Antec p180 and PC Power N Coolin s750....PICS!! 56k BEWARE!!

[StalkerZER0]

I got the antec p180 (black version) the day before Thanksgiving but I didn't get time to work on the case upgrade til this past friday.
The PC Power n Cooling silencer 750 psu arrived the same day too.

Pics below....and I don't want to hear nuthin bout bad cable management because I struggled with the best arrangement I could make with that silencer 750. The power supply is BIG and NOT modular.

Anyway take a look cause I've got questions for you all......................

I kinda like the plain black look. Its very sleek in my opinion. And as far as asthetics is concern its a good thing my optical drives were already a matching black.

Now don't laugh but take a look at the upper and lower sections and the cable management. Trust me....its the best arrangement I could come up with.
The upper section first.....................

Routing the cables from the silencer 750 was a PAINNNN!!! It took me hours to install the psu why? I'll tell you in a bit. But once installed I had to route the cables so that it would reach all the components. Look at the left side at the 4 pin atx power cable. Notice how stretched it is as it is snaked along the left side under the video card and up over the cpu to where it plugs in. And notice the right side....as advised I chose not to install the hard drives there and put what was the lower tricool fan in the upper front section instead.

Look at the lower section and the power supply set up.............

The silencer 750 is longer than the average power supply so I had to remove the 120mm tricool an that would have been to the right of the power supply to pull more air away from the lower hard drive tray to the right.

Why did it take me 6 hours to install the psu? Because I didn't want to accept the reality of having to remove the lower fan because I wanted that extra air flow for the hard drives. So I screwed and unscrewed multiple times two other fan brackets to try to get it to fit. But in the end the reality was that there is no room for a fan down there and the cables at the same time.
Question:
The 4 hard drives (two ide drives toward the left panel + two SATA drives close to the right panel) are feeling a little warm after I opened the case and touched them. But I guess there isn't anything I can do about that right?

The pic below shows the area just above the lower power supply area with that large black plastic bracket which is supposed to slide out of the way for the cables.......

In the above pic near the right side by the two red sata cables the hole there......I left it like that for a little bit of the hot air from the lower hard drives to vent. The only venting for the hard drives then is the psu's own fan pulling air, the air from the upper fan...and that is it really. Also on the left side is a closer view of that 4 pin atx cable that is really stretched over barely making it to the slot above the cpu. And if you notice to the lower right side of the pic I didn't bother to install the floppy. I'm trying to shove some some wires there out of view.

For people who are familiar with the p180 the lower front section in front of the lower hard drive tray seems to have a space....for a small fan maybe? Do you think a 92mm fan could fit there?......Maybe??

Look at the 2 pics below..........

These pics are a closer look at the upper section near the upper empty hard drive cage area. If you notice, I decided to route the hard drive cable against the back to where the left side door panel is almost touching the cable flat. Its technically not in the body of the case at that section.
I had to do that for two reasons:
1. So that I would be able to easily reach the ide drives on the bottom.
2. And more importantly because inside the case it was blocking that upper fan there and I wanted to create a better air flow inside the case.

It seems to be working too. And here are my average tempertures:

The only fans I have working to reach those temperatures are the rear case fan, the psu fan and the upper front fan.
I have decided not to run the fan all the way on top of the case to conserve on noise.

Cpu and mobo temperatures seem pretty stable.

On the issue of noise.......
I find that even without the new cpu fan I'm waiting on the noise signature on a whole is noticeably smaller. Remember though I'm not using the top case fan.

Ah, the dreaded panaflo cpu fan!

The panaflo is a good high speed but simply makes more noise than it should in my opinion. I hope to be receiving the nexus silent case fan soon. And if I'm not satisfied then perhaps I will get a fanless cpu heatsink and rely on the case fans for cooling.
For those familiar with these tricool fans I have all of them on low.

Any questions? Any suggestions? Please let me know!

Oh, one final pic. The top of the case I put a piece of a postcard to cover the hole. The spoiler is just there for looks.

 

[l0cke]

I feel sorry for your hard drvies

are those raptors...?!

 

[ULTIM@TE_GAMER]

Dude those antec fans are so loud, here http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=37&products_id=4453
i have these fans in my system and they are so quiet you don't even know the pc is running.
And, don't get a fan less cpu cooler, they suck, you always need a fan mounted on the heat sink to move the air if you want good system temps, i suggested the arctic cooler 7

 

[StalkerZER0]

I feel sorry for your hard drvies

are those raptors...?!

Umm...
Of the two sata drives...one 75 gig raptor and one 500 gig seagate.

And two older ide drives a 40 gig maxtor and a 10 gig WD.

