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DPete27
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Fri Oct 26, 2018 3:10 pm

Image
Everything is to scale. Except the motherboard width is exaggerated to accommodate the "motherboard tray" I'll have to fabricate.
The hole in the back will be 1.75" x 6.7" and the motherboard will protrude 1" out the back of the cylinder. I'll be getting a mountable 90 degree extension plug for the PSU (can't recall the specific name for this at the moment) which will mount flush on the back of the cylinder, right above the IO panel.
A 120mm fan could fit, but I'd have to grind the corners off the frame to approximately the center of the mounting holes. (square peg, round hole)
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UberGerbil
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Fri Oct 26, 2018 4:16 pm

DPete27 wrote:
A 120mm fan could fit, but I'd have to grind the corners off the frame to approximately the center of the mounting holes. (square peg, round hole)
What about using a 140mm fan and mounting it outside, ie below the bottom of the "case" -- it already has that little stand at the bottom you could drill mounting holes into. You'd need feet or a mesh ring at the bottom to raise it off the floor, but you're going to need that anyway to let air in.
 
Chrispy_
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Fri Oct 26, 2018 4:28 pm

Okay, I'm getting my head around the airflow a bit now.
Couple of questions:

1) Are the components different to your first post? That PSU doesn't look SFX, it looks more like an old shuttle XPC or 1U server PSU from the ratio of dimensions.
2) GPU is in backwards/upside down - presumably so that the display connectors are near the hole for the motherboard IO cutout? and the intake fan is facing the cylinder wall?

I'll refrain from overthinking this too much, but on the assumption that the GPU vents 50% towards the top and 50% towards the motherboard, and that the mITX PSU has vertical airflow, you have a clash of moving air mass, and a dual-chamber design might be a better way to cool everything.

We're only talking about a couple of hundred Watts under typical load though, so you're definitely going to be fine. We have racks (MDF shelving racks, not 42U server racks) of machines that draw maybe 450W from the wall each, and are cooled front-to-back by a single 120mm intake, with a 92mm exhaust, plus whatever the PSU fan contributes. From a cooling perspective you're going to be fine in absolute terms but optimising the airflow will reduce noise levels, and I assume you're trying to find the quietest possible way to run this system.

I love projects like this. Most challenging one I had was a bank of projectors with PC's underneath them all housed in small 1'x1'x3' plinths with LED-backlit frosted acrylic architectural models on top. The only perforations in the cabinet are a 3" diameter hole for the projector lens and a half inch gap around the top of the cuboid. Projector was 600W, btw and after many eyerolls and telling people that it couldn't be done I modified the floor tile and heatsinked all that sh*t under the false floor :D
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DPete27
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Fri Oct 26, 2018 7:53 pm

No you're right. I originally thought that SFX was going to work, but once I got everything drawn in CAD it didn't fit because the GPU needs to be located smack in the middle of the cylinder to provide the clearance I need to plug in the aux power on one side and the PCIe riser on the other. Then I considered a TFX form factor (since I have one in my spare parts closet), but the width wasn't the problem, I needed something with less height (in the conventional mounting orientation). The PSU is now a Silverstone SSF-FX350G. I'm not terribly excited about the tiny 40mm fan, but it's an interesting new product to try out. This thing is smaller than some gaming laptop's power bricks and produces 350W :o How's that for power density? The PSU fan will probably end up exhausting downward toward the mobo (unless reversing the fan produces no ill effects), which I realize isn't ideal, but it's probably going to have to be that way so that I can plug everything in with minimal wiring clutter. I plan on shortening the PSU cables to only what's needed (that will also be a fun new experience).

At this point I'm planning on venting the top as much as possible, and I'll also vent/slot the IO panel cover on the mobo to allow some heat from the CPU to escape there. My hot box only had the existing openings in the top, but I can at least drill 2 additional ~1/2" holes beside the pressure gage without anyone noticing because the shroud shadows that area pretty well. With all those extra holes, I should almost double the 20CFM that my hot box tested for. Try as I might to seal it up, I'm sure I'll incur some additional airflow losses around the mobo IO panel protrusion, which will allow some additional CPU airflow out the back. However, I don't want to let too much out near the IO panel for fear that would stagnate/starve the airflow past the GPU.

