XPS Gen3 3 extra fans experiment

[munski]

Dr. Frankenberry reporting in from the XPS basement labratory on todays experiment.
The 3 80mm fans arrived today so I zip tied the 2 Panaflos together and strapped them to a homemade "U" alum. bracket that I screwed to the case ceiling right over the RAM sticks in front of the CPU. So far, so good.




Added the 80mm low speed NMB fan to the air splitter bracket and re-installed the stock 92mm fan and shroud for the video card/hdd assembly to the door. Left off the green HDD shroud cover for now.
Kept the stock 92mm CPU heatsink rear Delta's zip tied to the black cage bracket - both positioned for exhaust and I have to say - NOT BAD!!! CPU temps at 88-90 deg F. with just a slight whine from these bad boys.
The 3 new 80mm fans don't seem to add much (if any)noise and I'll be keeping track of temps and reporting back in.
I've got more x-up shots if anybody needs to see the details and will be doing the ATI Silencer X800 SE install soon just to confuse the issue even more.
Sorry about some of the deleated pics on the other threads - I thought I was running out of image space and took a few off. If anybody needs to see more - just email me - [e-mail] - and I'll send some over.

Munski

[munski]

What I did was to cable tie the 2 Panaflo's together in the middle and then cable tie the top fan to the bracket. I glued a thin strip of rubber to the bottom of the "U" bracket to keep the fans from slipping around & it worked great. The bracket is suspended from the ceiling with 2, 3/8" sheet metal screws. It was nerve racking to drill the mesh at the top of the case - one slip and you'd be thru the top, but I went easy and just opened up a couple of the many existing holes. It should be easy to take off if I need to get at the RAM.
Thanks for the props on the interior, but the cable thing isn't quite done yet - still having trouble with the 5.25" bay cage mashing the cables to the side of the case when I close the door. Also, the blades of both the Panaflos are exposed to all the cables, so you have to tuck everything away carefully when you close up.

[lanraider]

Dr. Frankenberry,

It's alive...it's alive!
And with those temps, it's going to be alive for a very long time. EXCELLENT!

[stevogabe]

nice mod! is that a stock heat sink from dell?

[TRow]

Custom made fan braket: Priceless. Good work man!

T.RoW

[devnull]

One word man....awesome. I think that this summer I will try something just like that. I really think that my case needs more style. Maybe some anodized aluminum in it? DEFINITELY a new northbridge, if I take out that shroud. It just looks really naked without that big green bohemoth in there....but if it cools the thing down without a hit to sound, it seems worth it.

[munski]

Hey everybody,
Yup that's the stock Dell HS that came with my rig, alright.
If you want to spruce up your northbridge, Gabe at Swiftech said that this;

www.sidewindercomputers.com/swmc3.html

would fit, but I can't testify if the cpu shroud would get in the way. Gary at Sidewinder said that unless you overclock the MB (#$^&*@!!?&** Dell engineering %!@&?/%*!BIOS) it isn't necessary, unlesss, of course you have the extra $$$ to blow just for the high coolness factor.

more later,
munski

[devnull]

Im as much a fan of aestetics as performance. Anything for a lil more coolness factor.

[munski]

Here we go, again -
I stripped everything out of the XPS and I'm starting over from scratch by monitoring all the temps with the stock config. - then I'm gonna re-install everything and report back, since the noise level (stock) seems to be the same as when I added the extra 3 fans. (I'm so glad I'm unemployed right now, but it ain't gonna last.)
I hope that all my experiments help you XPS guys from making some of the mistakes I've made & read about.
Now, my poor Dell Dimension 4500 is blown apart on my workbench undergoing major heart surgery & I couldn't be happier. You gotta have at least 2 computers to fool around with!
munski signing out...