Well after hearing about shrouds improving your cooling if your watercooled via the forum. l googled > shroud reviews > saw that www.martin.skinnee.labs.com in the search results a review about Radiator Fan Orientation and Shroud Testing and the conclusion was fitting shrouds reduced temps by about 2-3 degree's. So decided to give it a try, next l googled shrouds to get a price, there was the single plastic 120mmx20mm costing about £7 + P&P and multi shrouds formed from metal sheets 120mm > 240mm > 360 > 480mm upto £20 + P&P. As l had a 360 Rad it would work out over £20 with screws + P&P, But while googling shrouds among the search results was > How to Make home made shrouds -
skinnee.labs - http://www.martin.skinneelabs.com/Radiator-Fan-Orientation-And-Shroud-Testing-Review.htm
How to make home made shrouds -
If you have any old 120mmx25mm fans, just cut through the four support legs and this will let the whole fan drop out, then just smooth down the best you can the stumps left on the on the outer body, Bobs your Auntie a home made shroud.
Fan centre cut out.
My fan set up before fitting the shrouds[Fig-1] x3 Vipers-pull / x1 Xilence-push, with my CPU at 4.2GHz idle was 37'c my GPU-GTX 470 overclocked to 850:1700:2000-1.025v > idle 31'c, living room temp about 22'c. After roughly 3 hours gaming BC2 ,CPU - i7920 at 4.2GHz hotest core was 68'c > GPU peaked at 52'C, temperature results obtianed using OpenHardwareMonitor running in the background, Viper fans set to PWM in bios via a PWM Splitter cable fan speed was approx-1447:rpm
Fig-1.
As l had only one old 120mm fan, l googled 120mm PC fan price the search reasult > £1.80 + free P&P, them googled M4x55mm bolts[fan+shround length = 50mm + 5mm]. l ending up getting 20 black sockethead/shouldered - M4x55x20 bolts for £3.98 + free P&P, need l tell you where from and the seller has a very good range of bolts, screws, nuts, washers. The sellers were as good as thier word no problems at all recieved the items a couple of days later, goods were brand new + the bolts had a slight coating of oil which just wiped off before use. By buying x3 120mm fans + bolts it came to - £9.80 quite a saving.
I just used a hack saw blade to cut the centre's out the fan bodys, wear a gardening glove or tape some of the hack saw up so as not to cut your self + smoothed the stumps down and fitted the shrouds in place[Fig-2] on the radiator
Fig-2. Shrouds fitted -
Now to see if the shrouds improve my temps, x3 Vipers fans set to pull > so top x1 Viper fan + shroud-pull straight over x1 Xilence fan + shroud-push + x2 Vipers:set to pull. I could have mounted the 120mm Xilence fan in the case then shroud, but prefure the bigger gap between case and Rad so the Rad pulled cooler air via the lower fans helping to keep temps down.
So my CPU at 4.2GHz my GPU-GTX 470 overclocked to 850:1700:2000-1.025v living room temp 21.5'c > hotest core was still 37'c, so game on BC2 again played for about 3 hours with Openhardware Monitor running in the back ground. First results > CPU at 4.2GHz hotest core was 66'c > GPU peaked at 50'c, this was repeated a second time after 20 minutes idle was again about 37'c, with the same result CPU + GPU 2'c cooler, fan speed approx-1395:rpm max on both runs.
Results - so before the shrouds were fitted idle temps were hotest core 37'c > shrouds fitted hotest core 37'c, as the room temps were about the same. The hotest core with out shrouds was 68'c after the test BC2, with shrouds fitted hotest CPU core was 66'c and repeated again with the same outcome 2'c cooler after playing BC2 for about 3 hours.
Well that can't be bad 3'c cooler for spending a £10.
Photo of shrouds fitted to case -
Would be interresting to see if other custom loop owners have tried shrouds with a good result, nothing stopping the H50/70 owners giving it a go. When skinne.labs did the review since then fans have improved especially the medium to low speed fans regarding performance. So really another test by skinnee.labs using low, medium, high speed fans would be interesting to see if results he got would improve!
