I need to make few air ducts around my PC case so that hot air doesn’t get recirculated to intake. I used to do this mechanically (cardboard tabs holding shroud in place) however since I changed my workstation and upgraded fans to Noctua IPPC 3000 rpm it no longer works - when fans spin up everything just flies away and gets devastated by those fans. So I came up with idea to use magnets to hold shroud in place firmly. Those very strong, small magnets:
I’m a bit worried though that they may damage something on motherboard. I’d probably place them around bottom edge of chassis and rear edges to isolate intake fans from exhaust ones, ensuring cold zone in front and bottom, hot zone in rear and top. Is it safe to use such magnets?
It depends on location and magnet strength combined with type of hardware.
In 2001, I had a person with a work PC at home call me about an unstable system. Turned out they had fridge magnets on the case side holding up notes and kids drawings. Once removed, the system became stable again.
It could potentially cause problems with your optical drive. My setup was slightly different, I used to keep a flashlight with a magnetic base on the top of my system, so it was above the drive instead of to the side like yours, and I don’t know how the strength of the magnets compare. I can’t remember if the drive was working or not, I think it was, but it sounded pretty bad, it was definitely struggling. So that’s something to look out for.
