kennymester

Purpose: To add airflow under a disc drive and make it look uber cool too.





Tools:


-Dremel
-Drill
-1/4 bit
-Sanding bit for Dremel
-Cutting wheel for Dremel
-Wire clippers
-Hot glue gun or super glue
-Soldering iron
-Small screwdrivers
-30mm hole saw if panel is not grated


Materials:


-Three evercool 30mm x 30mm case fans
-5.25 case cover
-10k potentiometer (Radioshack) note: using a different value potentiometer could possibly break something
-12v LED's optional
-Various wire
-Knob that fits your potentiometer


Well fist off I wanted to do this becuase the bottom of my DVD drive gets really hot
when I'm burning DVD's. I looked at some coolers online, but I couldn't find
anything I really liked. One day I stumbled on some of evercool's small fans
and I got an idea, why not put three in the drive bay cover.


Before you start building you first need to measure out the area of your cover. I figured that I could fit three nicely, but this may different for you. Also measure out an area for you potentiometer, it needs about a quater inch hole for the knob.





After measuring out the various componet spots its time to start cuttin' and drillin'. First cut out the quarter inch hole.





Next depending on your cover either cut out the 30mm holes or cut out the plastic on the inside.





Next you need to mount the potentiometer. To mount it stick it through the quarter inch hole and then tighten the nut on the outside. If it is tight enough it should not move around. You can use hot glue to strengthen it more if needed.











After mounting the Pot (potentiometer) we can now mount the fans. Before putting them in cut the yellow wire out along with the top connector. Leave about three inches of wire. To mount the fans I used hot glue so as to not show screws, but if wanted you could add holes for each fan to use screws.





Now that everything is mounted we can start the wiring process. The fans are going to be hooked up in parallel because each needs to run on 12volts. Take the red leads and solder them to the first connector on the left. Next take some extra wire and solder a lead on the middle connector. Take that lead and solder it to one of the connecotrs you cut off before. Make sure you solder that lead to the red wire. Now you can solder all the black leads to the black wire on the connector.




















Now that wiring is done you can attach the knob onto the front.





If you chose to get the LED's then you could now wire them in. You would first hot glue them into the position you want, then solder a black lead to then short lead on the LED and connect it to the power connector. After the black, solder a red wire to the longer lead and also connect that to the power connector.





Also pictured above you can connect this up as a three pin system or use the included adapter for a four pin molex connector.


Well that is pretty much it. Of course test if first before you permanently put in your system. Now you have a cool custom drive bay cooler.


Here are some pics of the finished product. All together the fans push about 9cfm's.














I had a lot of fun doing this and hope that you will too.


Feel free to comment or ask questions.


Ken

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Mystikalz

sweet~! very clean finish.

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Just a N00B

Sweet Rep!!+

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pjlietz

Nice mod! Looks great.

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dhrandy

Nice!

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Syrillian

Nice mod!

That should come in handy to any number of people. You did some nice soldering work there.



P.S. Nice pink glue-gun

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kennymester

Yeah, thanks, I've had that glue gun since I was like seven.

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Cncrcmoto

nice thats really sweet, did it make any difference to your temps?

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kennymester

Yeah, it blows right into the zalman9500 it lowers the temp about 3c. The real difference is when I make some serious lightscribe burns, the drive doesn't get hot anymore.

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d3daiM

very nice!!

-d3d

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