New
#291
One could use those 200mm fan with sided cut off (Antec Big boy), before surgery!
I have a 600T, black and put a megaflow fan in it. Instead of all the modding, I opted to remove the drive cages and mount them on the floor where there is a place to do that. I am only using One drive cage with 3 2TB drives. I mounted the SSD to the floor with Velcro. It was certainly much simpler.
The problem isn't the width of the fan; it's the thickness. The Antec fans aren't much, if any, better than the stock Corsair 200mm fans. Steve presented a reasonable (and popular) alternative that works quite well as long as one doesn't need more than three HDDs (I needed more, hence the extensive surgery, not to mention I'm just anal and OCD). I have no idea how many HDDs Andre needs room for.
Wow, I look away for a mere 2 hours and miss a world of comments.. (: Lol.
That doesn't sound like it will be a problem really, but perhaps a major annoyance.. Being such a wide setup, I thought the curved mounting bar idea would help with tilting them inwards more easily, now I'm starting to wonder if the layout will be too curved with this.
Thanks, the extra desktop space has made a world of difference to my wannabe website dev work.. I end up with 15 different app windows open before I know it, and that's with using a tabbed mod for Explorer.
Ironically, I'm actually sitting with a CoolerMaster Megaflow 200mm here right now, had it for months already.. :) I've got an SSD and 4 HDDs though, which causes a problem for the drive installation options in my case. I've got a piece of 4mm threaded bar with matching nuts that I'll be using to mount the fan, I just need to find time to actually do that.. Perhaps next weekend..? *he says rather pensively*
I concur, it's rather annoying hey..? The space Corsair gave us for the front fan thickness is quite literally a millimeter or two too small for the majority of aftermarket fans. Switching away from the stock fans was a purely aesthetic decision, I wanted to get away from the barrage of LEDs in my case.
As I know nothing of the world of multiple monitor stands, I am quite open to suggestions.. To try keep this thread clean, if anyone has a suggestion for my specific setup, perhaps it could be posted here instead.
If I remember correctly, it's 10mm that will stick into the hard drive cage area, and you won't be able to use the hard drive cages there. It has a slot cut out behind where the cages are mouted, if moved. It needs to be lower because the bottom drive is almost inaccessible, but workable. I believe, although I've never tried it, if you took a dremmel and made the slot higher, you could mount both drives there. That would be a simple thing to do. Much easier than modding the front panel to fit a larger fan. But, the stock Corsair fan didn't put out enough air to blow out a candle. I don't care what their specs say, you may as well have no fan than that one, it's 15mm thick rather than the standard 25mm thick.
I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it didn't go quite that far into the drive cage area when I tried.. Still, the fact remains that I couldn't put the drive bays back in.
After your previous comment, I took another look at my case and noticed I have three empty 5.25" bays... Brainwave! As an alternative to making a custom mount for the Bitfenix fan (which I'm still quite tempted to do), I've just ordered two sets of metal 5.25" to 3.5" mounting brackets, which should arrive later this week. Think I'll move two drives up in the case and try the idea of a single drive cage closer to the PSU and install the more powerful CM Megaflow fan. I believe the CM will move more air than the Bitfenix I've got currently, which should help airflow a bit.. I'm also planning to rotate my CPU cooler to point up and change the back fan to an intake, which should hopefully give me a better "positive pressure" system in my case.
Just thinking out loud, but I saw a few 3-bay sized adapters that hold 4 drives (like this and this) that would be nice to have.. I could then hide my one SSD somewhere and remove all my drive cages. Alas, I can't find anyone in SA that sells them...
@ZaLiTH, the 4-in-3 drive cage is a good idea, I've used this one since March 2011. It's in my "media repository" PC that runs 24/7 (last reboot was 191 days ago).
The fan is very quiet, I have to get right next to it to hear the fan running (and I may be hearing the other system fans as well). Aside from one of the LEDs being out, never had any trouble with it at all. It doesn't have an actual dust filter but the screen is a fine mesh that collects dust. I run the vacuum cleaner over it every couple of months.
The four drives are 2TB Greens, currently they're showing a Power-On time of 3.2 years, temperature of all four is 37C (99F).
The front panel styling may not suit everyone, but I like it.
Too bad you can't find one locally, is it that much more expensive to order one and have it shipped to South Africa?
What's about that one?
ICY DOCK MB154SP-B, 4x hot-swappable in 3x 5.25" bay, SATA6G mobile rack
or
Lian Li EX-H34S, Black, HDD expansion kit
Looks they're based in Johannesburg.
PS: I saw that on a pic...Indeed that internal fan does not permit much room when mounted on the front panel outside, to put back the main front panel one...
Last edited by NoN; 17 Jun 2014 at 18:08.
That would work, but I just put 3 2TB drives in the one cage closer to the PSU, as you said and velcroed the SSD to the floor in front of the fan.