I've had a Dell Dimension 8300 for a while now, I think almost a year and a half, and in that time I've only had one major complaint.
The fan sounds like a low powered hair dryer.
Seriously, the thing is just simply to farkin' loud. God help you if you try to play F.E.A.R or HL2, you'll go deaf with the thing revving up like a small engine. It turns out that the damn thing can push about 75 CFM!!!! Apparently this is a pretty common problem with this model.
Well it finally reached a point I couldn't tolerate anymore. So I did something. After some research I found a post by somebody who had replaced the CPU fan with an aftermarket model in hopes to quiet it down. I IM'd his account on a site and he actually responded w/ two emails outlining what he did. Which was very helpful.
By the time I had received his emails though, I had already decided that the reason the fan was changing speeds so much was because of bad airflow in the standard dell case. So I was already deep in to the same action any sane person would do....gutting it like a squealing pig and putting it in a new case.
Now, before we proceed, let's establish some basics. I knew they're be complications:
1. Dell does not use standard sized motherboards, or screw placements
2. Dell computers have funky jacks in the front for usb, headphones, power...yadda....
3. I woke up at 2am that day....an hadn't been back to bed :)
So, we start were every great idea does...breaking stuff that works already. So the first thing I did was take apart the Dell and get the motherboard out so I could see if maybe...just maybe the mounting screw holes would line up with what the case already had (btw, the case is just an old one of mine). Of course that wasn't the case so after some playing around I lined up where it would fit, and then marked the holes with pencil, drilled a hole, and screwed in some brass standoffs (aluminum is so soft I didn't have to tap them). I sure got lucky and nailed it on the first try...which is good because there really wasn't a second try to be had if the screws were off....the stupid board only had 4......once at each corner to support it. Obviously another dirty dell trick. Ok so where are we at now? Oh....before I forget...If you can help it don't try to take the heat sink off the CPU...for the love of all that is holy just don't do it. It came off the board with the CPU attached! Yup I pull the CPU out of the ZIF(see last pic)...thankfully without bending any pins...but I did manage to fill my pants. And lastly, the I/O shield on the Dell is pretty much non removable....so don't count on having a nice pretty one. I plan on going back and making out out of some thing aluminum when have free time, or the inspiration to do so. Until then me and my trusty dremel git'd her done:
Ok, so now that the mother board is in the case and the PCI slots are lined up, next up is making those funky front panel usb/headphone connectors work. So what I did was take an old 2x cdr I had (originally over $200...*cry*) and gut it....then I used brass standoffs (amazing, I know) to mount it pretty much up to the edge. I also chopped about 1/3 off it's length while I was at it. I then took a blank panel cover and drilled/dremeled holes out of it for the physical ports themselves. One caveat....the headphone cable doesn't reach...hell the main cable barely did. This wasn't an issue for me since I don't use headphones, and when I do my speakers have a headphone jack on them. Honestly this all wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The next step was wiring into the display LED panel/power button for the box, which is connected to the usb/headphone circuit board via ribbon cable (which you can see hanging out of the box here). So the dell main power led puts out about 1.9v dc, and it seems the same for the HD led. So the standard LED's that came with the case worked just fine. Now I didn't take out the original dell LED's instead I just piggybacked on them:
So everything's in the box...powers up...I have front ports and the blinky lights work...we're done right? Nope, one more thing to tackle...air flow. Where the hell am I going to mount that huge ass monster fan?
What? Mount it? Why would you do that Dennis? Wasn't the point of this to quiet down the machine?
Yes it was, and still is. But for now I plan on mounting it, and then if the machine is stable in it's new home swapping it out with a smaller CFM model. Another thing to know is that Dell only puts one....a single solitary fan connector on the board. Also it's a special temp sensing fan (hence the previous mentioning of "revving") so if it's not connected, and a plain old generic one is used you'll get an error every time you boot because the BIOS will think the temp sensor went dead and you have a bad fan. Plus, after much deliberation (which the emails from the original modder helped) I decided to punch a hole in the front of the case. This is because there still is a front panel that will hide it, and this will dramatically increase airflow. I did have to extend the cable for the fan using some wire by about 6 inches. So...pictures of my monstrous hole anyone? :)
Ok. so...yeah, that's pretty much it. Everything shoehorned in there now and works (go figure...). I tidied up the cables a bit and put it next to the old case for a comparison shot.
What were the end results? Here's an example:
Before: 90.6 F surfing/email/winamp @ room temp of 78.6 (12 diff)
Before: 93.6 F playing F.E.A.R @ room temp of 78.6 (15 degree diff)
Now: 83.8 F surfing/email/winamp @ room temp of 76.3 room (7.5 diff)
Now: 87.1 F playing F.E.A.R @ room temp of 75.9 (11.2 diff)
Not a huge variance eh? Well there's one more component to the equation. Decibels. The fan has never gone above standard stock speed. It's running pretty much at it's typical idle with no revving to speak of. Odds are that I'll eventually replace this fan with a quieter model and see no negative effects because of this case's improved airflow. I'll still need to go back and make an I/O shield for it when I get my hands on some thin material, but for now...it should be ok.
