard has 4-pin PWM headers, I could get some fans to take advantage of the built-in fan throttling.

Nick Geraedts
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Post by Nick Geraedts » Sun Apr 06, 2008 8:52 pm

Admittedly, all of the systems I've built in the past two years have been Intel-based (just personal preference... I trust the chipsets more), so I'm not sure what the thermal specs are on that CPU. As long as you're within the designed limits you should be fine. I just go by the motto "the cooler the better" (without creating condensation...).

I prefer to use a manual fan controller to adjust fan speeds. I'd rather have a system that made a constant, quiet sound to one that varied between being audible and not. Some motherboards have the 4-pin PWM control, but also allow for the choice of "traditional" 3-pin output. Have you looked into this option on your board? Otherwise, a couple of fanmates should do the trick to slow down the fans to an acceptable level.

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