Zoomlolly

Hi All,
Down here in sunny Empangeni S.A. we have lovely summer temp’s of 30 deg C plus, with humidity it ends up being in the mid/low 40 Deg C!! I built my system last December and since then I have not been happy with the temps it pushes out. I have spent some time reading these forums and watched how some of the guys have made some drastic changes to their cases. Well done, you have made me catch the modding bug. Anyway this will be my first mod and I am sure it is going to show every now then. Any and all criticism/advice is welcome. I am always open any ideas on how to go about this.
First off this mod is going to focus on getting some air into the case. The Gigabyte Aurora is a lovely box and I am very happy with it. It has a few problems though...Air flow being the one of the biggest for me. Most of the reviews I read before buying the case were very positive. My experience has not been negative just not what I expected. I think living down here in the heat will give different results. And I suppose the reviews were from places which are a lot cooler or from air conditioned offices.
The next thing I want to do with this case is some cable management. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of space in the case and this is purely my fault. I have just run the cables to get the machine running. It is now time for me to clean up my mess....I have a few ideas which I am going to try.
The last thing I want to do is give this case a little “bling”. It is a big, bold, sophisticated looking, business type case. It just needs a little something.....

Current Situation

As I have mentioned there is a lot of heat. I decided to try and cool the case a bit with a 120mm fan mounted in the drive bays. Don’t laugh to hard this just to see if the extra air flow will help, I mounted the fan with cable ties and removed the drive bay covers. It worked by the way. Ambient temp in the case before the 120mm fan experiment was 53 Deg C, It dropped to 48 Deg C. My sophisticated testing equipment was a household, dolphin showing thermometer which I stuck in the case with the door closed. So it seems it will be a good idea to let more air in.

Auroa case front door open

Fitted 120mm Test Fan

HDD Bay

Thermometer - At 7AM this morning.......


The Strip Down

I removed all hardware from the case, except the mobo. As I said before I want to do some cable management changes, so with the Mobo in place I took a permanent marker and marked out the mobo and the positions of all the cables. I want all the cables to come in from behind the tray.

Marked around mobo

Marking USB cable position

Mobo outlined with plug positions


I then removed the drive bay locks. I found that all I had to do was lift the rear of the lock and slide it back and it will pop out.

Drive bay lock removale - slide back

Lift plastic slider

Slider slips out


The lock themselves were the same. Lift, turn and out she comes...

Lift

Turn

Out



The tensioners on the other side of the drive bay were also real easy to remove. Pull back from the inside of the drive bay and out they pop.

Pull back

Out it comes


The card holder was just a screw to loosen...and it fell out.

Card holder screw

Card holder removed



The front fan just clips out but what is behind it is a big concern. I have no idea how air is suppose to flow though this. The grill and filter will be removed!!

Front fan and filter

Front fan grill with HDD mountings behind



The HDD bay also needs attention. I am going to cut away as much as possible and pop rivet struts across to hold the HDD’s in place. The HDD’s only sit on the top of the large hole things. I can get more air through here....

HDD Bay

No space between HDD Bay and Fan


The system speaker just popped out. The power switch and USB console had screws to be loosened. I cable tied everything together before pulling the cables out. I don’t want any plugs if there are any pulling out and me not knowing where they belong.

The system speaker

USB front Console

Cable tied all front wires together with power switch



Anyway that is it for now. I am going to drill out pop rivets and strip the case down even further. There is still a lot of cutting and changes I want to do.

Wakeo91

Ive recently seen this case. it looks amazing.

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Warfarin88

Awesome detail in your log Zoomlolly.

I looked pretty hard at this case when I bought my first one. That front intake and hard drive cage was one of the things that steered me away. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with to improve it!

Stalker

Great stuff Mr. Zoom, subscribed!

markkleb

Looking forward to your progress your zoominess... Subscribed.

Mozzie

Very nice Zoom good luck in your mod!!Subscribed!!

Zoomlolly

Thanks for the encouragement guys,
Yesterday was a no go for me, I lent my drill to somone and it has not found its way home...lol.
Anyway I will post new pics up tomorrow and hopefully with my MS Paint skills be able to show you what I am planning.
I have drilled out the pop rivets and got all the loose parts. I am going to start cutting and grinding a little later or mybe tomorrow.
I have America's Army practice a little later so I have to see what time I have left.
Lets hope I can keep it inside the lines...lol

The Fury

Cant wait :P

Subscribed.

I am very interested in getting this case shortly. What are your views on it?

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Q6600 @ 3.5ghz
We are teh Green Machine

British Overclockers Club

TheJack

Thank you for explaining how to take out the tooless HDD bay slides. Now i have a clue on how to fix mine.

Xombie

Very nice job so far.

I have the same case and I'm looking forward to see how your mods go.

A few recommendations for airflow: YOU MUST USE THE SIDE PANEL VENT! Don't use the plastic side panel, even if you like to look inside your case. You can still look inside your case quite well if you use the vent and light it up with some cold cathodes from the inside like I did. Using the vent is critical since without it, the only way to get air into the case would be through the "blocked up" front intake fan.

That brings me to my second point, the front fan is absolutely hopeless in drawing air into the case since it has so many "obstacles" in front of it. Make sure you keep the filter removed and, also, the fan works significantly better when pushed to the right hand side. Then you can actually feel it in the HD cage (which has only holes on the Right hand side, which I guess why it blows better).

Another tip, it's mostly common knowledge, but get rid of the Toolkit as it blocks system airflow.

I wouldn't consider myself a case modder at all, but I added a 120mm fan to the HD cage - I guess that could be called a "case mod" lol... - here's a a couple pics if you'd like to see how I mounted it, etc:







Subscribed btw.

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