Conceptual Design - 3D Magazine - Inaugural Issue


Cold Zone Tower

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In one place that I lived awhile back, I had two mountains mods cases (24"x24"x18"), no AC, and I was having a rough time of it, trying to keep my computers cool enough to operate in July and August temperatures. It turns out, that my 3rd gen Asrock (64 Gig, I7 Hex Core - hyperthreaded, 2 x Gtx 690's, 1T SSD) is quite capable when it comes to heat tolerance, but my 9th gen Aorus (I9, 128G, Rtx 2080 Ti, Gtx 960), well, not so much probably due to the M.2. 

Having been a fan of mountains mods (MM) for a while, I have always loved having lots of fans. I am not a believer in those tiny little cases where the fan seems to roar due to not enough air flow keeping the components cool as the demand on the chip and the gpu increases. At least two of the MM panel types of with 12 fan holes per panel not to mention fans in the front and back panels plus some custom 3" fan wholes I drilled and tapped on the floor of my case. So yes, fan's o plenty, but its still not enough.

Recently a new fan was added to blow directly on the back of the motherboard through the hole in the tray to disperse air underneath the border in the thin area of the standoffs, plus a suspended fan for cross motherboard air flow. I bought a digital thermometer for the Aorus case and I have determined to back and shut down once the internal temperature reaches 80° so that the system doesn't freeze 10 times a day (and no, that's not an exaggeration).

I was in an environment where the ceilings are 12' and the "room" is pretty big, so I was not prepared at the moment to move to full fledge AC on that size of a space. This project, the cold zone tower, will have 1 MM case in the bottom and 1 MM case 1 shelf up. On shelf #3, I planned to put in a small AC Unit to cool about 8x2.5x2.5 or thereabouts somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 Cu Ft give or take, so that the electric bill should not be too bad.

 

Thankfully, I have waited to buy my new Z690 system until I get all of the "heat" bugs worked out.

 

The model below shows the heat being expelled through an external window. The air-conditioner sucks up the hot air from the center shelf. One long hose will input cool air and one will with draw hot air. The same pattern is true for the short hoses. On the opposite side of the window - there would be hinges on the door so you have access to the computers.

 

So if you are in a hot environment, tweak this design to your needs and keep your equipment nice and cool.


Conceptual Design - 3D Magazine - Inaugural Issue