Birthday Build – Catawampus

I tried to figure out how people were attaching the radiator to the case.  I didn’t like what I was seeing.  If you look at this picture;  (easier to see if you click on the image and blow it up from the site it takes you too)

You can see the fans are connected through the case on the far left and right, but are connected directly to the radiator in the middle.  The far right fan would not be connected to the case at all.  All the fans would be at angles putting torque on the brackets.  Ick!! (technical term.) 

So what I decided to do was connect the radiator to the computer cross members, and use nylon spacers for a bit of metal protection and vibration damping.

You can see the 4 screw holes where I now have two screws already inserted.  The problem there is that the mounting kit assumes you going to use screws that go through the fan.  So, I had to run out and find really short screws.  Otherwise, they would puncture right through the radiator.  I’ve heard that a leaky radiator is bad around computers.  So, I opted to get the shorter screws.

Here we go ---- (ignoring fingerprints)

I’ll be using two 140mm fans on top instead three 120s.  I’ll always be blowing into the case instead of out like you would in an air cooled system. 

That’s as far as I’ll get until my replacement fans get here.  I’ve got to work out a mounting system for the Helix radiator and the inverter.  I’ll post something if I get that figured out.