Project Silentmaster: Coolermaster ATCS 110 Modding

Project Summary:
The Coolermaster ATC 110 is still by far the best case out there, I set to work on making this case even better along with being almost totally silent. This project has been featured on Hexus.net


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Project Silentmaster: Full Project Log

2003-09-01

Welcome to project Silentmaster, this has been a fun modding experience. I took one Coolermaster ATCS-110 and attempted to make it as quiet as possible along with a few other mods to make it look much nicer. This guide will show you what I did , along with some alternative techniques.



The Case.

The case I chose for the mod was my Coolermaster ATCS-110. This is the best case bar none, it is the top of the range Coolermaster case. It screams quality from all angles. It is very solidly built case (All aluminum). Cooling is provided by

• 2 x 80mm intake fans at the front
• An 80mm exhaust blowhole at the top
• An 80mm exhaust blowhole at the rear

A full review of the case can be found here.

What to silence?

There are many noisy components inside today's computers, these include

• Case fans
• PSU fans
• Heatsink fan
• Graphics card heatsink fan
• North bridge heatsink fan
• Hard discs

Now there is no point in silencing two or three of these parts as although your system will be quieter the effect won't be as noticeable. I will start off with the case fans.

Case fan silencing.

The modern pc case has at least two or three case fans , usually 80mm in size. Now cheap case fans can be very noisy. The commonly found YS tech fans knock out around 30 plus db of noise. This is two much for most people and with cases having upwards of four fans the noise created can cause many problems. This problem can be attacked in two ways.

• Swapping the case fans for quieter versions
• altering the voltage of the fan to make it run slower.

Quiet fans.


There are many manufacturers of fans nowadays. It is very hard to compare one fan and another other than by looking at the manufacturers claimed db(Noise level) levels and cfm(Amount of air moved by the fan). I tend to take these figures very much with a pinch of salt as they are generally recorded in ideal situations and depend on lots of outside factors. Now the favored fan of the moment for those seeking a quiet fan are the one made by Papst PLC. They have two quiet models for the 80mm fans found in the Coolermaster ATCS-110.

• 8412 NGL: 19.4cfm, 12db.
• 8412 NGML: 26.5cfm, 19db

I choose the NGL fans as I want as silent as system as humanly possible. I am not interested in overclocking and the cooling attributes of the case will allow for much slower quieter fans than many cases.

Volt modding fans.

The principle behind this mod is to drop the voltage supply to the fans, slowing the fan speed and therefore reducing the noise created by the fan. There are three main methods of doing this:

• 7 volt modding the fan
• Baybus
• Rheobus

The simplest of these methods is the 7 volt mod its ridiculously easy and can be done in five min's. Baybus/Rheobuses are much more complicated, they can however be now bought of the shelf.

7volt mod.

This is so easy its unreal, the principle behind it , is that the normal supplied voltage for a case fan is 12 volts. If you can lower this voltage you can reduce the fan's noise. The problem with this is that computer PSU molex supplies either 12 volts or 5 volts. 5 volts being a bit too low to provide any decent air movement from the fan. How to get around this is to instead of using the 12v line and the 0v line to provide 12 volts, but use the 12v line and the 5v line to produce (12-5)=7v Use the picture below to see how the fan is re-wired.



Note sometimes the black fan wire can be blue in colour.

Baybus.

The problem with the 7volt mod trick is that once the fan is set at 7volts there is no quick way of reversing this. If you wish extra cooling (when playing games for example). The baybus was introduced to get around this. It gives you the ability to switch between 7v , 12v and off.



Now for the purpose of this project I wanted a much more simplified circuit than normally found on baybus circuits. I am not going to have the switches in a spare bay plate with two led's per switch, but I am going to put the switch in a spare pci blanking plate at the rear of the case. Below is the circuit design that I used. The switches can be found at Maplins, part number FH05F.



The circuit is very easy to create , it takes 15mins to create. The finished circuit was mounted in the same pci blanking plate as the switchbus discussed later. If you don't wish to make it yourself , there are many part built kits on the market or a more personal service can be found at Baybus.co.uk.

Rheobus.

A rheobus is the next step in fan control. A rheobus gives you the ability to run your fans at any voltage between 12 and 0 volts. This is slightly more complicated to create yourself. The most basic design for a rheobus circuit is shown below.



A full guide on the building of a rheobus circuit can be found here. The circuit is fairly simple to build. Those with previous experience of soldering and circuit building should have no problems.



The picture above shows a rheobus in action. This is one that I had in one of my old cases.

Hard disc silencing.

So we've silenced the fans what's next? Well one of the noisiest components in the average pc is the hard disc. It puts out a constant little whine which I for one find very annoying. Manufacturers are taking note of this and trying their hardest to silence them, but they are still not perfect. Now their several products out there which aim to silence hard discs. One of the most popular products is the silent drive from Quiet PC


Pic copyright Quiet PC.