Ya I know bout the drives.
Is there a tiny fan I could to put in that slot in the front of the case near the bottom hard drive cage?
Or any other suggestions?

And the artic cooler 7 you say ultimate gamer? Something tells me its louder than a tornado. :|
We'll see how the nexus 92mm real silent (name of product not my description) case fan performs when it arrives monday or tuesday.

 

[filthysanchez]

i know you can fit a 120x25 mm fan in the spot where the bottom filter is.

 

[StalkerZER0]

i know you can fit a 120x25 mm fan in the spot where the bottom filter is.

Isn't that the size of the same tricool fan I removed from the bottom section and put in the upper section?
I noticed there is a slot of some kind in the lower front section but it would seem I have to pull the case apart to get to that area.
Can you tell me how I should proceed??

 

[skadebo]

At least get rid of the IDE drives, that should free up some space/cabling mess.

 

[SlikRig]

Looks like you rushed it a bit

 

[StalkerZER0]

Looks like you rushed it a bit

10 hours is rushing? Perhaps what happened was that I got tired toward the end and I just wanted to finish up.

But perhaps what I could do is yes get rid of the two smaller ide drives. I could free up some space a bit. And they are only like 50 gigs the both of them combined.
The 400 gigs I have left on the seagate should be enough. Perhaps I should do this then.

LOL but then down the road I'm gonna want more and larger drives.

Seriously though, if someone can confirm for me that the lower front section in front of the lower hard drive tray....if it is possible to fit a fan there....
I think I would probably want to do that instead.

 

[hortus]

Back up from it and take a good look. These cases are quite moddable if you don't get trapped into the same old rut everyone else seems to foist on it. I have worked a couple of them now and they cut nice and there is room for good management if you want it.

As has been said before, the dremel is your friend.

 

[filthysanchez]

here

 

[StalkerZER0]

here

Looks like a cool job. But is there any way around using a drill? I notice in that same front lower section on the inside of the case there seems to be enough room for a small fan. Would a 92mm fan fit there ?

 

[kirbyrj]

Man, I feel your pain. I normally set up a computer from scratch in maybe an hour. It took me at least 3 or 4 hours to get it in the P180 after moving fans around and trying to find a good layout where everything fit. I sold it after maybe a month of having it and went back to a Lian-Li.

 

[StalkerZER0]

Man, I feel your pain. I normally set up a computer from scratch in maybe an hour. It took me at least 3 or 4 hours to get it in the P180 after moving fans around and trying to find a good layout where everything fit. I sold it after maybe a month of having it and went back to a Lian-Li.

Ya I was looking at the LIan-Li v-silent series cases at first. But I'm sorry I'm not spending 300 bucks for a case.

In fact, this case seems fine its just the power supply I chose is causing a couple probs installation-wise. But the psu works very nicely.
If I could just find a fan that would fit in the space in front of the lower hard drive cage. I think then everything would be cool.....pun intended.

 

[halo14]

Hi StalkerZER0,

I've got the silver P180 case and the Antec Phantom PSU. It's about the same size as your power supply so I had to remove the large 120mm fan from next to the hard drives too.

Install and run HD Tune to get your hard drive temperatures.

I found that my hard drives (2x Raptors in RAID 0 and 2 SATA Drives) were getting to ~50-60 Degrees Celsius!. What I had to do was take the filter off the front of the case in front of the hard drives and place a 120mm fan there so it was blowing air directly over the hard drives. It's ghetto style but it works

The hard drives are sitting at ~30 degrees now and all is well.

There just isn't any room for a fan in the hard drive bay area as far as I can tell :/

I'm open for suggestions from anyone who's successfully put a fan in there and achieved decent cooling for the hard drives.

Cheers.

 

[StalkerZER0]

Hi StalkerZER0,

I've got the silver P180 case and the Antec Phantom PSU. It's about the same size as your power supply so I had to remove the large 120mm fan from next to the hard drives too.

Install and run HD Tune to get your hard drive temperatures.

I found that my hard drives (2x Raptors in RAID 0 and 2 SATA Drives) were getting to ~50-60 Degrees Celsius!. What I had to do was take the filter off the front of the case in front of the hard drives and place a 120mm fan there so it was blowing air directly over the hard drives. It's ghetto style but it works

The hard drives are sitting at ~30 degrees now and all is well.

There just isn't any room for a fan in the hard drive bay area as far as I can tell :/

I'm open for suggestions from anyone who's successfully put a fan in there and achieved decent cooling for the hard drives.

Cheers.

OMG! I'm getting 50 something degree temperatures and I just got a critical temperature warning from windows!


