Minor airflow obsession

[Peter Blanchard]

Bear in mind that I'm on a limited budget, not many tools and no 3D printer.

I've been thinking about making my own air guides/shrouds.

I note from video reviews of various servers that some shrouds are made of thin plastic. Like you can do with paper/card, some look to be of score-and-bend construction. OK for a straight through air flow.

I've got a fairly fierce heatgun. I could use a thermoplastic and a former. I'd use wood as a former - because it's easy to machine and very cheap. Rectilinear with bends would be pretty easy.

Thing is, I lack the knowledge to pick the right material for either.

 

[i386]

What chassis? Cpus? Heatsinks?
What's the big goal?

 

[Peter Blanchard]

Repurposed Dell T605 chassis
Re-use server class fans
supermicro x10slh-n6-st031 mobo
Tower cooler for Xeon with 120mm fan
Extra 120mm fan to push air over eight 2.5" 10K rpm SAS drives in four 3.5" bays with adapters
Three 40mm 3 pin fans on the ethernet chips.

Plans to add another eight 2.5" 5400 rpm drives in two and a bit 5.25" bays and single 3.5" bay.
Adapters originally meant for sticking 3.5" FDD in 5.25" bay.
I stick mesh over the hole.
Mount couple of 40mm fans at the front.

Goals are make the thing quiet enough to live in home office and not suck too much cat fluff into the guts of the machine.

 

[Peter Blanchard]

Also, learning a few skills.

 

[CyklonDX]

so don't use paper, or any material thats going to be affected in temps of 85'C

PVC plastic sheets are top use, as it won't deform like PETG ones (85'C is the softening temp for PETG)
PETG look nicer, and most likely easier to work with, but if you think your heat is going to get anywhere close to 85'C or above stay away.

 

[Peter Blanchard]

My heatgun will do 300C.

Side project is micro-controller based fan control but that can wait and might be unnecessary if I get the physical stuff right.

 

[ano]

we use CAD (Cardboard Aided Design)

works very good in servers,

 

[Peter Blanchard]

we use CAD (Cardboard Aided Design)

works very good in servers,

I'm going to use cardboard as a template for cutting and drilling.

 

[ano]

we did it for thoose pfsense appliance (basicly supermicro) servers, they dont come with fans for NIC, since they sell NICs with fans... but we wanted to use our nics, for rackmount servers, that chassis comes with 40mm fans, and mounts as option from supermicro, so bought thoose, and.. some cardboard, TADA, always supercool NIC's

 

[Peter Blanchard]

I've just discovered the world of budget vacuum forming.

 

[Sean Ho]

sketch a CAD model and some openfoam CFD?

 

[Peter Blanchard]

sketch a CAD model and some openfoam CFD?

Probably overkill.

Do manufacturers actually do CFD for shrouds?

 

[mach3.2]

Probably overkill.

Do manufacturers actually do CFD for shrouds?

I wouldn't be surprised if they do.


But I'm definitely not doing CFD for my jank box lol.

 

[Sean Ho]

Hey, you were the first to mention "obsessions"! There's always another rabbit hole to dive down.

Many manufacturers do run a bit of fluid modelling for airflow design, of which shrouds is a component. And it makes a difference -- many tower workstations can handle hot CPUs/GPUs while still being office-quiet. Noise is just not a big design criterion for rackmount servers.

 

[Peter Blanchard]

I am tempted to buy smoke making sticks/pellets for airflow visualisation. Whilst none of my machines have clear side panels, sure I would be able to bodge something.

 

[Fritz]

I am tempted to buy smoke making sticks/pellets for airflow visualisation. Whilst none of my machines have clear side panels, sure I would be able to bodge something.

Incense sticks work too and you get the added benefit of making the room smell nice.