The specifications are as follows:

• Reduces hard drive noise by over 90%
• Accepts all 1" high 3.5" drives
• Fits into a standard 5.25" (CDROM-sized) drive bay
• No special installation tools required
• Does not affect drive performance
• Gives extra shock protection during PC transit
• Most drives with a spindle speed of 7,200 rpm (revolutions per minute) or less are compatible

I've got two hard drives both 7200rpm one quantum and one maxtor. I have run these both inside a silent drive with no ill effects. The temperature sticker provided shows that the drives do get a touch hot but inside the operating temperatures specified by both manufacturers.


Pic copyright Quiet PC.

As far as silencing goes , they are wicked. I noticed a big drop in system noise levels. Put it this way I tried to go back to a system without silent drives for a week or two and couldn't do it I can't say more than that.

Other silencing techniques.

Other techniques can be used to silence other parts of the case. For example one of the noisiest parts of a computer case can be the heatsink, the PSU and the graphics card fan. There are several options for the heatsink including silent coolers and the trusty 7volt mod trick. I have used an ALPHA PAL8045 cooler in combination with a Papst low noise fan. This provides enough cooling for my AMP XP 2000+ with limited noise.

Next up is the graphics card fan. These are generally 40mm fans and are very noisy. I 7volted the blue orb on my geforce 3. This didn't cause and instability and was a great improvement noise-wise.

Finally the psu, this can be a real pain to address as taking apart a PSU is HIGHLY DANGEROUS, and only for people who know what they are doing or in my case idiots. My PSU is an enermax 550W one. It has two fans one 92mm and an 80mm fan. I left the 92mm fan as it was but replaced the rear 80mm fan. I removed the psu cover and took out the existing fan cut off the connectors and soldered in a new quiet 80mm papst fan.



Take great care when playing with a PSU if you are not sure what you are doing DO NOT attempt this.

While I was playing inside the psu I took the opportunity to replace the fan grill and to heatshrink all the cables. This makes the cables look a lot tidier and improves airflow slightly much like rounded IDE cables. Heatshrinking the cables takes a long time and requires lots of soldering to do but I feel was worth the effort.



At the time of the pictures I was unable to source an new fan grill in the 92mm size I now have and it completes the look nicely.

Next for further silencing I thought I would try out some sound insulation. The product I chose was Akasa Pax.mate





You get 4 pieces of insulating material and instructions on how to install the panels. The four panel are in two sizes, two small pieces for the top and bottom of the case, two for either side panel.



Insulation was very simple just a matter of lining it up pulling off the backing material and sticking it down. Note that its very sticky so be careful about placement as there is no easy way of going back. I installed just two panels due to the window I was planning on putting in the case.

The results of the insulation were slightly disappointing, the general case temperature rose by a couple of degrees, and I didn't notice too much difference in noise levels. This is in part due to the already quiet nature of the setup and the fact sound insulation works better with different frequencies of noise such as those from a Delta fan.

Case window I had originally planned a window for this case but couldn't decide on just what kind. The normal round, oval and square ones have been done to death now and I wanted something different. I had decided to do a unique window with no window rubber at all.

Now in order to not use any rubber I needed to be sure of two things. One that the edges were filed back precisely and find a way of fixing the perspex of the window in place. The first is fairly easy to do the second was much harder. The three ways I could think of fixing the perspex were:

• Glue
• Rivets
• Nuts and Bolts

Now with rivets and bolts you destroy the clean lines I was wanting, so the glue was the only option.

Next up the design, I wanted something original so I just drew out a ruff design and it looked good so I went with it. I drew the design onto the back of the side panel checking that nothing was obstructed.

The hard part is to cut out the shape, I use a dremmel with reinforced cut off discs. This goes through aluminum very well but its slow on steel so you maybe best using a jigsaw for that. I cut 2mm inside the line to give me some leeway. When the final shape was cut out I used the filing attachment to file back to the line to give a good edge.



As you can see above the window cut out is finished and filed back. Next up is cutting the perspex to shape. Place the perspex on the back of the side panel and draw a line 1cm all the way round the cutout. Now cut round the line on the perspex (I would recommend a jigsaw as dremmels melt the perspex , of course I used a dremmel , its more fun :D). Just one more stage is need , and that's the gluing. You need a strong epoxy based glue, place a small amount the outside of the perspex cutout and then press into place. Leave it to dry overnight.



Lighting

Now the window had been completed I had to look into lighting the inside of the case. I wanted the colour to be blue as its my favourite colour and always looks cool in a case. I purchased two 12.25in long PCMods cold cathodes (both blue) and two ZXMods 4" Cathodes (again in blue). Basically I installed the two larger cold cathodes on the bottom and on the rear support of the case. This lights the whole interior of the case very well. The two smaller ones were place vertically in the hard disc bays to light the front grills. The 4" cold cathodes are very good they can fit in much smaller spaces and throw out lots of light.



Matrix Orbital LCD

LCD's have been around for some time now, and Matrix Orbital have established themselves as the main provider of high end LCD's for computers. They have recently introduced a range of colour LCD's that provide a refreshing change from the normal green LCD's. The one I chose was a blue lcd with white text. Its my favourite of the models. I had a chance to look at the inverse blue LCD and although it was nice I definitely preferred the normal blue model.