Well thats it I'm going to try to put a fan there in the front panel some how. I'm shutting down for now til I figure this out.

 

[StalkerZER0]

I should have left well enough alone.

In trying to do some juggling of stuff around to try to get a fan near the lower hard drives I broke the little plastic connector on the SATA boot drive.
Right now I'm able to type this because I used some scotch tape to tape the sata cable onto the floating pins of the 75 gig raptor boot drive.

So right now the right side door panel is open because I can't close the door. That would knock the sata cable out of the fragile place that its in.
I've had to delete all the data stored on the 500 gg storage drive in an attempt to clone a copy of the C drive onto it.
I've tried partition magic and acronis imager but with no luck.
I go into the bios and select the new 500 gig sata drive as the new first disk to boot but it doesn't load the OS.

Can anyone help?

 

[_Durandal_]

Sorry to hear about your breaking the SATA portion of your HDD. After reading through your thread I thought I'd offer a picture of a recently completed build. This was for a friend of mine. At the time of the picture, I had ordered two PSU extensions from Performance PCs to re-route the EPS12V and the 24-pin ATX connector.

As you'll note though, it IS possible to get a fan in the lower chamber. The original 38mm fan will not fit, but the 25mm thick fan will work just fine. It will be a bit of a tight squeeze, especially because of the PSU wires, and the depth of the PSU itself, but go slow and flex everything a little at a time.

Post back with questions.

 

[Bbq]

My recommendations:

1. Use the lower PCI-E slot. It will help a lot. really. Loop the wire first to the left, then under the card, straight up, into the power.
2. When you're using it, find out exactly what adaptors you need. In your case, one lead of molexes, the cpu power, and the atx power supplies. And for the lower chamber, 1 molex and 1 sata lead. Keep those leads seperate. Then put in the power supply, put the un used leads under the supply. Route accordingly.
3. The upper molex lead, for the op[tical drives, will work better coming out of the forward slider.
4. Try a Zalman NBF-47J for the chipset. Perfect fit onto the a8n-sli if you use the lower slot.
5. Forward header lines, you want to fold them, and slip the excess into the crevess that's for the floppy.
6. Turn the rear tri-cool so the wire points straight down on the left. Peel back some of the sealing foam between the upper and lower chamber, feed the wire down there, and power it from a seperate molex. The fan speed adjuster, bend a pci bracket, slip the line out so you can adjust from outside.
7. Reverse the fan on the xp90.
8. You will want to use one of those clamping sticky things for wire management, on the mobo tray, to the right of the mobo. To hold down the big fat 24 pin.
9. Run the fat 24 pin over the ide cable. it will pin it down in place.

 

[AaronP]

Thats a nice setup your friend has though.

 

[StalkerZER0]

Sorry to hear about your breaking the SATA portion of your HDD. After reading through your thread I thought I'd offer a picture of a recently completed build. This was for a friend of mine. At the time of the picture, I had ordered two PSU extensions from Performance PCs to re-route the EPS12V and the 24-pin ATX connector.

As you'll note though, it IS possible to get a fan in the lower chamber. The original 38mm fan will not fit, but the 25mm thick fan will work just fine. It will be a bit of a tight squeeze, especially because of the PSU wires, and the depth of the PSU itself, but go slow and flex everything a little at a time.

Post back with questions.

That damn acronis crap don't work! I spent 22 hours imaging the C drive with that thing TWICE and both time it didn't work. So I used the seagate software to try to copy the C: drive from the WD raptor to the seagate drive to turn it into a boot drive. It took 7 friggin hours! I finally woke up this morning and the copy was complete.
I didn't have time to see if it worked.
I'm also hoping the boot sector on the seagate is ok because up til now I've only been using it as a storage drive.....no need to boot with it as the raptor was doing my OS booting. So tonight I will try to boot with the segate and see if it works.

So dude, exactly what kind of fan you used to install in the lower portion?

 

[_Durandal_]

Thats a nice setup your friend has though.

Yeah thanks, my friend is extremely happy with it so far! I just wish it were mine ...however, I do get to play with their $$ a bit when I build these things.

So dude, exactly what kind of fan you used to install in the lower portion?

I used the very same 120x25mm Antec Tri-Cool fan that was supplied with the case. Basically I removed the 120x38mm fan in the lower chamber and swapped it out with one of the 120x25mm fans up top.

Besides, with all the heat produced by the 680i northbridge, CPU, & video card, I'd rather have a slightly bigger fan exhausting the air . Good luck.

 

[StalkerZER0]

Yeah thanks, my friend is extremely happy with it so far! I just wish it were mine ...however, I do get to play with their $$ a bit when I build these things.


