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P180 Rear Vents - better cooling with those closed off?

PianoMan

PianoMan

Senior member
Was wondering if anyone else has tried blocking off the rear vents above the PCI slots and swapped the slotted PCI covers with normal slot covers. It helps my situation:

I've got my P180 up on a table, with one side and the rear towards a wall, and about 4" of clearance. As long as I'm not gaming, the computer is ice cold (well, not literally, of course). Once I put a game in (COD4, BF2, Oblivion, etc.) my 1900XT as we all know generates tremendous amounts of heat. With the back vents open, it seems that it just recycles the air back into the case. That corner of the room becomes noticeably warmer.

When I've exited from the game, my case fans (mobo controlled) were very audible, slowly returning to stock speeds after awhile.

With the back vents closed off, the fans don't spin up (at least that I can hear). Getting rid of the recirc path seems to have helped tremendously.

Anyone else running with the vents closed?
 
In my case, it made no significant difference for cooling (E6600 + 7900GTO) with those open or blocked.

So, I have blocked them using Scotch tape to reduce the amount of unfiltered air entering the case.
 
A strip of clear packing tape and five spare PCI slot covers have made it a "little less laughable", I think. Still think the case is pretty durn good (it's a year old).

Anyone else running closed or "all open" back there?
 
I'm of the opinion that those vents just short circuit any hope of a good airflow pattern within the case. Air, like water, electric current and students, takes the path of least resistance. So I see air coming in thru those vents and going right back out the rear fan above them without having done hardly any cooling at all. So block 'em off - I block all extraneous venting, get the front to rear flow going properly and then add back the others if it will actually contribute. One would need a very strong intake fan to actually have air going out thru those vents as I think was the theory.

.bh.
 
My thoughts exactly, Zep - thanks for the post! I'm replacing the front fan (Antec Tri-Cool) with a Scythe Slip Stream 3-pin, so the mobo can control that as well.

jonmc, the 1900XT runs plenty cool (well, as cool as those hot as hell GPU's can get). It was just raising up the internal case temps enough to cycle those fans.

With those openings closed off - the case runs real cool now. :thumbsup:
 
Y-W. I blocked off the same type of venting on my Silverstone Kublai KL01B (Review Here and it helped my cooling too. I have a Yate Loon SM (~66 CFM) on the rear and a Sanyo Denki 120x38 (capable of over 100 CFM) on the front. Tuned for positive pressure with a manual fan controller. Been beddy, beddy goood to me... 😉

.bh.
 
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