I reached out to EVGA regarding their single fan GTX1060 6GB and they responded by saying the fan on that unit maxes out at 2200-2500rpm. As a point of reference, the 92mmx14mm Noctua NF A9-14 produces 29CFM at 2200rpm so I'm taking that as best case scenario for what EVGA's fan produces at 100% and an insinuation that 29CFM will be plenty airflow to sufficiently cool the GPU. The nice thing about this small "high" pressure wind tunnel of a case with little/no areas for the air to eddy up is that air will be flowing at a decent velocity past any given component on its way out the case. To circle back to my earlier air velocity estimation, the case volume is only 0.254 Cubic Feet so even if I only get 25CFM, that means (theoretically) every bit of air spends less than 3/4 of a second inside the case.

And yes, the GPU has to be mounted with the display ports facing down for cable routing, but also because the expansion bracket is the only thing I can use to bolt the GPU to the component frame.
Main: i5-3570K, ASRock Z77 Pro4-M, MSI RX480 8G, 500GB Crucial BX100, 2 TB Samsung EcoGreen F4, 16GB 1600MHz G.Skill @1.25V, EVGA 550-G2, Silverstone PS07B
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Chrispy_
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Sat Oct 27, 2018 5:48 am

DPete27 wrote:
No you're right. I originally thought that SFX was going to work, but once I got everything drawn in CAD it didn't fit because the GPU needs to be located smack in the middle of the cylinder to provide the clearance I need to plug in the aux power on one side and the PCIe riser on the other. Then I considered a TFX form factor (since I have one in my spare parts closet), but the width wasn't the problem, I needed something with less height (in the conventional mounting orientation). The PSU is now a Silverstone SSF-FX350G. I'm not terribly excited about the tiny 40mm fan, but it's an interesting new product to try out. This thing is smaller than some gaming laptop's power bricks and produces 350W :o How's that for power density? The PSU fan will probably end up exhausting downward toward the mobo (unless reversing the fan produces no ill effects), which I realize isn't ideal, but it's probably going to have to be that way so that I can plug everything in with minimal wiring clutter. I plan on shortening the PSU cables to only what's needed (that will also be a fun new experience).

That PSU will be fine. Assuming worst-case figures all around, the efficiency chart is probably for 230V and that it's closer to 85% on 110V, then assume that your typical peak load is going to be 250W and you're looking at only 250W * 0.15 of heat loss in the PSU total, which is still under 40W and that a good fraction of that heat will be transferred to the vast surface area of the PSU's housing anyway. Under more typical loads of maybe 175W and with more optimism on the efficiency graph, it's under 20W.

DPete27 wrote:
At this point I'm planning on venting the top as much as possible, and I'll also vent/slot the IO panel cover on the mobo to allow some heat from the CPU to escape there. My hot box only had the existing openings in the top, but I can at least drill 2 additional ~1/2" holes beside the pressure gage without anyone noticing because the shroud shadows that area pretty well. With all those extra holes, I should almost double the 20CFM that my hot box tested for. Try as I might to seal it up, I'm sure I'll incur some additional airflow losses around the mobo IO panel protrusion, which will allow some additional CPU airflow out the back. However, I don't want to let too much out near the IO panel for fear that would stagnate/starve the airflow past the GPU.

<snip>

To circle back to my earlier air velocity estimation, the case volume is only 0.254 Cubic Feet so even if I only get 25CFM, that means (theoretically) every bit of air spends less than 3/4 of a second inside the case.

<snip>

And yes, the GPU has to be mounted with the display ports facing down for cable routing, but also because the expansion bracket is the only thing I can use to bolt the GPU to the component frame.


Your proposed layout may actually be fine because of the chimney effect with a single tube and a powerful fan at the bottom. Theory and practice don't often agree in fluid mechanics, not without access to very pricey modelling software! I certainly wouldn't expect to get the same CFM through the case with obstructions in it but I still think that it'll be fine, though possible a little noisy.