I used the very same 120x25mm Antec Tri-Cool fan that was supplied with the case. Basically I removed the 120x38mm fan in the lower chamber and swapped it out with one of the 120x25mm fans up top.

Besides, with all the heat produced by the 680i northbridge, CPU, & video card, I'd rather have a slightly bigger fan exhausting the air . Good luck.

Ahhhhhh! Gotcha. I can easily swap out the fan on top.
But get this though.....is that a 8800gtx card I see there? And it fits with the upper harddrive cage? If I had known that before then perhaps I would have never damaged the hard drive in the first place.

 

[_Durandal_]

Yes, that is indeed a GeForce 8800GTX up there, with the top cage still installed. Some remove the cage for improved airflow, but I chose to leave it installed to hide most of the wires behind.

I doubt the 8800GTX would fit though if you put HDDs in the upper chamber. However, if you leave it empty then you're good to go.

 

[EnderW]

PCP&C 750W in a P180 = bad idea
just get a Corsair

 

[StalkerZER0]

PCP&C 750W in a P180 = bad idea
just get a Corsair

It was a tough fit....and I made it harder than it needed to be but its done.

 

[onetwenty8k]

Also looks like the motherboard connectors don't have the best placement. Sorry about that.

 

[StalkerZER0]

Also looks like the motherboard connectors don't have the best placement. Sorry about that.

Ya, it cost me a hard drive replacement and the connections are a bit awkward but all in all I still like the choices I made. It was just my fault for being stubborn and trying to force the 92x38mm fan in the bottom of the case and messing up my hd.

 

[thrawn86]

Ya, it cost me a hard drive replacement and the connections are a bit awkward but all in all I still like the choices I made. It was just my fault for being stubborn and trying to force the 92x38mm fan in the bottom of the case and messing up my hd.

dude, no. forum search. there have been half a dozen guides with pics on how to remove that bracket in the lower front. its EXTREMELY EXTREMELY easy to remove, just drill out the rivets with a 1/8 or quarter inch drill bit (you'll have to remove the front panel and lower chamber cage first). the bracket slides right out.

Then grab some fan screws and some washers and you're good to mount that fan right in there. Mounting the fan can be tricky if you plan on using the filters (as you'll find out, since there is no fan standoff there, the fan is mounted directly to the case, and the mounting clips for the filters will clip the blades).

I did this mod myself and am very happy. I even manage to mod the filter clips a little so they didn't clip the fan blades.

fake edit: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=936507&page=1&pp=20

 

[StalkerZER0]

dude, no. forum search. there have been half a dozen guides with pics on how to remove that bracket in the lower front. its EXTREMELY EXTREMELY easy to remove, just drill out the rivets with a 1/8 or quarter inch drill bit (you'll have to remove the front panel and lower chamber cage first). the bracket slides right out.

Then grab some fan screws and some washers and you're good to mount that fan right in there. Mounting the fan can be tricky if you plan on using the filters (as you'll find out, since there is no fan standoff there, the fan is mounted directly to the case, and the mounting clips for the filters will clip the blades).

I did this mod myself and am very happy. I even manage to mod the filter clips a little so they didn't clip the fan blades.

fake edit: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=936507&page=1&pp=20

Hold on thrawn86 I have a question for you but first here is an update to all that are interested:

I had mentioned before that my attempt to clone the raptor's boot files into my seagate storage didn't work. So, after talking to a seagate rep I used their disc utility program to initate a "zero fill quick" procedure.
Apparently that erased any files in the beggining of the mbr that was preventing the OS from being recognized.
I then re-partitioned and reformated from scratch and as well installed windows from scratch. I'm up and running now.

But before I repartitioned the raptor drive (don't want to mail it off to a stranger with files on it) I took a day and a half to try to improvise a stable serial connection so I could copy files from 'My Documents' folder and others. Back and forth I went into the BIOS and if I didn't see the raptor recognized I turn the machine off, fiddle with the SATA cable and went back into the BIOS. With my work schedule this cycle went on for a couple days.

Now, I still have to deal with WD to see if I can get an RMA I'm going to go online and see what warranty service I can get from them.....wish me luck. :|

Back to my P180b case:
Last night as I was finishing up the repartitioning of the raptor I also got my nexus 92mm "real silent" case fan in the mail. So I install the thing and as I tried to boot the computer couldn't even get past the POST without the computer telling me (in a secretary like female voice) that there was a problem with the cpu fan. Apparently, the pc thought the fan wasn't spinning fast enough to cool the cpu down enough.

