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PC Cases for High Dust Enviornments?
Ummagumma asks: "My computers have recently been relegated to the basement by decree of the fiancee. Problem is, the basement is carpeted (with a really old carpet), and I have two cats, which generate alot of 'fuzz'. I have had to disassemble my PC to clean the fans and heatsinks out several times now. I am looking for a case that has a built in filter of some kind, even a simple one, that wont blow the bank balance. I have found the Antec SLK3700AMB, but cannot verify that is has a filter, though I have been told it may have. I figure at least a few of you are in a similar situation, so what are you using to prevent dust and fuzz from getting into your cases? My only requirements are: At least mid-sized (full size atx board), room for 4 5.25" drives, minimum 300W powersupply, a front and rear 120mm case fan (or mountings), with a filter at least on the intake." Some of the aluminum cases from Lian Li (and I can't remember the exact model numbers) have simple filter in their front mounted fans. What other case manufacturers have such features?
A nylon stocking will go a long way in keeping cat hair out of your chassis. It won't block everything, but on the plus side airflow is not too bad. Don't forget to filter your power supply if it set to suck rather than blow outside air.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I work for a scrap metal recycling company, with offices and recycling facilities throughout the midwest United States. As you could imagine, the dust is absolutely horrible, and what's worse is that it has a high metallic content (little bits of metal on a motherboard == sparks, burn-outs, shorts, etc). I have yet to find a good solution, other than someone mentioning puting coffee filters near any air vents on the case (which I haven't tried yet).
To be honest, I don't really care if it's a do-it-yourself solution or if there's a company out there that sells "filtered" PCs that aren't outrageously priced (most "hardened" PCs are WAY out of the price range).
We're currently using standard Compaq and IBM business-class Intel workstations and servers, but find that dust and heat can still cause problems. The Compaq PCs come with an on-site warranty, and I pay a little extra for the IBM on-site warranty, but I feel that there should be a better solution then having them constantly out to replace hardware that fails due to dust.
Don Head
UNIX/Linux Administrator
A wire frame with hooks hanging internally from the trame to hook over the intakes... It works. Cats and smokers make for bad server rooms, but with this (and it doesn't look so bad - an opportunity to be creative), until I need to change it, which is sort of the point) works out reasonably well without outfitting my servers with HEPPA approved air intakes. Get some decent, stiff thin wire (I had some laying around, so I can't specify, but I'm guessing it is about 24 guage, soft) and play with it. Breathing filters are easy to modify to place over it and do not seem to harm airflow.
I forget what 8 was for.
Filters out the dust pretty well. And your computer room won't stank either. (Yes I meant "stank")
Don't limit your case selection based on which have filters in the front! You can always get some filters and pop them in there. This is one of the filters I have used: http://www.directron.com/cr212nd.html -- These filters are great on dust. I have filters on all of the intake fans on my PC and have had nearly no dust in there. Just remember to clean them!!
Remember one other thing, filters are only half of the equation. To really get rid of dust you need positive airflow. What this means is, you need more air flowing in than you have flowing out. (But not too much, or it will be bad for your cooling) 10-20cfm is a good amount of extra air to have blowing in. This positive airflow creates a bit of pressure in the case which helps push dust out of the case.
It really is amazing how much filters and a bit of positive airflow can help. Try it and I guarentee as dust free a case as one can get!
If your machines have been banished to the basement, its only fair that the cats be banished FROM the basement. That should help the cat hair problem. (BTW, the fact that your stuff must be put in the dungeon doesn't seem quite fair to me, but I don't know the situation...)
I run a small HEPA filtering unit in my office, which helps with the dust. I don't have cats, so I don't have that problem.
You might also check out an Ionic Breeze from the Sharper Image. Supposedly it is supposed to pull stuff out of the air fairly well. However, I've also read concerns about the ozone that is produced by them.
My experience is that case manufacturers lack imagination. I've never seen a well-designed case, although some are better than others.
I did a search of more than 40 case manufacturers (several years ago) and the only one I was able to find that has cases with externally accessible filters is Macase. My experience is that the Macase power supplies have an extremely high failure rate, but they sell cases without power supplies.
It's great to be able to clean the filter without taking the chassis apart. Duh!! to the other manufacturers.
The Macase filters are good enough to reduce the dust by 95%. They are washable. It's necessary that the intake fan, behind the filter, has a higher airflow than the exhaust fan, inside the power supply. That way there is always positive air pressure, and air that has been filtered flows out of the leaks.
I don't know if Macase sells to the public. I've only bought wholesale from them.
