Fitting Noctua NF-P12 Fans, part 2 & 650D Power Button Fix
Alright, so if anyone has gotten to know me at all during the time I've been here, you will know that I am extremely fussy about just about everything, so naturally it did not take me long to become dissatisfied with that previous fan mounting job in the last post, because let's face it, it really was have baked.
What it was, though, is a good test fitting and trial run type thing and it gave me a good idea of what I wanted to do.
So last night I spent some time and mounted the fans properly, and we also were able to work on a few other things which I am very pleased about.
Here is another extremely detailed post with many pictures as usual.
If you remember the way the Noctua fans were fitted in the previous posts, the top of the one fan was screwed into the mesh and the bottom of the other fan was scred into the mesh as well. The top of the one fan and the bottom of the other fan were not screwed in at all, to make matters worse the 200mm round mesh area was raised a few milometers from the rest of the case, so the fans were raised a few mm at the top and the bottom etc.
This was a 'functional' method and it worked 'fine' but fine just isn't good enough to make me pleased with a job, so I set out to mount them properly.
I had two tasks I wanted to accomplish when mounting the fans this time. The first was that I wanted the fans screwed into all 4 holes each, so that meant drilling some additional holes in the case. The next though was I wanted to eliminate , or at least minimize the noise that appeared the be from the front mesh area.
I've heard people talking about cutting out the front mesh area out of the 650D to eliminate resistance noise from the front fan, so on that basis I had been thinking that it was being caused by the mesh itself creating turbulence noise. My dad however had a different take on it. He noticed that the circle shape mesh at the front was not massively different in terms of how open it was then the mesh at the top, and that is something that I had noticed as well. He also noticed that the noise from the front stopped right when the fans were turned off, rather than continuing a bit until it spun down, which indicates that it is a noise related to the motor of the fan, that is being transferred to the frame of the case in a way that is different to the top fans, creating an amplification of the motor noise because of the way the fan is attached to the front panel of the case.
My dad conjectured that the metal screws may have been the cause of the motor noise transfer, so he said if we used, for example the silicone mounting pegs that come with the Noctua fans, that it would likely solve the noise transfer issue.
But I had a different approach I wanted to try. I wasn't too keen on the Noctua silicone pegs when I initially tried them a while ago because they just didn't fasten the fan very tightly and it flops around a bit. More importantly I wanted to have the fans straightened out to offset the raised mesh section, so I wanted to use 1 rubber grommet for the non mesh area screws and 2 rubber grommets in the mesh area so that it would even it out and the fans would be level vertically.
I also wanted to have the fans 4-6mm behind the mesh, because when I tested the fans just in my hand holding it right up against the mesh it would make the resistance noise, but when i held it back behind the mesh a few milometers it did not make the noise anymore.
So that leaves two possibilities , either the fan being up close to the mesh is causing the resistance noise, and having it back a few mm would solve that, or it was the actual metal screws making the connection with the case that was causing a transfer of vibration, and in that case it wasn't doing it because I was holding the fan in my hand.
So only one way the find out which it was, I fitted the noctua fans that way I had in mind, with 2 grommets in the mesh area and 1 on the outside so there was a good 5-6 mm space between the fan and the mesh, maybe even 7 or 8 if you factor in the 2-3mm of raise that the mesh itself has over the rest of the front of the case.
Anyway I mounted the fans with the space between the mesh and the rubber grommets and the fans no longer made the resistance noise. So the point is you don't need the cut the mesh right out to get rid of the resistance noise, you just need to put a couple of grommets in and put more space in between the fan and the mesh area.
Now for some pictures.
This time I ventured into the basement to work because my dad and sister were down there.
a bit of top gear as I worked. this is my sisters desk and you can see her lowly 932 down there under the metal shelf
here is my dad's computer and setup
i got out my test fit fans again and used them to drill the holes. i screwed them into the mesh on the outside of the case and used the top holes of the fan as guides as I drilled the holes. this marked where the right place for the holes were, but also stopped the bit from slipping
Same method for the bottom fan
here is the grommets layout I wanted
very pleased with how the fans looked when mounted with the grommets. i always liked the look of fans when they were mounted 6mm+ behind mesh.
Another thing I did was move the HDD cage into the middle area mount. I never really liked how the cables looked split off and running into the front area of the case. I like the look of the cables here much better. now all the cables are in the rear 60% of the case or so.
i like the look of the new space around the front chamber of the case as well
Of course I'm fussy so I had to get out a level to make sure the fans were mounted just right
Here is a look at the grommets behind the mesh
Okay, so mounting the fans was the first thing I set out to do, then moving the hard drives for extra space at the front and more airflow from the front was another thing, then the third thing I wanted to do was fix the stiff power button on the 650D.
I have already make a separate post about this
here, so I will copy and paste that here.
Corsair Obsidian 650D Stiff Power Button Fix
"This is going to be part of my next project log update, but I've heard a few people complain about this, so I figured it is worth a separate post.
Basically the power button sits too tightly in the cutout and the way it's designed it has to slide forward a bit when you push it, so when it's too tight the button rubs against the cutout that it's in when you push it and it feels stiff to push and you can't hear any click.
What you have to do to fix it is make the little hole that the button is held on with a little bit larger so that it as space to move around a tiny bit and that that way it isn't rubbing against the cutout any longer when you push it.
You can do it with a soldering iron and then user something that is the right size to hold the hole open as the plastic dries, but be careful, because the plastic is thin and it's easy to heat it to much and ruin the little hole all together.
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCiPM9bMD7s
The end result of all this is that the front fans make exactly the same amount of noise as the fans in the roof, and I can have all 4 of the case fans on full speed as well as the NH-D14 on full speed and it isn't loud at all.
