STEP 1
One of my systems has a water block on both the CPU and a heavy duty sandwich-style air cooler on the graphics card. I never worry about those parts overheating. I’ve got about a 7% overclock on the processor and the poor graphics card is working harder than a mule tugging a barge on the Erie Canal. I don’t even monitor the temperature in that computer’s case or its components. Part of the reason I feel comfortable not knowing the Celsius status of the box is that I’ve outfitted it with terrific air cooling. I can practically chill a beer in that case. The only way I could get it cooler would be to buy an air conditioner compressor.
Cooling is a hot topic, even for form-factor designers. Intel’s BTX form factor is based on efficient cooling of its increasingly toasty processors. Someday, DIYers may start to actually care about BTX, but for now I’ll concentrate on airing out the most popular types of cases: ATX towers. The philosophy of a good air flow design, which I’ll show you, can be applied to other types of cases, as well.
Better cases come with pre-installed fans and lots of fan mounts, but many don’t include such hardware-friendly features. That’s not going to stop us. We’re going to delve full tilt into cooling the case, from choosing the right fans for the job to figuring out where exactly to mount fans.
Can’t find enough fan mounts? I’ll show you how to make them. Grab your tool kit: You’ll need the following:
- a screwdriver,
- a pencil,
- a compass,
- a drill with a 3/16-inch drill bit,
- a rotary tool with a cutoff blade (or a hole saw),
- a square,
- a metal punch,
- a hammer,
- a fan grill
- and, of course, a fan.
You should also use safety glasses and gloves when you’re cutting metal. Fan filtration is optional; dust may get in your system anyway, so instead of that, I vacuum out my system a couple times a year.
Prepare yourself: It’s time to build a tornado inside your PC. Continued…
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