New
#1
cooling options for my oddly-designed Gateway PC?
My main W7 PC is a Gateway DX4822-01. As far as cooling goes it has a massive intake fan over the CPU, a case fan I installed in the back and the power supply fan. The HDD bay sits at the front in an odd tray and there is no cooling or ventilation around it. I run my HDD at 47 C, which might be acceptable but I'd prefer to drop that a bit- seeing as my XP Dell runs its HDD at 42 C maximum.
Alright, so I have 2 internal floppy drive sized bays that are empty, which might house something BUT...
E5300 6GB DDR2 1TB HDD | Gateway DX4822-01 Windows 7 Desktop Pc
... as you can see the front is a solid chunk of black plastic. Now this front panel does come off, and the bottom area below the DVD drive doors also pops off as a separate piece. I can access the floppy area or even drill some vent holes towards the bottom of the PC if that would help. It's a 5 year old PC, I'm not too worried about any warranty voiding by cutting up the case a bit, or I could just leave the lower panel piece off. Or I could use one of my DVD bays for some sort of cooler too as I only have one drive(well okay, I have two, but that piece of junk that came factory installed just sits there unused after I got an Asus).
I suppose a PCI slot fan may also help to some minor degree but that's at the opposite end of the case, I need some cooling near the HDD bays.