Help! How do you cut a hole for a 80mm fan?

[OverVolt]

I'm going to be buying This Case and PSU, and the front fan does absolutly nothing, so i was thinking about adding a 80mm fan hole in the bottom right front of the case. I haven't ordered the case yet but i plan on it shortly, just wondering how to make a fan hole for that costly case.

 

[Ikonomi]

The best way would be to get a hole saw attachment for your power drill. Just stop by Home Depot -- they have a lot of them. You may have to sacrifice 4 mm or something, because the saws are made in standard measurements, but it'll work fine.

 

[DerwenArtos12]

With that big blank plate in fron fo where the fan goes you could but the hole for teh fan to clear away the extra sheet metal tehn do the same in teh plastic front and attach the fan to the outside fo the sheet metal with a filter over it. That wasy the fan will just about completely butt up against the plastic front and let ALOT more air through. If you want I can take a picture of my case which I did somehting similar to this with a 120mm fan.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

lol they put a fan mount there but no intake holes... I guess they expect people to do it themselves. It'd probably sound like a whistle if you put a decently powerful fan in there...

 

[OverVolt]

Hmm i guess i'll see if i can make an airway on the bottom of the front bezel or maybe somthing else not sure tho. Codogen sure makes a quality case!

 

[PliotronX]

Oooo, looking at the pics, yeah I can just imagine those pinholes making the fan sound like a whistle (good one AyashiKaibutsu :beer: edit fixed bear emoticon ). Before adding a whole other blowhole, I would remove the front bezel and cut out the pinhole pattern "grill" as this would help airflow immensely. I've done this with two of four tools that I know of capable and reasonably cheap to pick up and use. The first and preferred way is with a pair of tin snips and the second and slightly more clean way (but somewhat more time consuming) is with a Dremel and fiberglass reinforced cutting wheels.

For tin snips, check out this great thread. With Dremels, everything needed to know here is in the instruction manual, and the rest you just cut and take your time making passes and always wear protective eyewear.

The other two ways to deal with this are with a nibbler (cheapest of all, yet produces the least clean results though this may not matter since the intake is covered by the bezel ) and using a similarly sized hole saw with a drill.

Now with a freshly cut intake, I think that case needs some help with exhaust. Possibly a good 92mm fan out the top of the case. To minimize dust, you want to make sure there's more air going in than out though, so balance it out with the front intake fan with its new naked blowhole.

All cutting aside, I would not trust even the cheapest of systems with the included power supply as in my experience in the way of PSU's, you get what you pay for. It's likely to provide unclean power that is nowhere near its rated capacity (300W in this case) and die out quickly. I may be wrong as I've never dealt with this particular case/PSU, but I am willing to bet I'm not As a replacement, I would look into an Antec 300W or 350W (SmartPSU/TruePower) or a Sparkle/Fortron unit of the same rating. Also I would remove the fan grills in the PSU as it restricts some airflow, not quite as much as the intake in this case, but it would help some (better cooling for the PSU=more stable/quantity of power output).

Good luck

 

[Zepper]

You could also use the 9901 carbide Dremel bit - much easier than cutting wheel.
.bh.