I have an OpenBrick (http://openbrick.org), which works very nicely as a thin client box connecting to faster/noisier machines located elsewhere in the house; obviously, laptops work well for this, too, and since the bulk of the processing is offloaded to the server, even a fairly old machine works well, so long as it can run X and/or a VNC client.
With wireless cards thrown into the mix, you can just stuff the bigger machines into the attic, a closet, etc., and then set up your thin client workstations wherever you like, without fear of noise and space consumption making them a nuisance.
All of this breaks down as soon as you want to run a recent game of any sort, of course, but that's what the console systems in the living room are for.
This is the method we used in our server room at an old job, until we got a proper Cooling/filter system.
We just went to the hardware store and got some flebible filter material, and put it in front of the air intake fan. First it was on flat, but found it to gum-up too quickly, and not allow enough air through. Then we made a little baggie like thing out of it, (by folding it over, and taping the sides).
Worked well enough for our needs, and kept a LOT of dust/other crap out of the case. Plus, it was cheap.
Why dont you try some fan filters.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
build a plexiglass case around the PC itself with several industrial fans and filters of the sort used in large electrical enclosures.
Easily replaced without issue , filters are easily changed and they're a standard type to everything else around there. Plus you don't ever have to cut your case up.
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
Well, if you're worried about keeping dust out of your case, keep it off the floor. Don't put it on your desk, either. I use a small table or 2x4s to keep my cases above ground-level... there's not too much dirt in mid-air. For me, it's cut the dust down to an unnoticeable level.
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
How about you find another GF?
:) in the bedroom or lounge room, and we also have a network cable coming into the lounge room for the xbox, AP (so its more central in the middle of the house) and to her sons bedroom where a PC is.
No one needs a GF/Finace that forces you to put your computers in the basement. Thats just not on.
You certainly don't want to marry and spend the rest of your life with someone that doesn't accept your geekiness and need for computers.
My gf lets me have my own "geek pad" in her house. Its where all my geeky stuff is, and i spend alot of time there, even tho my geekyness does spread into the house.
I often use my laptop (powerbook!
So even tho most of my stuff is in the geekpad, i still have stuff spreading out through the house.
The best thing is, she accepts me the way she is.
BTW: I have the geekpad because i wanted it, not because i was forced into it like you were forced into your basement.
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
First, make sure your case has positive pressure with respect to the outside. All your filtered fans should face in, such that any leakage is in the out direction. This is very important because otherwise, your removable media drives will act as filters, trapping the dust from the air that gets sucked in through them.
In my case, the power supply fan is the only exhaust fan. All the other fans in the case face in, and all are equipped with filters. They flow less because of the filters, but they keep up with the power supply fan, so the case is ever so slightly pressurized.
Secondly, hardware stores abound with cheap filter material. There's this great open-cell foam filter that you're supposed to wrap around your air conditioner's condenser coil to keep cottonwood fluff out. I usually just blast the thing out with the garden hose... but the filter medium is ideal for trapping large dust, and since it's intended to wrap an entire condenser, you get about 20 square feet for just a couple bucks.
There are also these little 4"x12" filters designed to be slipped behind your HVAC system's registers. Don't do that -- your forced air furnace was designed for a particular flow rate, and impeding it will cause problems. The filters, on the other hand, are just what your computer needs. They're denser material, and they work well as a second stage filter, behind the foam described above.
Ironically, about the only material at the hardware store that doesn't work very well as a computer air filter, is furnace air filter media. It's too thick for convenient mounting, and it's hard to work with.
Thirdly, the case you pick is important. Try a large tower "server" case, they usually have plenty of room for mounting extra fans, and they're better designed with respect to airflow. Filters will drastically reduce the effectiveness of each fan, so plan for at least double your usual number of fans. (Invest in some quiet ones with the fluid bearings.)
A friend recently gave me an unused computer that just happened to be built in the world's coolest case. The little fan mounting trays have plenty of space to tuck filter material inside, and everything just clips into place, no tools needed. It's a SupermicrO tower. I've been inside a lot of computer cases, and this one is by far the best-designed I've ever seen. (I have no relationship to Supermicro, I'm just impressed by their product.)
I'm going to echo the sentiment of another poster who said to elevate the machine. Get it off the floor, although I don't see a problem with setting it on a table. Just make double-sure that it's not sucking air in through openings near the bottom. I've seen lots of office desktops turn into little stationary vacuum cleaners, neatly inhaling every shred of dust that falls near them.
Good luck!
