Remove case ducting?

H

hungryduck

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 29, 2005
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I have an Antec Sonata II case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129155) and it has this funky ducting on the inside that draws air from outside the computer and puts it right on top of the CPU cooler....but it doesn't seem all that effective to me; it has like 3 90 degree turns in it, even though I put a 92mm fan in it to increase performance, it didn't seem to help all that much.

Should I just take it all out? Would I see better temps? What are your experiecnes with this kinda thing?

Here is a pic of the case, you can see the big black ducting monster easily:
11129155129ef.jpg
 
I build with these cases all the time at the shop (3 last week) and never put them on.....biggest pita piece of junk Antec has ever produced. No worries whatsoever with removing it, you have better access, and would have much better case air management by adding a lowspeed fan to the side of the HDD cage blowing air across the graphics card(s) and sucking heat off the drives
 
The only benefit that I see with that would be sound dampening. It would give the CPU fan another layer of stuff to protect from the fan noise. As far as cooling, I don't see it.

A better use may be modding it to give the video card the cool air.
 
superkdogg said:
The only benefit that I see with that would be sound dampening. It would give the CPU fan another layer of stuff to protect from the fan noise. As far as cooling, I don't see it.

A better use may be modding it to give the video card the cool air.
Click to expand...

It has a spot for an 80mm fan to also blow on the video card. I had it in my system for awhile. I'm not sure how well it helped with temps, because my eVGA board blows at reading temps. I used two panflo med speed 80mm and 92mm fans in the duct with a vantec fan controller. They added almost no noise (the rest of my case is louder).

If I had a way to read temps myself, it'd do more testing. They should have just left out the duct and changed the case so the front 120mm is infront of the HDD cage, not behind it. This duct also doesn't have an air filter. If I do more testing, I'll put something in the intake to catch debris.
 
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