Centurion 5 HAF

I'm about to start my first case mod in a long while, and it's inspired by the Coolermaster Centurion 5 Club and all the great modding work I have been looking at on these forums in the last few weeks. I need to work on the airflow in my case, a venerable Centurion 5 that has served me well for 4 computer upgrades so far. Part of this mod is sentimentality, and part of it is that my wife won't approve a $200 computer case unless it is absolutely necessary. So, I want to turn my Centurion 5 into a close cousin of an HAF...

--- The Background ---

The problems with cooling all started with Eyefinity. I love it. I *needed* LOTRO on 3 screens. Trouble is, this sweet setup raises my in room temperature to around 75F and the temperature of the exhaust from my case is upwards of 87F, and the GPU gets up to 85C! It only got past that once, above 90C, and BSOD. In the middle of a raid.



You can see my case hiding behind the monitors:



Hidden inside there are all those heat-inducing components:
- 8GB of crucial RAM on an Asus P5n32e-sli board
- Q6600 @2.4Ghz cooled with a 120mm Tuniq tower
- 4 SATA drives, an IDE DVD-R/W
- an intel gigabit nic
- a Creative Labs Audigy
- a PC Power&Cooling 750W PSU
- a couple other fans that don't do their job

closer, with flash:

and without flash. Notice the blue light from the front CM drive bay totally obscured by too much wiring. If light can't get through, how can air?


Don't forget some terrible wiring, in part from the lack of wiring holes in the Centurion 5. This is the 4th computer to live in this case. Back when I had a Pentium III in there, it was usually nice and cool. But, time has moved on, and the Centurion needs some work.
My goal is to get my temps down, way down, so I can not only have stability, but perhaps a little overclocking, too.

I am starting with a new fan, a REXUS 250mm and a Sunbeam fan controller. The Silverstone 120mm that is currently frankensteined onto the case panel will move to the back. I'll be cutting a big opening in the side for the Rexus, and a blowhole in the top for the other CM fan that was in the back of the case. Oh, I almost forgot, while I have the Dremel out, I plan to add cable management holes in the motherboard tray also.

Hopefully it won't suck.

Good luck!

IMO I would opt for a bigger case... That or get super creative with your cable management. Good luck!

criccio said:

IMO I would opt for a bigger case... That or get super creative with your cable management. Good luck!

Click to expand...

While I have the Dremel out, I'm hoping to add some cable management holes into the motherboard tray. Thanks!

Good luck with that project. Back when I had a Centurion 5, cable management was a nightmare. I finally retired it with drilling it into scrap metal.

All the parts arrived, and I had time to work on this! I'm excited. I haven't [STRIKE=Option]destroyed[/s] modded a case since I took a hacksaw to an IBM PC 5150 case to fit in a Cyrix 166.

Stage 1: The Huge Ass Fan

The REXUS 250mm fan is big. It's bigger than I thought. (that's what she said)
It didn't look like it would fit in there at all. (that's what she said)



It looks like we're going to need a bigger hole. (that's what she said)

I guess we'll have to do a window mod! (that's what she... wha?)
Fortunately I had some old acrylic left from another project that was a perfect size, 11x14.



Since I've been researching other mods, I knew it was a good idea to tape out where I would cut my window opening. I clamped down the case panel to my trusty Workmate, and prepared to cut. KIDS: If you try this at home, remember that you can move the panel and re-clamp it so that you don't cut a hole in the surface of your Workmate.





I drilled a hole big enough to fit the saber saw blade, and carefully cut along the lines. This pic was snapped while I was moving the panel.



The finished case opening:



The acrylic needed a hole for the HAF (Huge Ass Fan). I cut this on the scroll saw by first drilling a hole for the blade, sliding the blade through the hole, and carefully following the line. There are probably several ways to do this, one of which is a hole saw. Another is with a Dremel and a guide. This was convenient, and seemed to do a great job.



The fan fits perfectly!



Next up: drilling some holes in the acrylic for the bolts that will hold the window. I drilled the holes for the window first, then used that as a stencil to mark where I would drill the holes in the case panel. I used my ancient pre-World War 2-era drill press. We used to have a table saw and a jigsaw that matched them, but maintaining those was more work than they were worth. This drill press just keeps on truckin', though.



My grandfather had quite a sense of humor. I wish I could have met him. I bet he was [H]ard.



This REXUS fan is thick, too thick in fact to fit inside the case with my Tuniq tower. So It needed to be installed through the window, such that it hangs outside of the case. Judging by the design of the real CM HAF cases, I'm not the only person who has had this problem. So, I modded the fan grill a bit, and installed it into the window:









Here you can see a close-up of how the fan sticks out about an inch from the side of the case. That area is sealed pretty well, though, because I have the fan mounted through the window. There's no whistling of air leaking. The clear plastic of the fan frame matches the clear acrylic, too.



Here it is in action.



So far, I've changed nothing else except for the new fan and window, and already I see an improvement. I left the machine on for 24 hours, but it sat idle for that time. Idle temperatures seem to be down significantly, about 5 - 6 C, even with the room temperature being 77F today. I haven't had time to run LOTRO, so ignore the max temps. The most stressful thing I've run today is Photoshop.



Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for Phase 2: The Blowhole and Phase 3: Cable Management...

I took some time this weekend to tear the whole computer apart to carve a few new holes in the Centurion 5 HAF. Goals for today were:
Cut out a blowhole
Cut out wiring holes in the back of the motherboard tray

Basement cat was amused:

ur cornputr a splode!


I drilled out and marked an area for a 120mm fan mount on the top panel of the case. There is *just* enough room for the fan to fit in the space between the power supply and the 5.25 drive bay. There is about 1/2 inch of wiggle room, which you can see later once the fan is mounted. As you can see, I taped out the top of the case to prevent scratching the paint. I used the fan grill itself as a stencil for the hole, which I then cut free-hand using the scroll saw. I found that using the saw at higher speed gave me much more control than a slow speed. This seemed counter-intuitive at first. At slower speeds, the metal that I'm removing moved more than at higher speeds, causing the blade to catch. Clamping the metal cut-out helped keep it from vibrating as much.







And here is the finished cut, along with the grill.



Next up: Sketch out where I want the motherboard holes. I wanted a hole for the PSU wiring, as well as a hole behind the CPU area to make mounting a HSF bracket easier than removing the whole board. I also considered adding more smaller holes near the bottom of the motherboard or on the sides near the 5.25 drive bays. I decided against this because there isn't any room at the bottom of the case for extra holes, and there is a decent sized space already between the 3.5 bays and the motherboard tray.



You may be able to tell that there isn't a lot of room in that case, especially for trying to fit in a scroll saw. Too bad the Centurion 5 doesn't have a removable motherboard tray. Oh, wait, maybe it does:



With my trusty drill, I removed the 8 or so rivets that hold in the motherboard tray. This was my first time drilling out rivets, and it was surprisingly easy. Of course, you say, drilling them out is easy. I did think of this beforehand, and made sure before I started that I had a pop-rivet gun and plenty of rivets of appropriate size (1/8" in this case).

Holes are much easier to cut when you can get the saw in there.



And here it is, finished, and re-installed. From the front:



And from the back:



Not too bad. In keeping with the "stuff I found in my workshop" sub-theme, I used some clear plastic tubing that I sliced open as molding around the hole for the PSU wires. Not quite as clean as that spiffy black U-channel stuff, but it was cheap and functional. Like the Centurion 5.

Looks good man, keep up the good work!

Now that the case has been "modernized", it is time to put all the parts back inside in a clean and orderly fashion.

Basement cat attempted to help with this:

I finded u moar pixels, but then I eated them...


While I had the motherboard out, I thought it couldn't really hurt to add some more cooling to the chipset. I had a couple little fans that were part of an ancient bay cooler, and they were a perfect size to cover the heatsinks. Zip ties seem to be the appropriate choice for this kind of mod.



I liked this picture, taken in progress as I put the parts back together. You can see the new blowhole fan.



Much cleaner wiring than before. There is probably still room for improvement, but I'll need to check temperatures before I'm "officially" finished.



You can see how close the blowhole fan fits into the top of the case pretty well in this photo.



One more just to show how I got all those power cables out of the way.



Of course, there's always an ugly back-side.



And here is the "Newegg Gallery" of external case shots.





I'm really happy with how it finished up. Compared to the inspiration, the CM 922 HAF and 932 HAF, I think this Centurion 5 HAF compares nicely. I now have:
- cable management holes in the motherboard tray
- a window
- 120 mm and 92 mm front intake fans
- 250 mm side intake fan
- 120 mm rear exhaust fan
- 120 mm top exhaust fan
- low noise and high airflow
- fan speed controller
- drive bay cooling
- blue LED lighting
- clean, classic appearance with modern cooling features

Now that the case is finished, I can focus on fine-tuning the cooling and the fan speeds, measuring the idle and load temps, and maybe even an overclock.

I've even been inspired by some of the other posts here to consider foam for noise mitigation, fan gaskets, and maybe even some ducts or baffles to better control airflow, turbulence, and noise.

Thanks to everyone who has viewed this thread. I welcome any comments and criticisms.

You must really love this case to spend all that time on it versus getting an actual HAF. Still this is pretty damn awesome!

this is the perfect inspiration for me to finally attack my crappy enermax chakra

Looks really great, man. Nice clean job.

Pretty sweet! My cat would have probably broken something or otherwise made the whole endeavor a gigantic mistake. Maybe that Radeon box was the perfect distraction...

Outstanding mod. Very well done.

Nicely done! awesome job modding what you had, instead of just going new shiny shiny.

Well done. You've really breathed new life into that Centurion 5.

Nice work- looking at your pictures your rear fan is actually an intake- at least in the finished pictures it is

Volkswagen said:

Nice work- looking at your pictures your rear fan is actually an intake- at least in the finished pictures it is

Click to expand...