So does anybody know a way around this or simply is the nexus fan not good enough to cool an amd 4000+ with an thermalright xp90?
If that doesn't work I could always use the nexus as a hard drive cooling fan in the panel in front of the case in the lower hard drive section. I mean, I wouldn't have to cut or drill open the front area like you suggested thrawn.
But in any case can you please walk me through exactly how to remove the front panel in case I want to drill out that bracket??

Thanks.

 

[Bbq]

There is an option in bios to disable warning if your cpu fan is not running.

Me, I just press F1 whenever I start up.

 

[kingsleytim]

That damn acronis crap don't work! I spent 22 hours imaging the C drive with that thing TWICE and both time it didn't work. So I used the seagate software to try to copy the C: drive from the WD raptor to the seagate drive to turn it into a boot drive. It took 7 friggin hours! I finally woke up this morning and the copy was complete.
I didn't have time to see if it worked.
I'm also hoping the boot sector on the seagate is ok because up til now I've only been using it as a storage drive.....no need to boot with it as the raptor was doing my OS booting. So tonight I will try to boot with the segate and see if it works.

So dude, exactly what kind of fan you used to install in the lower portion?

Acronis works just fine, we use it all the time to clone drives and do backups. If it didnt work then you either did something wrong or may have issues else where preventing it from working. We use it all the time here at work and have no issues with it, Its so easy to use its almost impossible to do something wrong with it.

 

[StalkerZER0]

There is an option in bios to disable warning if your cpu fan is not running.

Me, I just press F1 whenever I start up.

At first I was doing that. But as I had to keep resetting so I could work with the hard drive it told me that the cpu fan wasn't working and it wouldn't give me the opportunity to hit F1.
I assumed then that the fan just wasn't spinning fast enough. I mean, I couldn't even go into the bios. Is there a workaround for this? Is that nexus not good enough then?

Acronis works just fine, we use it all the time to clone drives and do backups. If it didnt work then you either did something wrong or may have issues else where preventing it from working. We use it all the time here at work and have no issues with it, Its so easy to use its almost impossible to do something wrong with it.

What hard drives were you working with? Or more to the point....were they seagates?

 

[StalkerZER0]

Dude those antec fans are so loud, here http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=37&products_id=4453
i have these fans in my system and they are so quiet you don't even know the pc is running.
And, don't get a fan less cpu cooler, they suck, you always need a fan mounted on the heat sink to move the air if you want good system temps, i suggested the arctic cooler 7

Ya well that nexus real silent doesn't work for a cpu cooler. So I'm willing to look at other options for 120mm case fans. I mean, if I have to continue to use the panaflo cpu fan then I will consider swapping out the antec tri-cool fans.
Maybe I will get those golf ball fans you suggested but the 120mm versions.

 

[Bbq]

Don't bother with the golf ball fans.

If you want some silent fans, try the new Noctua's with the funky shape and color, or the Yate Loon D12SL12's.

The nexus isn't working properly? how hot is the c pu getting?

Tip: Try strapping a 120 to the xp90. Upper set of holes, 80mm clips. Perfect fit.

 

[StalkerZER0]

Don't bother with the golf ball fans.

If you want some silent fans, try the new Noctua's with the funky shape and color, or the Yate Loon D12SL12's.

The nexus isn't working properly? how hot is the c pu getting?

Tip: Try strapping a 120 to the xp90. Upper set of holes, 80mm clips. Perfect fit.

Do you mean use one of the 120 fans I have at hand? But that would mean I would have to sacrifice fan speed monitoring correct?

 

[dchrsf]

put the panaflo on, boot in BIOS, disable fan speed monitoring for the CPU so it wont prevent it from booting, shutdown, and replace the panaflo with the nexus. I have a 92mm nexus with a SI-97 (similiar to the XP-90) on my Athlon XP 3200+, and it folds @ full load at 50c all day. It should work for you, but check temps in BIOS after you do the trick and install it and make sure it isnt too high (60c+)

 

[Bbq]

Do you mean use one of the 120 fans I have at hand? But that would mean I would have to sacrifice fan speed monitoring correct?

You can use one of the 120's you have at hand. You don't HAVE to give up RPM monitoring, you can just power it with the molex and use the little switch box on the tri-cool.

Or if your fan has a 3-pin, you can go nuts with that.

 

[StalkerZER0]

So guys what is the little 3-pin on the panaflo for? Is it just for powering? Or powering and monitoring I guess.
So basically I would be without fan speed monitoring right? The only thing I would be able to see is the cpu temps correct?

 

[dchrsf]

Right, no fan speeds if you hookup to molex. 3 pin is meant for simplicity (plugging into mobo) and is proprietary to fit the motherboard (and adapters if you need to use molex like you want to)

I'd try the nexus..