Cheap air filters for 120mm fans

[roguerower]

I bought a Centurion 590 b/c I was impressed with the way it looked. After reading some reviews however I've found out that some of the fan openings don't have filters on them which will make the entire case easy prey for dust and w/e other particles slip through. I've checked out Xoxide.com and all of their filters are 6 bucks. Would there be someway or someplace local (Home Depot, Lowes, Ace) that I could make my own filters?

 

[GrumpyMan]

Got a girl friend? If you do, then get some of her old stocking nylon hose, they make decent air filters in a pinch.
If no girl friend, your mom may some old ones lying around. Anyway they really work great.

 

[Zepper]

I use the three piece plastic w/ foam filters near the bottom of this page:
http://www.jab-tech.com/Fan-filters-c-170.html . The foam filter medium is easily removable to wash or replace. I use air conditioner filter foam for replacements which is cheap and widely available. Plus the three dimensionality of the medium gives longer service between cleanings than the more one dimensional media like stocking material or some of the other filters on that same page.
. Of course, you could always use some self-stick Velcro hooks and the AC filter foam to jerry-rig a workable solution.

.bh.

 

[AmberClad]

Ironically, I think you'll find that a lot of the dust comes in from the front intake with the CM590. Yes, the filtered front intake. It doesn't work very well and dust particles are apparently small enough to bypass both the aluminum mesh and the foam lining. My hard drive has a lovely coating of fine dust already, after only a month or two.

There's no real point to putting the filters on the three exhaust fans. I do have filters over the side intake mounts though.

 

[Zepper]

Yes AC has a good point - filtering exhaust fans is unnecessary. And unless you have set up positive pressure in your case, your exhaust fan(s) will drag dust in thru every uncontrolled opening in the case. I filter intake fan(s), block off ALL uncontrolled openings in my cases and generally try to create positive pressure (total CFM in > total CFM) out to limit internal dust. Very hard to do in most Centurion models because of all that "mesh".

.bh.

 

[roguerower]

With that said then, what do you think would be a good setup for the 6 fans (when i finally get them installed?

Top 2 Blowing in
Side 2 Blowing out
Rear Out
Front in

Sound good?

 

[Tim]

Originally posted by: roguerower
With that said then, what do you think would be a good setup for the 6 fans (when i finally get them installed?

Top 2 Blowing in
Side 2 Blowing out
Rear Out
Front in

Sound good?

Top 2 Out
Side 2 in

 

[roguerower]

Any particular reasoning behind that recommendation?

AC, how do you have yours setup?

 

[AmberClad]

I have it set up this way:

Top 1 - Out
Top 2 - Out
Rear - Out
Front - In
Side 1 - Filter, No Fan (my CPU heatsink is too big for me to use a fan here)
Side 2 - Filter, No Fan (that side panel has a tendency to amplify vibration, which is why I don't use a fan here)
CPU Fan - Up, towards Top 1 and Top 2. I've also tried it the other way pointed at Rear. There's not a whole lot of difference. I only have it this way so that the hot air on the back of my video card is pulled out of the case.

* The reasoning behind that configuration is that cool air is drawn in from the lower front and exhausted out through the top and top-rear. Hot air has a tendency to rise, so if you're using the top two fans for intake, that's counterproductive.
* I have a relatively light system. If you're using a quad and a decent number of hard drives, then you might want to add more intake fans. Either jury rig a second one onto the front (or buy another 4-in-3 module). Or use the side intakes.
* Seems lopsided at first glance, but many older systems and cases had no dedicated intake fans at all and got by just fine. As long as the side panel is on, the negative pressure generated by all the exhaust fans is going to help pull in air from the front anyway.

But a caveat - a case with negative pressure helps to prevent heat from building up inside the case, but as Zepper alluded to, it also has a tendency to attract a fair amount of dust. So it's something to keep in mind.

 

[roguerower]

My rig right now:

Centurion 590
E8400 w/ AC7 Pro
Asus P5Q P45 board
4gb Ram
WD 640 HDD
One of the new ATI cards, probably 4850

The AC7 blows the air back towards the rear fan and i figured having a fan blowing in would help circulate the air from the passive heatsinks on the mobo as well as help get the GPU air up towards the other fans. Thanks for your help, I'll see what I can do.

 

[crontab]

I only put filters on the intake area of my case. I cover all the fans and holes on the front of my case.

I just use AC vent filters that you can get at walmart. 3 bucks a pack or something. or 5, I don't remember. Lasts me a couple years for a couple pc's...

http://www.webproducts.com/sto...catalog/vrf12c-300.jpg

 

[roguerower]

AC, what do you do with all the rest of the cables from the PSU? And what is with the 3 different types of connectors for the front audio? I plugged in the HD audio but there's all the 2nd connector and then all of the individual connectors.

 

[AmberClad]

I'm using a modular PSU, so there really isn't much I need to do to deal with extra cables. There might be some space behind the motherboard tray to hide them.

I only use the HD Audio connector. I don't use the other AC97 connector or whatever it is - I believe that's an older audio spec, and my motherboard doesn't support it in any case.

The bunch of individual connectors are if you're using a format other than HDA or AC97. What you do is connect each connector to the corresponding pin on the motherboard or sound card's audio header. It's there for flexibility - you can connect them together in any configuration needed.

 

[roguerower]

I'm using the HD connection (Asus P5Q mobo) but do you know if there's anything I can do with them (maybe even cut them off... ) I just connected the cables together and stuffed them below the HDD caddy. I moved that up so that the fan blows over the video card and put the HDD in the middle so it gets air above and below it.