On a last note l hope this helps watercoolers to make up thier minds if they wwere thinking of fitting shrouds > Post your results if you do.
skinnee.labs - http://www.martin.skinneelabs.com/Radiator-Fan-Orientation-And-Shroud-Testing-Review.htm
How to make home made shrouds -
If you have any old 120mmx25mm fans, just cut through the four support legs and this will let the whole fan drop out, then just smooth down the best you can the stumps left on the on the outer body, Bobs your Auntie a home made shroud.
Fan centre cut out.
My fan set up before fitting the shrouds[Fig-1] x3 Vipers-pull / x1 Xilence-push, with my CPU at 4.2GHz idle was 37'c my GPU-GTX 470 overclocked to 850:1700:2000-1.025v > idle 31'c, living room temp about 22'c. After roughly 3 hours gaming BC2 ,CPU - i7920 at 4.2GHz hotest core was 68'c > GPU peaked at 52'C, temperature results obtianed using OpenHardwareMonitor running in the background, Viper fans set to PWM in bios via a PWM Splitter cable fan speed was approx-1447:rpm
Fig-1.
As l had only one old 120mm fan, l googled 120mm PC fan price the search reasult > £1.80 + free P&P, them googled M4x55mm bolts[fan+shround length = 50mm + 5mm]. l ending up getting 20 black sockethead/shouldered - M4x55x20 bolts for £3.98 + free P&P, need l tell you where from and the seller has a very good range of bolts, screws, nuts, washers. The sellers were as good as thier word no problems at all recieved the items a couple of days later, goods were brand new + the bolts had a slight coating of oil which just wiped off before use. By buying x3 120mm fans + bolts it came to - £9.80 quite a saving.
I just used a hack saw blade to cut the centre's out the fan bodys, wear a gardening glove or tape some of the hack saw up so as not to cut your self + smoothed the stumps down and fitted the shrouds in place[Fig-2] on the radiator
Fig-2. Shrouds fitted -
Now to see if the shrouds improve my temps, x3 Vipers fans set to pull > so top x1 Viper fan + shroud-pull straight over x1 Xilence fan + shroud-push + x2 Vipers:set to pull. I could have mounted the 120mm Xilence fan in the case then shroud, but prefure the bigger gap between case and Rad so the Rad pulled cooler air via the lower fans helping to keep temps down.
So my CPU at 4.2GHz my GPU-GTX 470 overclocked to 850:1700:2000-1.025v living room temp 21.5'c > hotest core was still 37'c, so game on BC2 again played for about 3 hours with Openhardware Monitor running in the back ground. First results > CPU at 4.2GHz hotest core was 66'c > GPU peaked at 50'c, this was repeated a second time after 20 minutes idle was again about 37'c, with the same result CPU + GPU 2'c cooler, fan speed approx-1395:rpm max on both runs.
Results - so before the shrouds were fitted idle temps were hotest core 37'c > shrouds fitted hotest core 37'c, as the room temps were about the same. The hotest core with out shrouds was 68'c after the test BC2, with shrouds fitted hotest CPU core was 66'c and repeated again with the same outcome 2'c cooler after playing BC2 for about 3 hours.
Well that can't be bad 3'c cooler for spending a £10.
Photo of shrouds fitted to case -
Would be interresting to see if other custom loop owners have tried shrouds with a good result, nothing stopping the H50/70 owners giving it a go. When skinne.labs did the review since then fans have improved especially the medium to low speed fans regarding performance. So really another test by skinnee.labs using low, medium, high speed fans would be interesting to see if results he got would improve!
On a last note l hope this helps watercoolers to make up thier minds if they wwere thinking of fitting shrouds > Post your results if you do.
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which are backed up by washers, the fan bodys are very sturdy its very solid indeed it does not move an inch.