Case Modding

[Beardroid91]

I have been thinking about a pretty big mod project to my Antec P183 case in the past year or so, and now i thought i would get some input on the project. The plan is to mod my 5 year old case to accommodate a 240 mm cpu water cooler, as my case was designed before the whole trend of AIO water coolers.

So the cpu cooler i plan on using is the Cooler Master Nepton 240M due to its outstanding performance in reviews, but i'll be ditching the stock fans for my Noctua high pressure fans to pull air out.

I plan on cutting a large part out of my cases top panel and replace it with a special pre made 280 mm steel fan grill with a 240 mm cut out, to mount the Nepton 240M with fans in pull mode, so (radiator - gasket - steel grill - gasket - fans)

The Drawing: The red is the fan grill, blue is radiator and fans etc., green is mobo and black well cpu cooler.

my drawing

Any of you have any ideas or suggestions for my mod project ?

The goal is to make my pc noiseless when it is idling, right now i have constant fan noise that is annoying, so i hope to be able to shutoff the in take fans when the system is idling. It is the cpu cooling running push-pull that is making the fan noise atm.
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And i might do an even do bigger mod; painting my pc case black, and do some other minor mods, like updating the lighting.

But i'm not i'm ready for a painting it, because that is a massive task...

But any mod of this size would mean atleast a 1-3 days downtime, so need to think it through before doing anything and that i'm sharing my idea here

[grimx133]

I've only used one 1x140 rad, but have used a bunch of 3x120's. You're better off building a custom loop, but it is a tad expensive eh. If you're going to cool the gpu, might as well do the cpu while you're at it. EK makes some decent waterblocks, at least they did in my watercooling days.

[Fulysic]

Once work settle's back down I plan to undertake the same task as you Bear in regards to side window mod, my case is Rosewill Thor V2 case

If all goes well i plan to do the top three spots as well

[Beardroid91]

A custom loop is expensive and I'm on a tight budget, and really limited on space, but yes a custom loop is the better choice if I had the money, which don't at the momenti, the best I could do is the upgradable Fractal Design Kelwin S24, it has G1/4 fittings.

And my graphics card has a gigabyte windforce x3 cooler on, so it is not worth ruining the warranty on a new card just yet.
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Good luck with that mod Fulysic

[MadManCK]

Replacing the with plexiglass will look awesome. Looking forward to the pics.

[Beardroid91]

The universe must really like my plan to mod a mount for a 240 mm Cooler Master Nepton 240M, it just went on sale, it dropped whooping 32 euros

Time for my mod to get started

I have next week off for winterbreak so perfect timing

edit.
Just bought the Nepton 240M only 10 left on their stock, yesterday they had 50+

[MadManCK]

Lol, i thought you had Noctua fans on that prolimatech? Those make not much noise.

You can make a custom fan profile, but as you run your CPU at 4.2 gig it will always run hot and needs to get rid of the heat.

I bought my case with the idea of being able to built in some watercooling later. I'm currently running a 2x 14cm fan/ 28 cm radiator configuration at the top. But the Cosmos II is big enough to house some pets.

If you got the space for it, go for bigger fans. As they need to run at a lower rpm to get the same airflow and make less noise.
When you have to revert to 12 cm fans, mount them below the radiator and push the air from the case upwards. That way you use the natural heat dissappation as hot air wants to go up and you will hear less noise from the fans than when you mount them on top.

Off course you will need the space. Maybe build a construction of sheet metal on top of it to house the radiator and the hoses. And use shrouds for the fans. They dampen the sound also.
You can also mount the radiator on top of the case and the 2 fans on the inside. With a nice grile on top it might look cool as well.

I used to have a big 25x25 cm radiator on top my previous rig. With a big coolermaster 20cm fan on it. Temperature controlled.
Most important is to get the good fittings and clamps. And maybe use a reservoir. More cooling fluid takes longer to heat up, so you can run fans at a lower speed.

One thing for sure, it will get cramped in your case. So basic airflow is still needed to cool the MB chips, Mosfets and RAM.

There is simple dampening material that will also silence the noise from the case. With some clever placed dampening stuff you can already make things more or less inaudible.

[Beardroid91]

Haha that's quite a list and summary you have there Mad, but i like AIO cpu coolers more as they 99,9% leak free and you have a warranty to back it up when things goes south - remember you lost a system a few years ago due to a leak, also a custom water loop is insanely expensive and only worth doing if you have seriously highend pc rig, otherwise it is not really worth it cost and effort of doing it.

Plus the AIO cpu watercooler are pretty cheap compared to a custom loop.

And i remember hearing that if you able to move the enough water through the radiator it you could bit a lower speed

And Linus from LinusTechTips busted you theory about put the fan's on top or underneath, it doesn't help fan flow. As a matter of fact if the fan are in pushmode the rad builds up dust faster, and it is hard to clean it with fan in push.

And i'm going to be using gaskets to make a airtight suctioning for the top mounted fan to pull the fan out, and make only goal is to have the pc quiet at idle, it couldn't careless about when i'm gaming, i have a headset on

But thanks for the tips, i had thought about make a top casing of some sort. The plastic side of a huge 3-5 liter square container, and spray paint it black if it works out, it just need to shield the from bumps i dust of the pc 3-4 times a year

[Beardroid91]

Here is the video i talked about in my last post, it clearly shows the benefit running in pull config with decent fans made for the job

[BBvideo 640,360][/BBvideo]

At the moment i use 2 Noctua F12 fans in push/pull on my aircooler.

So as you can i won't be limited or restricted by running a pull config, and i'm going to use rubber gaskets to make the fans even more efficient, so in theory i could run them at lower speeds hopefully at idle.
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And i forgot to mention in the post above that the Coolermaster Nepton series has a very high flowrate pump, which means a 240 mm rad can dissipate the same amount of heat as a 280 mm rad with a low flowrate pump.

[MadManCK]

Yes, my previous water cooling system, that was completely custom built BTW, started to leak when the top plate of the CPU cooling block started to crack after 4Y of operation. Never buy a cooling block with a see-through top, but get a solid one that does not crack.
It looked cool though, before it malfunctioned. I had some fluorescent cooling fluid running through it with some black lights in the case. Looked like an Alien space engine.

Those gaskets/shrouds are very good. I used them to seal the fans to the radiator, they silence the noise and prevent air pressure to escape. Also, because of the slightly bigger distance, they spread the air pressure better over the radiator surface, increasing performance some more.

If you mount the radiator on top, with the fans beneath it, it will push the air through the radiator and in the same time use the upwards tendency of hot air. You can also opt for a push-pull configuration with 4 fans. That will give the ultimate airflow when you need it.

I think there are radiator mounts and cases pre-made that you can modify to your liking. But completely building it yourself is even more awesome off course.

Good luck figuring it all out and in the hunt for the right parts.