you come from Bit-Tech forums? ;)

not that I'm aware of.. I'm just strange & not afraid to break stuff with my lovely dremel. or hammer.
:-)

Re: only slightly E-ATX!
 

this is the reason I ask:



a smiley from their forums;)

oh! Lol! no, I just thought it was appropriate..

I am actaully really bad--I live in a carpeted apartment in manhattan and so generally just toss on some sturdy looking sunglasses & sit over the bathtub to catch all the metal filings. (and obviously trust to my good luck)

the 'mods gone wrong' on the bit-tech forums are hilarious! mine usually don't end quite so disaterously.. they just quietly stop working & get put farther back in the crammed closet.

That depends on which direction you apartment windows are facing and which floor you are on ...... you don't have to sit over the bathtub :D

Friend of mine lives on the 31st Floor Downtown Chicago, opening the window to do some cutting on a large window sill works out great :)

One question, I'm trying to install a Nexus 120mm fan on the front of my Antec Sonata II. This fan does not have open-thru holes like the one that was used for the review.

Where did you get those rubber band with knots? I'm trying to find a solution to mount this fan. It's not easy at all considering that it's very difficult to use the typical fan screws, and use a screwdriver. There is no enough space for that, and the more difficult to install, the more impossible it would be to take the screws out.

Please help, I'm stuck... Thank you!

Regular heavy duty rubber band :)

Tie one knot big enough so that it won't pass thru the hole; press the other end of the "cut rubber band" thru the hole, pull the rubber band so that the fan sit tight against the frame and tie a second knot, trim the excess afterward.

Glad I spent six years in the boyscout :D

Can I just run with no duct?
 

Good review. Wondering if you could please help out some more....

I have just purchased the Sonata 2 case.
The review recommends not using the duct. Can I just use the default fan and remove the duct?
Would this cause air to be sucked in through the unfiltered duct outlet?

I am putting in the following:
AMD Athlon 3700 Socket 939
ASUS A8N SLI Premium
250G HDD Seagate with 8mb Cache Leadtek Geforce 7800 GT PCI Express

Nothing is overclocked. What would be enough ventilation?
Should I just block the duct outlet and remove duct or use the duct?

hey there, glad you liked the review. If you are using your stock Athlon 64 cooling than you can safely remove the duct; the duct outlet would cause cool(er) air to come in for your 7800GT to be cooled down; the CPU area sits to high and is not affected by it. But I doubt if it'll make any major difference because of the small duct holes, odd positioning and low airflow in that area.

you could do a simple test by taping of the duct outlet and checking CPU/SouthBridge/Video Cards temperatures ([g]speedfan+download[/g] can do this easily for you) and then removing the tape and checking again.

make sure room temperature does not change a lot >2°C and stress your system/GPU at least for 1 hour after each change to allow temperatures to become stable and reach a maximum.

Just for kicks -

I volt modded a second handed R9800 pro.

With and without original air duct I found no difference; both situations did not yield the highest mem and core Oc'ed speed as to using my own Chill Vent with merely the 40mm fans.

The second R9800 pro with identical volt mod returned the same result although the settings were a bit different from two different cards rather than temp and air flow effect.