Sharp eyes, there, Volkswagen. The rear fan, in that picture, is indeed an intake. I have also been experimenting with fan directions. I thought that by turning the rear exhaust fan to be an intake, and turning around the CPU fan, I could pull cool air in from the back, and have it exhaust out the top via the blowhole. Turns out, the Radeon spits a ton of hot air out the back, and I ended up with higher CPU temps. The air right outside the back of the case is warmer than the general air inside the case. 85F - 90F behind the case, and 78F-85F inside the case.

So, I'm turning it back around as I try out other fan configurations, probably this weekend, when I do some more serious temperature testing.

Nice makeover! As a fellow long time Centurion 5 owner I support this thread. One neat mod I've seen people do was completely remove the lower hard drive cage and replaced the measly 80MM intake fan with a 120MM. Considering you have nothing in there maybe you can try that out.

VERY nice improvement. This went from terrifying to gorgeous, nice job!

Thanks everyone for the support and positive comments!

I took a few weeks to fine-tune the cooling and attempt an overclock. I thought I'd post my results.

First, I looked at noise. I wanted cooler and quieter out of this mod. The biggest noise offender was the 92mm Delta that I installed in the bottom front intake. I replaced that with a Scythe Gentle Typhoon. Wow! What a difference. Almost the same amount of air, but perfectly silent. Amazing. That's what I'll be buying from now on.

Next, I looked into this push-pull concept I have seen over on the overclocking forum. More airflow for less RPM and less noise? Sounds like a winner, especially considering how noisy the Silverstone fans I have are at their full 2400RPM. At 1000 - 1500 RPM they are quiet enough so I can't hear them over the big side fan.

As pointed out before, I tried my rear exhaust as an intake. That didn't work at all, pulling in hot air fresh from the 5870's exhaust port. That Silverstone got turned back around, as well as the Tuniq fan inside the Tower 120 heatsink. I put the original CM 120 exhaust fan into the blowhole spot since it is actually a pretty nice fan, moving a decent amount of air with no noise at 1500RPM. The SS that was in the blowhole is now zip-tied to the Tuniq tower, pushing air into the fins. The SS at the back pulls the air out. I even made a duct that fits over the Tower 120, so that air coming in through the front 5 1/4 bay fan heads into the heatsink, and is exhausted right out the back. This also forces a little more air over the RAM and the northbridge & south bridge heatsinks. End result is cool, and so quiet I can hear the hard drives over the fans.

Fan1 is the CPU fan, Fan2 is one of the Silverstones. The other is set the same.


Those temps, especially under load, got me thinking I might actually have some overclocking headroom with this B3 stepping Q6600. After a few hours of methodical tweaking of settings and *many* BIOS resets, I had a few overclocks that would POST and boot into W7.

One was the "AI Overclock", a feature on my Asus P5n32e-sli, which would only go up to 10%. 2.6Ghz was not worth pursuing. The 15% AI OC would post but Windows would BSOD.

The other OC was 3.0 Ghz, which seemed reasonable to me. Settings that got me there are: Vcore 1.4000, CPU VTT 1.55, FSB unlinked, FSB QDR 1333, MEM DDR 667, everything else default or auto. The P5n32e-sli tends to give way less voltage than you specify in the BIOS, and you'll see that CPU-Z shows it in the 1.28-1.3 range.



The temps seemed pretty good to me after 24 hours or so of Prime95. Notice that CoreTemp in this screenshot shows the multiplier at 8.5 rather than 9.0. I noticed this fluctuation a lot. SpeedStep and C1E were turned off, but that drops the multiplier to 6.0.

CoreTemp at full load


RealTemp at full load


Open Hardware Monitor at full load


Open Hardware Monitor at idle and SpeedStep on


I have since bumped the fan speeds down a bit to 1500RPM for the 3 that affect the CPU, and I can't hear them over the power supply fan or the 250mm Rexus in the side panel, and my temps are holding steady.

I think I'm finally finished with this mod. Thanks again for all the comments!

You have the TJmax set wrong. Its suppoed to be 100c for Q6600's.

criccio said:

You have the TJmax set wrong. Its suppoed to be 100c for Q6600's.

Click to expand...

Are you trying to tell me I have more room to OC, or that I need better cooling?

According to BillParrish in this thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1326430

the TjMax does not matter, only the delta, which I think looks to be pretty okay in my case. I should have plenty of thermal headroom, even at full load. If temps get too hot, I can always turn up the fans.

But, for sake of discussion, I have looked all over at the TjMax settings and arguments, and nowhere does it appear that 100c is correct for a Q6600 B3 stepping. According to this article, http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-dts-specs,news-29460.html, TjMax for a Q6600 B3 is 80c.

Truth is if your only hitting 60 at full load after 24 hours u could OC higher, full load for 24/7 is unrealistic unless ur running folding really or something similar. Even gaming in the newest games is never gonna 100% load 4 cores for more than a few seconds at most. Great job on the clean up and case upgrades. Its amazing what 100 bucks and 5 hours can do...

Great mod

I always love to see a case torn down to its bare metal parts, pop-rivets be damned! Nice job for the huge side fan.