Air movement around case

[Guest]

Hi!

To keep two of my cats from chewing on my cables I am drawing up plans to build a new desk. The new desk will enclose my two computers inside one of the pedestals. Both cases are standard medium towers with 250 watt power supplies. I am allowing at least 1 inch of space on all sides of the machine (front to back there is considerably more).

The question is - Should I mount fans in the pedestal to draw air into the space and push it out? Is it enough to drill holes and allow for natural air flow? I was thinking of mounting 2 fans. 1 near the front-bottom to draw air into the pedestal, and 1 at the top rear to push air out. Is this overkill?

Thanks

Chris

 

[FatBurger]

Yes, I would definitely put fans in there. Get a couple of slower 120mm fans so you can have decent airflow without the noise. But it's definitely worth it to get some fans. See if you can connect them to a wall outlet and just keep them going, and make sure you get filters too.

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Whoever thinks up a good sig for me gets a prize

 

[Mavicator]

I know people who have no air movement in their cpu enclosures without problems but they aren't running much inside. If you're putting 2 machines in one tight enclosure you should definately have some kind of ventilation. A good option would be an AC powered fan since they are typically very quiet compared to high-volume DC fans.

-- Ah sh*t! sys64738 --

 

[Guest]

I used to have a computer (with a 200W PSU) inside a converted cupboard-thingy attached to my desk because I wanted to see if I could cut down on the noise emitted by the system. It would get very warm inside so I stuck two fans from a dead power supply in the back, but the fan noise started to get annoying (due, in part, to my dodgy carpentry).

In the end I removed a large chunk of the back section of the cupboard - this fixed the heat problem and made cabling a lot more convenient as well as keeping the noise from the computer to a minimum (which was the original idea! hehe).

Anyway, if your cats are like mine then they will always find away to cause destruction, disorder, and chaos...

Good luck!
Thermion