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PC Case Made Completely of Fans
drgroove writes "I work in a computer store building PCs all day. With every new case there are one or two 8cm case fans included. Most of the systems we build do not need any more cooling than is supplied by the CPU fan as most of our customers generally don't go in for all this 'overclocking malarky.'
Looking around the stock room I discovered two large boxes of unused 8cm case fans. Surfing through case mod sites, the most popular mod you see (besides Lexan windows) is some form of whizzy cooling device, be it fan or waterblock. People go to great lengths to keep their PCs cool. Now... putting these two things together..."
Does this design cool the computer super-efficiently or eliminate the user due to oxygen deprivation?
Gotta be careful with those plastic fins on the fans. They're not very durable. Last week we had a guy with four or five pieces of paper in his hand, rolled up into a cylinder. He accidentally touched the processor fan with them and three of the fins busted right out. That made the rest of the fan imbalanced and it made a terrible racket until he yanked the power cord.
If a small cylinder of paper can break them, think what a pencil or a shoe could do.
Oddly enough, the motherboard temperature of this case (25C) is identical to the temperature inside my current casing (Lian Li PC-60: 3x 80mm intake fan, 1x 120mm exhaust, and 2 fan power supply)
I guess airflow through most well designed casings is pretty good these days.
Though I bet this "case" won't have any "hotspots". It has to be as noisy as hell though, I can't believe noone else thought to do this first.
he didn't do his homework, he made the computer airflow so that it enters the top and exits the bottom, this works against convection and is counter productive.
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/coolcube/
I didn't see in the article if he was running these fans at the standard 12V or had underclocked them.
Since noise produced by air is generally proportional to fan speed and inversely proportional to fan size, you could consider each side of this mod as a single large fan.
If you set each of these fans to a few hundred rpm this beast just might be quieter than a single fan pushing the same amount of air and with much better air flow.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
On the contrary. Want a quieter case? Use a fan with bigger blades. Like that, more air can be moved with lower rotational speed and noise will be reduced. With a case built entirely of fans, I imagine each fan only needs to rotate very slowly for good ventilation. This thing has the potential to be extremely quiet!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
He mentions he will put LEDs in, I think it would be fun to put a strobe in/around it somewhere... should look interesting, stop-motion of all those fans...
I was given a computer that made a funny noise.
I looked inside and noticed that one of the fins on the CPU fan was bent.
It was actually under warranty, as the person that gave it to me had an extended warranty, but why would I spend the postage to send the computer in just for a new CPU fan?
I tried to straighten it and it broke off.
I didn't want a wobbly fan on my CPU, so I broke off the opposite fin.
It's worked fine for over a year.
(Slot Athlon 1GHz)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.