Looks like I'm gonna have to do some case modding.

[Evil Lurker]

Got my HIS bracket set in the mail today. Guess what? Didn't fit. Had to take a chainsaw file to the HDMI port opening since it was about ~3mm off center. Luckily the DVI holes lined up so after a bit of filing I finally got my card more or less securely mounted.

Its kinda a good thing that I had to wait for the bracket... when I took out my graphics card, the thing was hot... like 60C hot and that was idle. Turns out the case has really crappy airflow... much worse than I thought. Its not to bad when there is no graphics card installed, but when you put one in everything runs hot. Did a 15 minute run of Prime95 and my CPU temps got up to 68C... GPU temps were in the 70's with nearly no load.

Think tomorrow I'm going to be putting a 120mm Scythe fan on the side and a small 40-60mm fan on top to suck the hot air away from my graphics card VRMs.

[ratdude747]

Re: Looks like I'm gonna have to do some case modding.

Here is my advice: I would drill the mount holes and use a dremel cutoff wheel to cut the large fan hole. Use a wire grate to cover the hole.

[Evil Lurker]

Re: Looks like I'm gonna have to do some case modding.

Actually I got a set of sheet metal punches and a nibbler. I can more or less put any size or shape hole I want in it.

Need to rig me up a new PWM fan controller (4 pin, motherboard sends PWM signal to the fan, mosfet in fan controls RPM) for the CPU fan. Thinking possibly an opamp or comperator based sawtooth wave generator whose frequency is controlled by an NTC and attach that to a 555 timer configured as a monostable multivibrator or something like that. It would probably help quite a bit if I knew what sort of signal was being sent to the fan.

[ratdude747]

Re: Looks like I'm gonna have to do some case modding.

Actually I got a set of sheet metal punches and a nibbler. I can more or less put any size or shape hole I want in it.

By a nibbler I hope you don't mean tin snips... tin snips only work well on flimsy trash cases.

As for the punches, go ahead but be aware that unless you have the right punch for the hole, your results are going to look like crap. IMHO a dremel is a much better tool for the job (if you have dremel access, that is).