s1rrah

Thermaltake's Armor case series is sort of like sushi ... either you love it or you hate it.

Personally? I adore mine.

Once modified, the air flow created keeps my internal case temps near identical with my room ambient temps. This is a FTW situation for a die hard air cooler guy like myself, but it's taken a bit of work.

That said ...

One HUGE gripe I have regarding the stock armor case is it's pathetically inefficient 90mm top exhaust fan.

The fan itself doesn't move much air and the plastic trim makes it ESPECIALLY hard to get any air out of the case.

For a stock setup ... I think it's adequate.

But for a serious maximum air cooled overclock ... I think its no good


Stock Armor Top Exhaust
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The solution, of course is to add a nice fat 120mm fan (or even a 140mm) that moves a bunch of air and that is more quiet than the stock 90mm fan.

That means, the top of the case will have to be modified significantly.


Required Tools
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This is pretty much the easiest case mod in the world, but the CFM returns are incredible. Here's a short list of the few things you'll need to make it work.

1. A small hand dremel with a thin cutting disc.
2. 120mm fan of your choice (I used a Scythe fan)
3. Zip ties


Trimming the Trim
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About the only thing more fun than dremeling through plastic is dremeling through metal (the sparks are better).

But this is still pretty fun: smells good, throws some good debris around your work area, creates heat, ... most of the necessary good things, anyway.

First things first: you'll have to pop your top plastic trim work out of your main case.

It's easy, just remove the side panel and stock exhaust fan/fan mount and you will clearly see that the top trim work snaps in via about 6 little plastic tabs. Work from the inside and pop these tabs loose to remove the trim.

Once the trim is out, you can start dremeling.

Here's a couple photos showing the process:

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CUT HERE:




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FINISHED:




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Painless, right?

As the first photo describes ... be sure not to cut into the area that your little flip top cover needs to attach to the underside of the trim. This way you can still use it to cover the case onboard audio inputs.


Wrapping it Up
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The last step is to mount your new 120mm fan into the top of the case using zip ties.

Fortunately, the Armor has that nice perforated top which is a zip tie modders dream.

I used the 120mm fan that shipped with my Scythe Infinity as it's rather quiet and moves a good amount of air:

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Pretty snazzy, huh?

This mod produces a gazillion times more top exhaust airflow than does the stock Armor's exhaust design. HUGE increase.

Of course ... a simple alternative is to simply remove the trim altogether ... zip tie in your 120mm fan and be done with it ... but it's not nearly as clean looking (audio inputs exposed, etc.).


Why Do This?
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The stock CPU speed user or even the light overclocker really shouldn't concern themselves with this mod.

If your using air cooling and running a pretty good daily overclock, though ... it will seriously improve your cases exhaust function ... especially if you are running with a high intake fan setup like me.

I pretty much HAD to do it since I decided some time ago to run a fairly unconventional (but very effective) total case fan scenario.

Since I run a Scythe Infinity cooler, with two Silverstone FM121's in a PUSH > < PUSH setup ... I decided the best scenario for maximum CPU cooling would be to have room air being directed into either of my Infinity fans ...

Therefore, I had to switch my REAR EXHAUST to a REAR INTAKE ... something many air cool die hards consider blasphemous for some reason.

Also, ... to further increase the flow of air from the front of the case to the other side of my Infinity CPU cooler ... I mounted a SECOND 120mm intake in my cases front.

That leaves only a lame 90mm rear exhaust and a lame 90mm top exhaust to get the air out of the case

Here's a diagram:

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This PUSH > < PUSH setup, after a week of testing against other CPU/CASE fan configs ... was a full 3C better than anything else (yes, better than the traditional PUSH > PULL > ).

I think one reason such a massive intake fan scenario works is that the Armor case is so perforated ... every side of the thing is full of holes and so pressure problems, regardless of the high amount of intakes, are non-existent.

Also ... the increased air exhaust garnered from this mod helped as well.

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That said ... have fun cutting your cases apart.



[this mod brought to you by Insomnia]

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real

good work!

REP+

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s1rrah

Thanks ... considering your video card and overclock ... it might be worth doing on your system.

Technically ... the top of your case should be the warmest ... I just can't believe how poor the stock system was.

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s1rrah

:BUMP:

Cause inquiring Armor owners need to know ...

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iampoor

Just to let you know...

Putting an input and output fan near each other makes them VERY ineffective (I've tried )

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DiagnosisDirt

Nicely done , I love a clean mod thats both functional and discrete.
This is a good reminder to all air cooler's , fan grills suck.

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s1rrah

I assume your talking about the rear exhaust fan that sits a couple inches above my rear 120 intake?

A very astute and fair comment/observastion.

But having tested with ducting on the rear intake (moving it about two feet away and down from the 90mm exhaust) and without ... the temps were identical.

I think it's mostly due to the fact that the exhaust is on top and the hot air immediatly rises once exiting the case ...

The setup showed in the last graphic has been unbelievably good so far ...

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Again ... a wise note regarding placement of fans. Thanks ...

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ReV1eWs:
ND-1 VGA Cooler | Mod'd Scythe Infinity | Iceberq 6 VGA Cooler | Spirit RS RAM cooler | Zalman 9500 on NOS | MagicTune
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Aumotocnic: "An unfortunate member of the overclock.net insomnia club"
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OSAMT: "Member of OCN Songwriter and Musician Thread"
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spacegoast

so the push/push method on your cpu cooler actually dropped cpu temp?
for the 2 rear exhaust fans, the top fan shoots warm air out while the bottom pushes air in. how can you tell if the lower rear exhaust fan is pushing in the warm air that the top one shoots out, same goes for the top exhaust fan. you dont want the warm air re-circulating back into your system. if your results are correct though then i have no gripe, lol.

nice work btw.

Fishie36

Cool, simple, and effective, but it looks a bit rough. Perhaps you could change out the entire mesh so you don't have the odd spots that were used to hold down the plastic assembly?

I dunno, it actually doesn't look too bad

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zelavon

I have that case, maybe I'll try this. I always thought that top fan was pointless!