Wire Situation

[nboy22]

Took a trip to Home Depot this morning and picked up 7 feet of wire covering for $1.19. Gonna see how it looks over my wires, I will post pics when I'm done. Anyways, here's what it looks like CLICK HERE

 

[nboy22]

Update with the loom stuff on now CLICK HERE. It was a bit painful to get on, but it looks pretty good. I switched over to a regular flat IDE cable instead of the cobra on the bottom 2 hard drives, so now it's not AS cluttered as before.

 

[Degrador]

Looks very nice - puts my airflow to shame bigtime. Only suggestion now is that it looks like you're blocking your PSU's intake fan... Not sure what psu you're using, but if it's a good one then it might be controlling fan speed by heat level, so you might want to push those wires further down or something to improve its airflow.

 

[nboy22]

yeah, the thing is about that picture is that it doesn't capture the full angles of how it looks, what is happening is the wire is actually covering just a few cm over it. So I think I'm good for now, I wanted to do that because I think before it was blocking some of the airflow from the heatsink.

 

[Degrador]

Heh, I just noticed you've got 5 case fans Just out of curiosity, is the top fan an intake or blower? Because otherwise it seems you're going to have some serious negative pressure there (assuming the rear ones are outtake and front intake). That might be what you're after, not sure, personally though I'd be trying to keep balance though (1 in vs 5 out (with PSU) would be unlikely to be as effective as 2 in and 4 out).

 

[nboy22]

I have a side and a front fan that are for the intake, then I have the other 3 in the back exhausting and the top exhausting.

 

[gordanfreeman]

wow that looks great. its a little cluttered down by the HDD's but i am not sure that can be improved at all. good job for sure!

 

[nboy22]

It looks a bit cluttered at the bottom in the picture.. but it's probably actually better than before, because now I don't have that extra cobra in there that is SUPER-LONG. that regular ide cable rests right up against the hard drives instead of having me take all the excess over to the side, even though the ide cable does that, but it's flat, so I think it's going to give me better airflow. Plus that other fan I added at the bottom is increasing my airflow as well. my pc has been hitting about 38-40 celsius while I'm on it doing basic everyday things like playing music, and chatting. My case temp has stayed at 30-31 the whole night. But I do think it's a little cooler in my room then before, but that's good because that means the airflow is picking up all that cool air, so in winter, my pc will be frozen . Now, I believe my next project is going to be trying to silence my fans up a bit. . I've already kinda started, I added rubber washers last night to all my fans, those were hard as hell to get on.

 

[nboy22]

Ok, Just picked up a dremel tool (rotary tool) from my grandpa's house, I also went to pick up some fan grills. I got one 120MM fan grill, and 2 80MM fan grills. Now the purpose of me getting these tools is I am going to be cutting the back and front fan covers off and replacing them with grills, they look like this -> HERE

 

[gordanfreeman]

last night i did a major wiring overhaul in my case. the major improvement being that i folded my flat IDE cables into a bundle to help reduce ariflow restriction due to the big cable, and changing the positions of my HDDs on their rack. (my case: http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=11-129-122&depa=0) i used to have my 2 HDDs in alternating middle mounts. i moved one to the very top mount, and the 2nd to the very bottom mount. this basically creates a windtunnel for my 120mm front fan to blow directly through. the only thing obstrcuting this air from flowing strait onto my vid card and up to the cpu is the folded IDE cable (probably smaller than a round IDE cable as it is) and the 4 molex wires for power. maybe its just cuz of cooler air, but i have a 5 degree C drop in my cpu temp since last nite. wierd cuz i only have a 1 degree mobo temp drop. oh well im happy and it really didnt take all that long to do :thumbsup:

 

[nboy22]

that's good, I originally started with a huge mass of wires just twisty tied in front of everything pretty much.. then worked my way down to what it is today. Although it takes time and some effort and strategic type planning it's worth a few C drop. What's weird with me though is that I moved one of my HDD's into a floppy disk slot and another below that in front of my 120mm, as a matter of fact, I think it actually made my system temp higher than normal, but my cpu usually stays at about 38-41 C while I'm doing basic functions. So I'm thinking about moving that hdd back to where it was before.

 

[gordanfreeman]

i dont think i have gotten my mobo temp above 30C ever. however my cpu hasnt seen a temp below 40C unless strait off cold boot. normally it hovers around 50C and around 55C under load. i dont know what the case temp is, but i generally just assume its pretty close to the mobo temp. all i know is that i got a 5C drop in cpu idle/light load temp over the past 24 hours, and that coincided with my rewiring effort. ill have to give it another day or three to be sure, as my ambient temps may be a bit cooler than normal right now, but i am liking the results so far

 

[nboy22]

yeah. I use my "system" temp as a case temp. I still might buy another case, I'm looking for something decently quiet that has good airflow.

 

[gordanfreeman]

i want to buy another case sometime when i have money. right now i am content w/ what i have. plus my brother and i are working on modding some old beast we bought at a discount store right now too. so that will be another case to play with there.