Case Fans and Case Modding

     - Sunday, October 05, 2003

I recently added a new hard drive to my machine and in the process looked around a bit for the fan. I know my machine has a fan because I can hear it when booting. And I can feel air blowing out the back of the machine. What I hadn't realized was that the fan I can hear is attached to my processor chip and just blows air onto it. It doesn't circulate air into or out of the case. The other fan is just part of the power supply and, again, doesn't really do anything to keep my computer cool.

Okay, so maybe I'm just dumb about these things I guess (after all, I put up with WinME for 2 years before upgrading). I just assumed there was a fan circulating air into my computer. Apparently that's just not the case. Many manufacturers just don't bother because of the extra noise that fan's create. They're assuming you turn on your computer, do a little word processing, and then turn it off.

Now that I've got extra hard drives and new video display and capture cards, and my machine is always on and often recording video (i.e., spinning the hard drives constantly), I decided it's time to add a fan or two.

Enough justification, here's what I did: Bought a Dremel, cut out a hole in the side of the case, attached an 80mm fan, and tried to close the case. Yup, you guessed it, I measured wrong and the side panel wouldn't close because the new fan was hitting the power supply. Opps. So I tried to shave down the fan and in the process the dremel slipped and I shaved off the plastic covering on the fan wires. Double opps. Out of spite, I finally got the case to close with the fan. Of course I don't feel safe with this fan installed, so I removed it.

In the end, it was a massive fiasco. Everything went wrong. And whoever said using a dremel to cut a hole in a metal case was easy is crazy! It was a major pain. I now have a very uneven vent on the side of my computer. I'm just going to buy a new case that already has fans. Oh well, it was a learning expeerience.

posted by Kevin Watts |  Permalink |