Random musings on the important things in life, for example computers and UT football.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Name: VW
Hometown:
Somewhere in Texas
Occupation:
Systems Analyst
Please sign my Guestbook!
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Sunday, March 09, 2003
CASE MODS - PART 1
OK, as promised, here's the specs of my home computer and a recap of the mods I've done so far. (If you were hoping for an explaination of the origins of "Rubberface", that will have to wait!).
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Motherboard: Asus A7N8X Deluxe (nForce 2)
Memory: 512 megs Kinsgton PC2700 DDR SDRAM
Graphics Card: Geforce 4 TI4200 (Gainward Golden Sample)
Hard Drive: 30 gig IBM Deskstar 75GXP
Optical Drive: Pioneer 10X DVD-ROM
Power Supply: 350 watt Enermax Whispersys
Case: Enlight 7237 Mid Tower
For cooling purposes, I have a Thermalright AX-7 heatsink (MONSTER heatsink... still one of the best available) with high-speed 80mm Panaflo fan mounted on it. Then another medium-speed 80mm Panaflo for the exhaust, and an ultra-high speed 120mm Panaflo for the front-mounted intake.
For anyone unfamiliar with Panaflos, they're regarded as one of the best "quiet" fans on the market. Very low-friction (the ball bearings float suspended on a layer of oil, hence the term "liquid ball bearings") and they're perfectly balanced, so they create virtually no vibration. Of course, "quiet" is a relative term when they're moving the sheer quantities of air these suckers are moving :-).
For that reason, I have all three Panaflos hooked up to a rheobus mounted on the front of my case in one of the floppy drive bays. If you're wondering what exactly a "rheobus" is, it's also known as a fan controller. It lets you control the speed of each fan independently, anywhere from 60% to 100% of its rated speed. So far I couldn't be happier with it. It lets me tone down my fans to virtually silent levels, or crank them up for those 3D-gaming marathons. In fact I'll probably do a separate writeup on it, since it's such a cool ittle piece of hardware. Here's a link to the one I bought: Rheobus
To further minimize noise and vibration, I added some Akasa Paxmate to the inside of my case. It's basically a rubbery foam that comes in pre-cut panels that you stick on the inside of your case. There's much better materials available in the $40-80 range (Dynamat, Acoustipack, etc) but $11 for enough Paxmate to treat a medium-sized case is pretty hard to beat :-) Paxmate
For the two or three of you out there who are familiar with my computer's case, the Enlight 7237, you may be wondering "How the hell are you using a 120mm intake fan when there's only room for an 80mm???" Well I'm very glad you asked.
First I cut away the "grill" covering the fan intake with some wire cutters. I then used a handy little device called a "nibbler tool" (about $8 at Radio Shack) to "nibble" away at the metal around the fan hole, and enlarged it just enough to accomodate a 120mm fan. I then used my Dremel tool to drill a screw hole so I could mount the fan. Then.... well, the next few steps are rather hard to describe, but suffice to say that I ended up with a perfect fully-filtered 120mm intake in about 2 hours of work. In fact I was quite surprised that it worked perfectly while only needing to drill one screw hole (and even that wasn't entirely necessary... although I wanted to make sure it was mounted on there pretty tight). I'll be sure to do a detailed writeup with photos when I get the chance.
Well that's enough for now. In the meantime, here's some excellent reading material before my next installment. It's a great little site run by a guy who knows an incredible amount about custom PC modifications and computers in general. It's also where I've gotten the most inspiration for the various mods I've done: 7volts.com
2:02 AM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
