PC Desk MK1 cooling help

O

ODTech

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Hi All.

I've decided to build a pc desk for myself after seeing them around and not being impressed by the price.

Cooling 101 says intake at the front and bottom and exhaust at the top and rear. Before i start making holes in the front facing board i want to try leaving a gap in the floor only to see if it will be enough. I could test this in practice but it would mean alot of extra work to undo to get back to the point where i can start cutting again. I am looking for some opinions.

See attached picture, the motherboard is obviously not the one i will be using, it's just for getting my measurements right.

I have a ATX motherboard, 2 x 279mm GPU's, 2 ssd's and 1 hdd.
Optical drive and USB will be in a cabinet mounted to front of the desk and unused cable and slack will be fixed on the under side of the compartment where there is some space left so airflow should be pretty good.
My cpu has watercooling so most of that heat goes directly out the back, the radiator i will fit above the rear io ports
If i leave the backplate setup as is and add 2 120mm fans to the left where the drives will be could i possibly still run into overheating problems?

20170410_184134.jpg
 
can you add some indications on your pic of where you want to place all your fans and the cpu rad..? description is a little hard to place on the pic..
 
WAslayer said:
can you add some indications on your pic of where you want to place all your fans and the cpu rad..? description is a little hard to place on the pic..
Click to expand...

It was a tad late when i made the post so didn't think of marking the positions on the picture. See attached.

Red box: Air Intake gap.
Blue dots: 120mm fan positions. I'm not sure about fan 2, it will be relatively close to a MSI GTX980 Gaming Card.
Green dot: Radiator position
Pink dot: PSU. It's a corsair gs700 and semi passive cooled so it won't move air unless itself is heating up.

pc.jpg

I was thinking this fan and instake setup should give me good negative pressure.
 
that makes things a little more clear.. another option is to move the 2 120mm fans to suck cold air in from the right and left side of the desk.. i.e, put them on the sides next to where the proposed air gap is.. they will intake cold air, and the rad can then exhaust air out the back.. you can also make a small air gap at blue dot 2, to allow air to exhaust there as well..
 
I always go for negative pressure as i think in most situations its more effective than passive intake.I dont see a reason to force in cold air if you have good negative pressure.
Also you must do this in a way that forces air around all the spaces in the case.So make the holes line up diagonally with the passive air intake gap so that the air is forced over all components.Think of a periscope, light comes in at the top and is forced all the way down and out the back.
 
Last edited:
is this inspired by this video?


[video=youtube;zWhyXjAXOrA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWhyXjAXOrA[/video]
 
Baxteen said:
is this inspired by this video?


[video=youtube;zWhyXjAXOrA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWhyXjAXOrA[/video]
Click to expand...

This dude would suck at a LAN.Hey guys can you help me get my pc off the truck and move it in?
 
Baxteen said:
is this inspired by this video?


[video=youtube;zWhyXjAXOrA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWhyXjAXOrA[/video]
Click to expand...

Nop. Can't say the video looks farmiliar. I became aware of the pc desk when i saw the LianLi retail desk.
The design in the video looks like a popular way of doing it thought. I saw a similar one on Linus tech tips, he just had a normal rectangle one.

The thing is this is the first time i'm trying my hand at wood work, i had it in standard 6 as a class but decided not to take it further. It being my first time i went for cheap wood incase i made a mess of it. Material is so far only 2 shutterply boards and a 22x44 pine board totaling less than a thousand rand, a little over a thousand rand for the odds and ends.
 
The way I see it you'll still have some heat issues. Most of the air will flow straight across from the gap to the fans with very little reaching your board. Path of least resistance. (unless you move the board to where the fans are, or the fans to where the board is)
 
Jimmy-Z said:
The way I see it you'll still have some heat issues. Most of the air will flow straight across from the gap to the fans with very little reaching your board. Path of least resistance. (unless you move the board to where the fans are, or the fans to where the board is)
Click to expand...

Will see. Almost done so i can install and see how the cooling works If the thing ends up running terribly hot i will just take the glass lid off until i figure it out. Pic attached incase anyone is interested.

I didn't take a close up pic of the internals but you can see the fan holes.

From left to right.

2 x 120mm vertically positioned fans. I'm planning on installing water cooling for the GPU's down the line. For now i might block off the top one and only use the bottom for hdd cooling.

140mm fan above the motherboard.

120mm radiator for cpu cooling.

Cutout for PSU.



index.jpg
 
Ok so i finished the desk. Heat so far is not a issue i just have a question about idle temps.

My GTX980 idles in the high 40's and with light gaming is steady around 50's. I did google it and the temps is nothing to worry about. Anyone else have comparable cards that can give some input on their temps and what chassis/cooling they use?
 
ODTech said:
Ok so i finished the desk. Heat so far is not a issue i just have a question about idle temps.

My GTX980 idles in the high 40's and with light gaming is steady around 50's.
Click to expand...

Which particular msi 980 do you have, link?
 
ponder said:
Which particular msi 980 do you have, link?
Click to expand...

https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GTX-980-GAMING-4G.html#hero-overview

I made a mistake on my previous post. Idle temps was high 40's and light gaming brought it up to 60. Light gaming = Anarchy Online with 2 clients running.
I put Fan Speed % in MSI afterburner to 30% so both fans are spinning constantly and now the light gaming temp is hovering around 40C.

I also still have to do some cable management to have better airflow but with my current non modular psu that's not so easy. My next purchase will be a modular psu.
 
ODTech said:
https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GTX-980-GAMING-4G.html#hero-overview

I made a mistake on my previous post. Idle temps was high 40's and light gaming brought it up to 60. Light gaming = Anarchy Online with 2 clients running.
I put Fan Speed % in MSI afterburner to 30% so both fans are spinning constantly and now the light gaming temp is hovering around 40C.
Click to expand...

Idle below 50C should be ok, without a custom fan profile the fans will only kick in at 60C. The gpu temp also depends on your ambient temp.
40C at 30% fan with some load sound good, my 1060 does not have 0rpm fan option so it's always at min 30% fan speed an at idle that's in the mid 30'sC. Run unigine valley or heave at ultra settings to stress the gpu and see what temps it reaches under full load after 10min or so.

Worse case scenario maybe remove the fan shroud & clean out any dust bunnies or put some new thermal paste on the heatsink/gpu.
 
The card is clean so i air flow on the cards heatsink shouldn't in theory be a problem. I might change the heatpaste, i've not had it long but it is second hand.

It's a cool morning and cold start idle temp for both the GTX670 (host) and GTX 980 (gaming guest) was low 20's. I ran Valley on Ultra HD settings for 20 minutes and temp rose and stabilized at 70. After i quit Valley temps quickly fell to 30 and is very slowing falling from there, i'm guessing it will end up low to mid 20's again.

Intake is from a 10mm x 800mm opening in the floor of the pc compartment only. Multiple fans in the back pulls air out. When i stick my finger into the intake opening i can feel the cold air rushing past so it's working well enough.

Mission accomplished.

Oh and i originaly made the pc compartment too big so i partitioned it off and i put my consoles in the other half. Ultimate game station :D
 
ODTech said:
It's a cool morning and cold start idle temp for both the GTX670 (host) and GTX 980 (gaming guest) was low 20's. I ran Valley on Ultra HD settings for 20 minutes and temp rose and stabilized at 70. After i quit Valley temps quickly fell to 30 and is very slowing falling from there, i'm guessing it will end up low to mid 20's again.
Click to expand...

Sounds fine.
 
And here's what my fancy plywood desk looks like. Not too shabby for the first thing i built from wood... ever. Material wise it came to less than R1500.

20170517_141237.jpg
 
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