I am currently renovating my apartment and it's time to plan out the network again. Here's my idea, I have a fairly large TV Unit and inside of it is one cabinet that you can see in the image as well as the measurements. The cabinet has a back plate and a door in the front so it's completely closed off.
And I thought I should hide all the network devices inside of the cabinet. I was planing to place a 16 port network switch (Netgear ProSafe passive cooling) and a firewall (Netgear ProSafe passive cooling) but since I have a small PC (Shuttle K45) acting as a home server, I thought I can throw it inside as well. However I fear that cooling might be insufficient. Primarily because of the Shuttle K45's dodgy cooling. The Shuttle K45 has a Flex-ATX PSU that has a 40x40x20mm cooler and it's very bad and loud. I plan on replacing the PSU cooler with SUNON HA40201V4. That's the PSU now the rest of the PC, on the back of the housing there is a 92mm original fan as the exhaust and for the CPU I have LC Power LC 85. That's it no more fans the case is like 12in long and 6in wide. I have 2 HDD inside.
Temperatures in the open (under little or no load): Motherboard: 48C, CPU: 47C, HDD1: 37C, HDD2: 35C. CPU fan 800RPM, Case fan 800RPM.
The home server does DLNA streaming and file sharing. Transcoding is disabled on DLNA (means less CPU usage). CPU is C2D E6600. Noise is a big factor.
What shall I do, how do I approach this?
Please bear in mind I live in Serbia, while we do have a fair amount of hardware we don't have an exotic range of equipment. Investment is $30 USD maximum.
P.S. I'm planing on getting two Cooler Master R4-S2S-12AK fans and a 12V MOLEX power adapter with a fan controller. One fan will serve as an intake on the left side and the other as an exhaust on the right side behind the Shuttle PC. I was also thinking of getting a controller so I can control the speed. Can anyone approve of this? Or suggest something else?
I think the fact it is a closed box is the big problem, mounting a fan in the back of the cabinet after drilling out a hole would be my suggestion if thats possible. All the fans will do otherwise will just shift it out of the PC into the cabinet which will eventually heat up. It's like a GPU inside a case, you have to get the heat away from the GPU as well as out the case. I think this is best solution providing that I imagine you will leave this equipment turned on?
I remember linus did a video where he made a similar cut in his home tv system cabinet so might be worth checking it out. Be interested in final pics if you go ahead with it.
Yeah I remember he did an update not so long ago, that's how I got the idea in the first place. However my case is a little more specific, because of the budget, parts availability and also the PC case and it's "dodgy" PSU cooling.
If I remember correctly Linus was using special Noctua 120mm fans. Here I can't obtain them, there's only standard edition Noctua fans, and they cost like $40 USD a piece.
I can't seem to find any 200mm fans without LED lightning, unless I order them from eBay or some big retailer abroad.
I did find Cooler Master R4-S2S-12AK fans pretty cheap, 120mm would two of them be sufficient I may be able to get four, two of them intake and the other two exhaust.
To be quite honest just cutting a hole in the back of the cabinet and using some fine mesh to prevent dust would solve the hotboxing issue or at least aid it greatly. If possible have some holes in the bottom to allow natural convection to take place with hot air rising out and cold air coming in from the bottom. Alternatively getting some old north/southbridge heatsinks (can probably salvage from old computers?) and attaching them with thermal pads to uncooled parts may help.
