Stealth blowholes

Stealth Blowholes

So you have your new gaming or high performance rig and its running way to hot. So whats the solution?
There are several:

Watercooling
Buying a new case
Improving the cooling in your current case

If you decide to keep your existing case a blowhole is what you require to remove the hot air. However blowhole's generally aren't as aesthetically pleasing as they could be, particularly on the new all aluminium cases. This problem can be overcome easily using the method of stealthing the blowhole. Basically its hiding as much of the nasty stuff as possible behind the case panel so only the nice stuff shows.

What you are going to need

A fan
A laser cut fan grill
PVC beading
Glue (Araldite)
M4 bolts x 4 (long)
Tools

First Step

First step is to remove the panel that the blowhole is going to be created in. Now you need to carefully work out where you are going to place the fan as well as what size of fan you wish to fit? Make sure your blowhole is not going to obstruct anything inside your case. Now you have the placement grab hold of a pencil and your laser cut grill. On the biohazard version simply draw a line round inside edge of the outermost segment of metal , this will leave you gaps but simply rotate the grill through 30degrees to finish the job. You should now have a circle a couple of millimetres smaller than the shape of the grill. This is your cutting line.

Tooling

There are serveral methods / tools you can use to create the hole , most preferable is a holesaw and arbour (however a good one will be around £30.00). You can also use a dremmel or similar tool. This is what I used as I didn't want to buy a holesaw. Start off with a reinforced cutting disc (make sure u wear safety goggles as these can break off) I would cut slightly inside the line 2 or 3mm this gives you leeway. Cut slowly and let the tool do the work. Work your way round the circle cutting as you go. Hopefully you will have a similar hole as in the pic above. Now just file back carefully until you meet the line. What you should have now is a perfect circle.

Now grab the PVC beading and trim the hole with it to tidy it up. Its much nicer, especially when your cutting isn't prefect. The beading can be found at Maplins part code : XR78K

Time for placement

Next up, we need to sort out a way of fixing the fan to the case, you could just drill a hole through the panel but this looks nasty. The solution is to glue 4 bolts on the inside. Take the fan you are using and four M4 nuts and bolts. Put the bolts in place, then line up the fan how you want it. Simple glue the bolts to the panel, you will need some very strong glue if its going to withstand the force of the fans, look for the strongest epoxy you can find. If your case is aluminium make sure the glue will work on metal. Leave it to dry for 24hrs or so. (This time will depend on the type of glue you use)