magnethead

I'm trying to decide between the Thermaltake Soprano and the Ultra Wizard.

Either way, I currently have a Dell dimension 4600. Anybody with a dell can probably guess my next 2 questions:

Is the side fan with funnel sufficient enough to cool the CPU compared to the OEM dell ducting

How the dickens can i connect the front panel (i believe both have firewire) to my non-firewire enabled motherboard, assuming it has dell's special anti-modification frontside connector. My computer has 2 USB2.0 and a headphone port.

If anybody has some other cases they like that would work, i'm still open to suggestions. Basically, this is what i need:

2 5.25" CD slots
1 3.5" floppy slot
4 3.5" HDD slots

5+ rear expansion slots


Right now I have a DVD lightscribe burner, a CD burner, the dell crapfabulous (as in never working) floppy drive, a creative PCI sound card, a GeForce 5500OC AGP graphics card, a dual slot fan, and all 8 USB ports in back are used up (i need a powered hub, granted 2 of those are external CD burners). I only use the fornt sides for my thumb drive and USB mouse for when my wireless needs a re-charge, and the headphone port is well excersized.

Right now, this is my cooling setup:

80 mm intake fan wiretied to the front under the faceplate; constant 12 volt molex
80 mm exhaust fan wiretied to inside of side panel; constant 12 volt molex (swapped sides with a 4700 for the side grille)
dual slot fan on 12 volt molex with highest speed selected (rated 40 CFM)
OEM 120 mm? fan on motherboard PWC
OEM PSU fan

my math says my case should theorietically be emptied of stale air 150+ times a minute based on averaged CFM's for the fans (20+20+40+35+20 all over .82 cubic feet). However, right now speedfan reports my temps as 99 farenheit for my OEM SATA seagate 160 GB and 84 farenheit for my IDE 300 gig western digital. I'm trying to keep my computer halfway cool and cables and small case aren't helping me any, so i want a new case. My dad lost his 60 GB SATA seagate after 15 months for an unknown reason, just one day wouldn't spool up. I still have it and i've tested it, it's dun dead. I ran speedfan on his new drive, it registers 115 degrees on the IDE drive i put in his computer (dell 4700). Do the 45/46/4700 series cases just have a tendency to run hot? During winter, my 160 gig never got above 93 degrees, the second stayed about 78.

I know i'll be blasted for having the paper just taped in there, but it's to prevent an air-short so that the only incoming air must travel over my 160 GB drive, which has the intake fan blowing right onto it (in otherwords, the air hits the drive then goes up through the 5 mm space bwteen drive and case). and no, that's not the factory FDD/HDD cage, it's a slightly (ok, heavily) modded one from a junk computer that i used to seperate my drives, as when they were next to eachother in the OEM bays, temps were close to 99/89 when room temp was 78. I seperated them in time for summer because, again, i'm trying to keep to 2 digits.

1 g0t 0wn3d

Dust it out and see how it is?

1 g0t 0wn3d

BTW the hdd temps are ok.

magnethead

it's blown out, no dust at all on PSU intake or CPU heatsink.

I just spent 20 minutes moving all those cables in the cavity between the floppy/HDD cage and the wall of the case on the other side from the opening side.

I moved my primary drive away from the intake fan thinking it might have been restricting it, bad idea. Hasn't been running 3 minutes and it's shot up to 104 degrees. (104/82) So i'm gonna move it back. I didn't think that the air hitting the backside would matter that much...if the mounts allowed it, i'd turn the drive around so the air hit the motor and circuitry of the drive. I also took the little 60mm fan off since it probably wasn't doing much.

Can somebody look that my iitial questions over new cases?

I figure if I get one with a bunch of HDD bays, i can space the drives out and have a custom fan under my 160 gig blowing air on the circuitry to cool it down some through wind chill. Both i'm looking out have 5 internal, so i can have

160 HDD
Fan
empty
300 HDD
empty

the temps may be fine, but they're outside what i like to see. My friend got a custom case/computer with sensors out the wazoo and his HDD'd never exceed room temperature, not sure about processor but i know i can put my hand on the heatsink and i can't feel the heat...I just moved my drive back next to the intake, and i couldn't even touch the drive because it was too hot, i wound up getting an oven mitt.

the pictures i posted link to hi-res 1600x1200 versions, FYI.

magnethead

As to my case questions- Here's the connectors for the power switch and LED's, and the one for the frontside USB, in reverse order. Side of oard is power interface, bottom of board is USB interface. Audio i assume is the black cable running back to my sound card with the wide and narrow white plug.

Do the aftermarket cases use similar plugs or will i have to pull out the shrink wrap and soldering iron to make any case work with these plugs.

Thumbnail will open hi-res 1600x1200 image

1 g0t 0wn3d

No they have seperate plugs for each thing. You would have to put them all in there.

magnethead

looks to me like the USB is a generally used 10 pin plug (wait, dell did something not prorietary? I'll have to see that to believe it), the power i'll decode sometime soon.

1 g0t 0wn3d

Oh sorry i thought that it was the power jumpers, yes that is normal.

magnethead

so are both USB (top pic) and power switch/HDD LED/pwr LED (bottom pic) standard for ATX compliance or is/are one or both dell proprietary? Or do aftermarket cases use 2 pin connectors for each of the 3 items and a 10 pin blcok for the USB?

Of the many computers i have in here, none use a 10 pin block for power, rather a 2 pin on the switch, a 3 pin with middle missing for pwr LED, and a 2 pin for HDD LED.

magnethead

I DETUNED my graphics card with riva tuner, cut it down to 80% during standard 2D use (235 MHz core/350MHz memory) so hopefully that will cut down a hair of heat. Factory was 290/350. I removed the side fan and blocked it off and that lessened the vacuum. I'll get a new temp reading later today.