As long as the CPU isn't producing insane amounts of heat, just turn the fan in the PSU around so it sucks air instead of blowing it, and whack a plastic scouring pad (available in the dishwashing things at your nearest supermarket for a small fraction of a dollar each in bulk packs) across your new air intake. You might have to use scissors to shape the scourer aound mains plugs, switches et al, but that's easy. Feed it through the washing machine every so often - with a low-lint load - or just hand-wash it with dishwashing detergent.
If you have a motherous great room-heater for a CPU, you can add a case fan with a similar filter, or bolt another "pusher" fan over the PSU fan intake on standoffs (to allow room for dropping the scourer in between the fans).
For a multi-stage filter, get some pantyhose and flywire (aka "flyscreen", "termi-mesh" would also do, and at a pinch some coarse shadecloth) and one of those little wire baskets people use for holding garlic, potpourri, nuts and such. If you position it right, you can use a loop of wire attached to a case bolt as a hinge on one side of the basket and as a catch on the other. Stretch the pantyhose over the outside of the basket, and the flywire outside that. You will need two fans to push enough air through this arrangement.
If you have multiple computers to filter, I suggest making a single large filter assembly with a brace of fans feeding a distribution pipe, and holes on the side of that with spongy sealing tape around them to butt the PSU intakes of your boxes against (fans reversed in those, of course). An unemployed evapourative aircon picked up off the kerb during a council cleanup day and used absolutely dry can be a great start to a large filter assembly.
It helps to be able to monitor the health of all of your fans, and have a computer squeak at you if it all goes horribly wrong, which monitoring can be done optically or with a magnet on the hub not on a blade tip (think balance).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The Antec SX1040BII definitely has a filter for the intake fans, as indicated in the link and because I have one. It doesn't meet your requirements because it has 4x80mm fans, not 2x120mm. The one I got has a good Antec Truepower 400W power supply. It was $80 at CompUSA (I needed a case fast).
I would suspect that since there is not explicit mention of a filter on Antec's page for the SLK3700AMB that it doesn't have a filter.
You may want to head over to the Case and Cooling Fetish forum at Ars Technica and search for filter-related posts. Some members there know their stuff. The two tips I gleaned were:
What I would do is build a box that the computer goes inside of.
Make a box that is about 4x3x3 feet out of good looking wood (dimensions subject to change based upon what you will be putting into it). Use metal cabinet hinges to attach the door, so that the system closes fairly tightly. Cover the inside with copper flashing, like what is used for roofing. At the corners, leave a tab of copper from both sides, then fold the tabs over each other so you end up with several layers of copper from each side. This gives you a good Faraday cage, reducing EMI.
Next, cut holes for wires and ventilation. I would put an outlet strip on the inside so you run 1 power line in, then plug the computer and what ever else lives in the box in to that power strip. Connect the ground on the power strip to the copper shield.
On the ventilation holes: use LARGE slow fans - a couple of 12 inch fans would be best. Put the fans on the INSIDE of the box, mounted on rubber pads (e.g. rubber washers), blowing inward. Leave a couple of holes for air to escape - the best pattern is for the fans to be low, and the escape holes to be high. Put either chicken wire or metallic window screen (preferred, as it helps keep hair out) over the holes to maintain the EMI shielding (the wire goes between the fan and the inside of the box. On the OUTSIDE of the intake holes (the ones with the fans) put a furnace air filter. The idea here is LOTS of surface area to filter, to reduce the restriction of the airflow.
Now, on the inside, glue foam - plain old "foam rubber" works, but acoustic foam (the kind cut with ribs on it) is best. On the bottom, put in another board mounted on either rubber pieces or a slab of foam. This isolates the computer from the case and absorbes the noise inside the box.
You now have a box that is very quite, both electrically and acousically, and keeps the dust and pet hair out. (do remember to check the filter once a month.)
With such a system, you may even be able to move the machines back toward the living area (if you make the box out of a good looking wood and do a good job of it, and either paint or stain it so it looks like furnature, not a piece of junk.)
www.eFax.com are spammers
I have three of the Antec Performance II series cases(SX835II and SX1040BII) and they all have air filters on the front of the case which can be accessed without taking the case apart.
You just have to lift the case up, and they slide out from the bottom. They definately make a tremendous difference with keeping dust out of the case. I have two fans on the front pulling air in, two on the rear blowing out.
I don't know if the SLK3700AMB mentioned in this article has one. I have an SLK2600AMB and it does not. The Solution series is not nearly as nice as the Performance II series, it's not as heavy or easy to work with. However, I found the nice grey case to blend in with my television better and it houses my media computer.