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Recycling Garbage -- A CD Cake-box Blow-hole Duct

BonzaiDuck

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
I've been building intake ducts out of 120mm fans that have fallen out of my favor. With sliding side-panels on the case, you can probably bolt them to the case-panel interior side, using the same machine screws chosen for the chrome fan-grille.

But this time, I wanted to mount the duct as an extension of the CPU fan, in turn mounted on an XP120 heatpipe cooler. I wanted something much lighter than gutted fan-frames. And I had an "inspiration" as I looked across the room at some empty CD cake-boxes, waiting for a trip to the garbage can.

Cake-boxes come in stubby and long sizes, so take your pick.

Then, examine the following 120mm air-filter:

Nifty Fan Filter

Get your dremel drill handy with a cutter appropriate for shaping or cutting plastic.

Cake-boxes have a protruding "rim" or ridge along the top. (Discard the spindle-bottom of the cake-box -- I haven't yet found a use for it.) Trim that off first. Then, cut a perfectly round hole in the top about a quarter-inch from the edge.

Along the edge of the cake-box, every precise 90-degrees, cut a "flat-T-shaped" hole, about 1 1/4" to 1 1/2" wide for the top of the T running along the edge of the cake-box side, right under the 1/4" of the remaining top panel, leaving only the top-panel plastic itself. The "T" bottom should be about a half-inch wide, and the height of the "T" should only be about 3/8".

Remove the fan filter and small self-threading screws from the fan-filter frame. The frame has the holes for securing the filter to a fan. Gently bend the filter-frame and force it down into the cake-box, tucking the corner protrusions of the frame through the slots you just cut in the cake-box, first one, then a second, and so on.

You can then secure the filter and screws back on the frame, tucking the filter corners under the narrower parts of the four slots you cut.

For a completely flush-fit with the fan, trim off about 1/16" in the middle of each edge of the fan to which this duct will be attached. You can mark the fan for where to trim off the plastic by matching the cakebox up to the fan -- on a 120mm fan the cake-box overlaps the fan-frame edges by a little more than an 1/8".

You then fit the cake-box and filter to the fan and secure with four screws. Trim the "height" of the cake-box to match the distance from your CPU fan to the side of your case-side-panel, where you would cut the corresponding blow hole.
 
FINISHING TOUCH FOR THE NOISE-CONSCIOUS

Cut a piece of Spire or Akasa-PaxMate noise deadener to fit the circumference and depth of the cake-box duct inside diameter. Not to worry about the foam deteriorating and getting sucked into your CPU fan -- remember! -- it's filtered!
 
I haven't got around to that yet. I can probably take some shots with the Olympus and upload them to my web-site. Love to do that for you, but I have a lot of distractions right now. Isn't there a way to post pictures here? What about that "ftp" button?

I just did this yesterday. I installed my XP120 around mid-November, choosing the moment when I would replace the 2.4C processor with my 3.0C. Originally, the 2.4 had a heatpipe cooler that used a 92mm fan, and I hung my fan-frame duct from the case-cross beam using PCI slot-covers, machine-screws and nuts. The 92mm-wide duct continued to serve with the replacement of the fan with an acrylic 120-to-92 fan adapter and 120x25mm fan on the old copper heatpipe cooler. What part of the 120mm fan was not covered by the smaller duct, simply drew air from inside the case.

The XP120 seems to perform as well as a Zalman CNPS-7700-Cu, by comparison with my buddy's system which uses a similar Northwood processor and "sister-model" ASUS mobo. I tried a SUNON KD1212PMB1-6A fan first, which was great, but it weighs 326 grams, and the XP120 addresses weight-reduction as well as cooling efficiency. By comparison, my friend's CNPS-7700 weighs in at something like 930 grams, while the XP120 is only about 375. So I opted to replace the Sunon with a YS-Tech 120x38mm fan with about 18CFM more throughput and only 3 dBA greater noise at the top end. The YS-Tech only weighs 213 grams. Refitting the "fan-frame" duct caused me to re-think how to build it, since I was now attempting to install that Ultra fan-filter, and the cross-beam was getting in the way.

But putting the filter right on the fan and using it to anchor the CD cake-box duct resolved my problem. I can cut a small notch out of the cake-box to accommodate the frame so that the rest of the protruding cake-box mates up with the side-panel blow-hole. And the fan filter is just as accessible for unscrewing it from its frame, easing it out of the cake-box-duct, and cleaning it (although I would just as soon poke a vacuum-cleaner hose into the duct to clean the filter.)

Some may sneer at this, but one reason I want a duct for the 120mm fan is its proximity to the interior PSU intake fan and the rear exhaust fans I've installed. I don't want the CPU cooler fan competing for air with these others, and I don't want the power-supply starved of air because I'm sucking 125 CFM through my CPU cooler. The duct allows me to draw air exclusively from the case exterior for the CPU, increasing interior pressure and thus feeding both the exhaust fans and the PSU fans.

With a duct as light as this one -- my guess is that it is maybe 10 or 20 grams in weight and maybe even less than 10 -- I doubt there is any more stress or "torque" to the motherboard from hanging it with the fan on the XP120. And the total weight so far -- 375 plus 213 grams (plus a nominal 20 for the duct) -- is about 508 grams, or a mere 58 grams exceeding the "Intel guideline" for HSF weight.

Now if I could figure out a nifty way to implement that other guy's "foam-duct" idea for CPU-heatsink exhaust -- this whole thing is gonna be "schweet!" If cooling is facilitated by some noticeable amount of Centigrades, I may be able to eliminate one of the case intake fans. (Or -- just disconnect it -- or -- put it on a controller that allows me to just "turn it off" . . . . ) . . . . & 🙂
 
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