As anyone who's been around one knows, the Dimension 3000 is a LOUD machine due to the CPU duct and a single exhaust fan. My wife's was driving me nuts and sold her on the idea of a case mod by telling her she'd get pretty lights. It worked!
I forgot to take a "before" pic, but I'm sure you could find a pic of the basic case easilly enough.
My idea was simple. Add ventilation as easily and quickly as possible. The side door on this thing was steel. I didn't feel like tryin to cut through it, so I didn't. $13 dollars worth of Polycarbonate sheeting, and she had a new see-through side panel. Add 2 fans, one 120mm intake side-mounted fan and one 80mm front mounted exhaust fan. Also got sucked into a gimmick, an Antec GPU cooler. Wife thought it would look cool, so $20 later, she got more pretty lights!
Couldn't find a 120mm BLUE side fan, so we got stuck with red. But, then, this mod was more for function than aesthetics.
She has now decided that we have to replace the red fan with blue and paint the case in Dallas Cowboy colors. She don't even WATCH football.......
Anyhow, here's some pics of what I did. Will add some pics after I finish the mod to her specs in a few weeks. Have my own case to do, now.
Funny blue glow above the GPU is that Antec cooler:
#1
#2
#3
#4
The happy bit is, the machine runs nice and quiet, now. That old exhaust fan is thermally controlled via the motherboard. Used to run full-blast all the time. Now runs low, slow, and quiet.
Mission accomplished.
Eric
*Edited for an unfortunate and mildy pornographic typo...