If it were my project the only thing that would concern me a little is the sheer amount of hot exhaust directed towards the centre area; PSU fan, all 95W from the CPU, at least half of the 120W from the GPU, let's call it 30W from the PSU and you can probably add another 15W for everything else on the board to call it an 'even 200W' hotspot. Sadly I don't think reversing the PSU fan is going to be effective - it's a shrouded-intake, negative-pressure design so the coolest air is induced at relatively high-speed around all the primary heatsinks and then dissipates more slowly internally to less important heatsinks in the PSU. If you flip the fan and do nothing, the fan is going to have to work MUCH harder because the air reaching the primary heatsinks near what has become the exhaust outlet is now higher-pressure, slower-moving air that is already pre-warmed. Rather than flipping the fan around in the PSU, I'd prefer to find a way to flip the whole PSU around if possible.

One alternative for you to think about is how much deviation from the cylinder shape are you willing to tolerate at the back, out of sight?

You've already made a 1.75" slot at the bottom for the motherboard tray, and you obviously need more cutout for cable-routing. If you were to enlarge that slot by half an inch in width and then extend it upwards a bit you could easily squeeze a couple of decent-quality 60x25mm fans in there. Go up to a 3" slot and 80mm fans become an option. If you were willing to do that you have a lot more options available to you for experimentation:
  • Intakes at top and bottom, exhausts next to the hot zone in the centre at the rear,
  • dual-chamber design with 120mm dedicated to the motherboard and a couple of smaller fans handling the top chamber, or given that there's empty space between the cylinder wall and the GPU you could probably put a couple of 80mm fans in there.
  • chimney-effect assist by recessing extra fan(s) in the gap between the cylinder wall and the GPU.

Personally I think the simplest alteration that would improve cooling to all components would be to flip the PSU around in its entirety, the additional benefit being that you can MASSIVELY shorten the cables to remove a significant portion of the airflow resistance they cause. You'll obviously need to do something funky with right-angle IEC C14/C15 cables but you'd need to do that whatever orientation it's in, anyway ;)
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DPete27
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Sat Oct 27, 2018 9:40 am

My apologies, I misinterpreted the layout of the PSU. I intend to orient the PSU with the fan and C13 connector at the top, output wires toward the base (the 24 pin and SATA wires will be comically short). I'm not used to seeing a PSU fan on the back panel, so it looks like this fan sucks air through the housing. That's prefect. I get the wires in the direction I wanted and the airflow in the optimal direction also.

I know what you mean by the PSU inhaling heated air from the CPU though. I'm afraid that's going to be unavoidable. I can try ducting if possible.
Main: i5-3570K, ASRock Z77 Pro4-M, MSI RX480 8G, 500GB Crucial BX100, 2 TB Samsung EcoGreen F4, 16GB 1600MHz G.Skill @1.25V, EVGA 550-G2, Silverstone PS07B
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sweatshopking
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:36 am

did you ever finish this? wanna see pics
 
DPete27
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Re: Fire Extinguisher PC

Wed Apr 03, 2019 10:09 am

Sorry. Thought I wrapped this up. Unfortunately, the client fell through because he had bought a dual fan EVGA GTX1060 against my advice (and paid $300 at the tail end of the crypto craze...against my advice) and we weren't able to get a swap for a single fan model. I wasn't terribly upset about that. While the project would've been fun and interesting, I had already put a LOT of time into the planning, and a lot more would've had to go into the fabrication. Not to mention that the PSU would've been a specialty part that's never really been reviewed. At least now the fire extinguisher is restored instead of cut up.

Since this project was so unique, I had considered mocking it up inside a couple of those 3lb coffee cans stacked 2 high (same diameter as the fire extinguisher). I'd probably end up doing it with an externally mounted ATX PSU so I don't have to buy that special one, but I'd have to purchase a PCIex16 riser I don't really need. Even then, it'd only be a proof of concept for thermals. I already know all the components would've fit since I had the whole thing planned and drawn to scale in CAD.

I've got some other ideas in the works.
Main: i5-3570K, ASRock Z77 Pro4-M, MSI RX480 8G, 500GB Crucial BX100, 2 TB Samsung EcoGreen F4, 16GB 1600MHz G.Skill @1.25V, EVGA 550-G2, Silverstone PS07B
HTPC: A8-5600K, MSI FM2-A75IA-E53, 4TB Seagate SSHD, 8GB 1866MHz G.Skill, Crosley D-25 Case Mod

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