topic starter. your design either circulates the air in and out and in and out or its not efficient in cooling. it depends on how you want to design the cooling actually. normally if you want to cool the hot hard disk. other than wc, passive cooling is too hard to cool it up. frankly if you have alot of hard disk. try placing them close together and fan them directly. any fan will do, but do remind it has to have a high preassure and prefereable high cfm to maximise cooling. my hard disk mod is the same as your latest one. but mine is a large 12cm nidec beta V at one side while another delta in front of the casing. exhausting hot air is not a concern to me as my casing is naked. for the case of dust. i think there is not much you can do about it. if you're in an air con room then its good as the air con will filter most of the dust. but if you're on the plain ceiling fan, i suggest you install a air filter. its cheap and keeps you from doing daily house keeping on the pc. my friend is currently trying out another method of reducing dust without the usage of filter. he's thinking on using static energy but its kinda dangerous as electrical component might get faulty due to it.

if your place your hardware too far apart and cooled on a parallel air way. then its not good. since you have plenty of space tryblowing it. if dust is your concern, you can try salvaging old heat sink and then blow or suck on the heat sink attached to the hard disk. work fine for me.


always remember hot air rises. cold air is always at the bottom. to force air thru tight places, high pressure fans are required( fast spinning fans) high cfms fan work best in moderating and removing heat fast.