The model I chose is the LK202-25-WB-V. It has many advanced features including:

• 20 characters x 2 lines
• Interface with up to 25-key keypad
• Use 6 General Purpose Outputs
• Software controlled speed, splash/start-up screen, line wrapping, scrolling, contrast, backlight and time-out setting (up to 180 minutes)

Also available are bay inserts with keypads, these allow you to control the LCD from the buttons. These are excellent as long as the software supports them, and most modern LCD software has these programmed in. They are only available in black and beige, no silver for aluminum cases unfortunately. I have a plan on how to over come this in the future but haven't found a source for some of the items required. Stay posted for more ;)



In my plans for the lcd early on I decided that I want to try out connecting the lcd via USB not by the normal Serial connection. The easiest way of doing this is to use a RS232 to USB converter these are available from Maplins



The converter emulates a com port so you can use all the software you can with a serial connection. Those looking for an lcd but with motherboards with no legacy ports should definitely look into these converters.

As far as software goes for the LCD I only use LCDC. You now have to pay a small registration fee but it is well worth it. The software is so advanced and set-up only for Matrix Orbital LCD's and can do more things than any other piece of software that I have used. I tried to go back to using other LCD software after this and I got frustrated very quickly. It was money well spent when I signed up for a registered copy.

Slotbus

With all the cold cathodes that are in the case I really needed a way to turn them off at night to prevent them from keeping me awake. The most common option is to create a switchbus in a spare bay plate that allows you to turn them on/off. I don't like the look of them to be perfectly honest, they take up a spare bay and wouldn't have fit in the case due to the door. Therefore I need a way of mounting the switches, my first thought was to place them in the side panel next to the window, but I decided this would look silly. Then I remembered reading about a slotbus. The basic idea behind a slot bus is to use a spare pci blanking plate to hold the switches required. This was the perfect solution to my problem, the switches would be hidden from view and yet still accessible.



A slotbus is very simple to create you need to get hold of one switch per cold cathode , a spare pci blanking plate, a bit of wire and some heat shrink/ electrical tape. The switch I used is a very simple on/off switch part fh97f from Maplins. All you do is solder two wires onto the switches , heatshrinking or taping over the bare wire when done to prevent shorting. Next you hook the wires up to the power line of the cold cathode, again heatshrinking in place. After that you take a spare pci blanking plate and drill four small holes for each of the switches. Screw the switches in place and you are done , its just matter of routing the wires so they are tidy . It will take about 15mins at the most.
After I had completed the slotbus, I decided to add a 7v/12v/0v switch as well to control my fans this was just added next to the existing switches. To me it was the perfect solution to the problem of hiding the switches.



Other Mods

I was originally planning on not having a floppy disc at all as I haven't had one in a system for a while, but I got fed up of my housemates wanting stuff off my machine, or wanting something printing off a floppy. So I decided to put one back in this project. Of course a beige one will not do. So I got out the spray cans and set to work. What you need to paint a floppy fascia is the following:

• Nissan starburst silver spray paint
• Grey primer spray paint
• Clear coat spray can
• Some sandpaper. Fine grit
• Masking tape

The method for paint a fascia be it cd drive or floppy is very simple. First remove the fascia from the drive and mask off any area's you don't wish to paint. Next sand back the fascia to get any grime etc off the drive and to prepare it for the primer. Now spray a light coat of primer onto the fascia , leave it to dry for 24hrs. After it has dried lightly sand back the primer to prepare for the layer of colour. I chose nissan starburst silver metallic for the drive as I know its a very close match to aluminum Again lightly spray the fascia and leave to dry for 24hrs. When it has dried do a coat of clear coat to protect the paint. Repeat with any buttons etc you have as well. While I had the drive in pieces I replaced the green LED with a blue one as green looks so last century. Make sure you match up the polarity of the LED's when you do this as they only work one way round.



I was never happy with the original rear grill on the case, I looked plain and ordinary which wouldn't do. So I decide to cut it off and replace it with a sun grill. Unfortunately the existing grill is a weird shape slightly larger than a sun grill in places. Anyway I got out some sharp wire cutters and set to work (aluminum is very soft so you don't even need a dremmel to remove the grill. It took 5mins and looks much better now as you can see.



Also replaced were all grills with sun grill lazer cut grills and all screws/thumbscrews were replaced by anodized blue ones which look much nicer. The front grills filter was removed and 2 sun grills place in front of the fans and 2 aluminum mesh filters behind. This gives great looks through the mesh with the cold cathodes lighting up the shape of the grills

Gallery






Conclusions

This project took me a fair while to complete but the results were well worth it. I love the look of the case now and it is virtually silent. I can sleep with it on with no problems. The window method I used I will use from now on as it looks much better than ones with rubber molding. I hope I have encouraged you to start modding your case.

Thanks

Thanks to Kustom PC's for providing many of the parts require for this project, without them this project wouldn't have been possible.