120mm fan on Swiftech 462-V--opinions?

L

Lawdog

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 11, 2005
Messages
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I have a perfectly good gaming rig that I intend to use for a while still, but I just can't take the Vantec Tornado noise on the heatsink any longer. Rather than switch out a great heatsink, or change to the normally suported 92mm fan, I thought I'd go for real quiet with a 120mm fan. I have pretty good room in my case, so I am going to try to mount a 120mm fan on my Swiftech 462-V heatsink using an 80 to 120mm fan adapter. The adapter is about an inch thick, but I have clearance between the heatsink and the case window. The only issue will be on the top, because on the NF7-S, the CPU is toward the top of the mobo.

I grant this is a bit different, but if it works, I will post some pics here and report on the temps.

Anyone have any comments or opinions on this?
 
I had the same heat sink on my last computer I made new fan brackets out of some copper strip I bought at Menard's for 3-4 dollars at the time just remember to center punches the the ends before you drill.
 
The centre hub on the 120mm fan is pretty big... that'd my only issue with it. That heatsink is meant to be paired up with slow fans.
 
A very good point Korruption, and one I'm concerned about. I'm going to check for fit first, then if it will fit, I'm going to watch the temps carefully for a while.

Again, I'll post up my results either way. Thanks for the input.
 
I pulled the old PSU out to make room and got to working.

The 120mm fan will fit, but the heatsink uses snap rivets to hold the fan on. Not only are they a bear to remove, but you can't reuse them. So I have to figure out a way to attach the adapter, but new snap rivets won't work with it because its screw channels are too small. Looks like a ghetto mod is in the works.

Nice mod Snake, BTW.
 
Well, I pulled it off and it worked great. Thanks to Tony for the assistance. I found some metric hex head bolts in one cm length that fit the adapter and heatsink holes perfectly. The only trick was threading on tiny nuts on them because there was very little room to work.

Results are great: Noise to my ears is about 50% of what it used to be. I've lowered some of the motherboards temp warnings, just in case the cooling is not what it needs to be. We shall see, but temps are about where they were before.

CPU temp on my overclocked Barton 2800 is 41 C at idle and never gets much warmer than that. We'll see what happens after the Arctic Silver has a chance to cure over the next few days. CPU temp should drop.

I went with a Thermaltake Thunderblade 120mm fan because it allows motherboard rpm monitoring, is rated for 78 CFM and has a 21 dBA rating. It is nice and quiet, even at max speed.

Here are a couple pictures (forgive the wire managment for now please!):

Top View:



From bottom looking up:




Once I get it all cleaned up inside and the fan wires sleeved up, then I may throw in one more pic. Comments?
 
Lawdog said:
I went with a Thermaltake Thunderblade 120mm fan because it allows motherboard rpm monitoring, is rated for 78 CFM and has a 21 dBA rating. It is nice and quiet, even at max speed.
Click to expand...
No it isn't. It might still be quiet for you, but that fan puts out more like 30dBA of noise. Thermaltake is notorious for flat-out lying on their fan specifications. Lots of their high-speed fans get the coveted 21dBA and 17dBA rating.
 
Lawdog said:
CPU temp on my overclocked Barton 2800 is 41 C at idle and never gets much warmer than that.
Click to expand...

I'm running SpeedFan in the background to keep an eye on things and all is good in the temp dept: After the Arctic Silver has had a couple of days to cure and set, the CPU temp has dropped steadily. It now hovers around 35-36 C as I type this and surf the [H]ardforums looking for new things to try.

I can recommend this mod as a success. However, use a Thermaltake fan at your peril... I read here somewhere they're not as quiet as they sound. ;)
 
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