Corsair 650D - Koolance Radiator Shroud on top? (First Mod)

[YiuKorochko]

Hey all, wanting to do some light modding to the 650D when it becomes available to me.

I would like to stick the Koolance 2x140mm Fan Radiator Shroud on top of the 2x140 slots on the top, but I worry the actual mounts for it will stretch beyond that of the holes provided. I'm not too keen on drilling to many extra holes, but it'll help with space and airflow on the inside, so I see it as being worth it.

I'm also putting in a Silverstone 5.25"-3/5" drive bay in the 3 lower 5.25" bays, leaving the top one for my BluRay drive. This bay holds 3 hard drives and includes a 120mm fan and I will be replacing it with a Bitfenix Red 120mm fan. This fan is taken into account in the airflow diagrams.

Here I have a few diagrams to help show what I mean, including airflow directions:

In the pictures with the cover on, you can see two 140mm fans next to the window. These are to help cool the hard drives.
In the pictures where the cover is open and you see a fan behind the CPU hole, this is actually a fan mounted on the outside of the back panel. It pulls air from underneath the motherboard and pushes it out of the case.
I would have done this in Google Sketchup but the 650D wasn't available, and I'm very new to Sketchup in general so I couldn't just make up a new model.

Let me know what you think, I'd particularly like to know about how the Koolance 2x140mm rad shroud will work.

 

[King Damager]

Would be able to help much more if the pics worked

kd

 

[YiuKorochko]

Would be able to help much more if the pics worked

kd

This is freaky, I've had the thread up like 3 hours now and the images were all working fine until now. The site I'm hotlinking to seems to be down, I'll load the images in the original post.

 

[King Damager]

That's a hell of a lot of fans.....

For a 650D I think you can only fit slim lines in the roof, even with the Koolance. Rather than push pull for the top rad and a slim rad, I'd try and fit just pull in and a larger rad.

kd

 

[YiuKorochko]

That's a hell of a lot of fans.....

For a 650D I think you can only fit slim lines in the roof, even with the Koolance. Rather than push pull for the top rad and a slim rad, I'd try and fit just pull in and a larger rad.

kd

From what I've researched, the full size fans will fit the Koolance shroud should support full depth fans, so if I just have those then everything should be fine, but I want to get the push fans just in case, I've got plenty of other gadgets I can stick them too should they not be needed/not fit.

My biggest point of concern is how difficult it will be to mount the Koolance shroud, and if anyone can give me tips on cutting holes in the window.

 

[King Damager]

I'm not quite sure about the Koolance shroud as I haven't had any experience with them.

I'd still recommend a thicker rad with just pull rather than a thin one with push-pull. Chances are you'll get much better temps.

For cutting a window hole, I'd probably use some kind of hacksaw. You'd want to start off by drilling a hole, very slowly probably in an area that's definitely going to be cut out. Saw to the edge of the hole you want to make, and then saw round. Normally I'd recommend a Dremel, but I'd be pretty sure the heat it throws out would create all sorts of issues cutting through plastic/acryllic.

I'll also say that I really don't think all those fans are going to make a huge difference to your temps. Beyond a certain point the gain from adding fans doesn't really become worth it, not to mention it'll probably sound like your PC is taking off... Also, side panel fans can often mess up the airflow because they distort the air in the front/bottom, out the top/rear set up that you're trying to use as well

kd

 

[YiuKorochko]

Ah, the radiator is just a rough guide (the radiator and full size 140mm fans should fit fine inside the case), I'll be using a Corsair H100 to cool the system as it performs really well for it's price and just a plain CPU cooling loop costs too much to make on it's own. I plan on getting a GTX680 when it's out too, which means I will have to wait forever for a waterblock for it so I can include it in the loop.

All the 120mm and 140mm fans on the case door may be over the top, but the 200mm is aimed specifically for the 2011 socket and surrounding parts. I'll have two Corsair AirFlow Pros running on the Dominator RAM, but since I'm not doing a full liquid loop involving the chipsets on the mainboard I have a feeling at least one fan facing the mainboard will help.

I wanted the 140mms over the hard drive bays as I'm running a Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB drive and I fried one in my last build because it wasn't getting enough air (case was a bit tighter as well). But, I am definitely putting a replacement 200mm fan in the front of the case, so that could work fine enough, in the hard drive aspect I guess I'm being a bit paranoid.

As for the noise levels, I'm planning on hooking all the fans up to a controller, the 4 on the radiator simply hooked into the cases built in controller so I can control noise levels. I've got a nice pair of Sennheiser HD 280 Pros and they keep out pretty much everything.
When not using those I'll have a set of M-Audio AV40 Monitors on, so after revising through some things here and there it shouldn't be a problem.

I most definitely want at least a 140mm fan behind the CPU, on the outside of the back door. I've seen from a friend of mine's own build that it drags temps way down as a lot of air gets trapped back there over time.

This system is quite similar to my September build, but it's hosted in an Obsidian 800D case instead.

 

[qbazdz]

Reviving from the dead...
Have you had any luck with the top shroud?

 

[YiuKorochko]

I'll get back to you soon as, the build starts in September I think, though I may wait to see if the Ivy Bridge Extremes can pull off a better 6 core technology before I buy anything for sure.
I've designed a couple other mods as well for other cases, should the 650D seem a bit too tight, I don't know everything yet, but I'll update this thread as I go, might add some other designs a little later to see what some folk think of the others.

According to the provided measurements, everything should fit a-okay, but despite that there may be alignment issues, things in the way making it structurally impractical to mess with etcetera.

 

[Evoss]

You will not get that fan in behind the motherboard plate if you want to hide cables.

Also there is no nead for that many fans. I have fans in stock positions on my 650D and my CPU runs at 30 and 50 under load. You aren't going to benefit much, if any, with all that effort

 

[YiuKorochko]

I'm not all that concerned for the CPU, I trust from several similar builds I've found online that the Corsair H100 will keep it cool enough, I'm aiming to bring the overall system heat down.
I'd like to install a custom loop involving the north and south bridge, and the GPU but its easier to use a non-reference GPU with a nice 2 or 3 fan cooler and some Corsair Airflow Pros.
I've killed a good few hard drives recently, so HDD heat is a current issue I'd like to solve.
I'm going to want to keep this system until the new Intel Extreme chip set comes out.

There isn't a lot I will be doing on the system that won't tax the system quite heavily, so its simply a suggestion to the issue. Recently I've considered individual HDD fans or even 5.25 inch water boxes for the HDDs. New 6GB/s 2TB Caviar Blacks shouldn't be struggling to cope with heat and intensive I/O demand after only 2 months.