XPS 8940, Better 3rd party cooler

@studmonkey77  Here's the photo.

@Jon-62  on thingiverse, you posted you need washers using that 2 fan mount.  Where do they go? Do you have a pic of the front side? Ty in advance

@studmonkey77  Here's a picture I took of the front.  I was also installing sections of filter at the same time, retained by small neodymium magnets.  The washers are under the heads of the screws.  It would probably work without the washers, but I prefer to use them.

I put sticky tape over the Nyloc nuts to hold them in place in the frame while screwing everything together, with long tags to allow me to pull the tape off after installation.  

Pictures seem to take a few hours to render or be admin approved...

That two fan mount looks interesting.  There's no way a longer card would fit! 

@SteveK318 I agree on everything (including that darn Am I A Robot thing!)

The one thing a YouTube commenter mentioned is that the bracket for the fan should "clip" into the metal guides in the case.  I need to open my PC and check that out.  I checked and double checked my 120mm fan blades wouldn't eat any wires.  

The only other addition to the upgrade I would offer to those with the front hard drive - get a longer SATA cable.  Mine moved but is pretty tight!  

Cheers!

@Jon-62  picture wont show on here for some reason. Can uou still use the dell gpu bracket with both 80mm fans in the system?

@Jon-62  is there anyway you can do the dual fan adapter design with the m3 bolt/nut like you did the single fan adapter

@LikeHerdingCats - yeah, I didn't mention it in yours, but I may have mentioned it before to you. I did mention it in the subject video... Here's a couple of pics from the front showing the 'clips' latched in ... 

Yeah, when I initially installed my SSD, I had to use a longer SATA data cable. You can see the red cable in the picture. It's odd they provide a long enough power cable, but not the data cable ... I guess it comes down to $$.

- Steve

@LikeHerdingCats @Jon-62 @studmonkey77 @svdgabriel @Own8940 @bertro514

I know this isn't the right location for this post, but I I'm desperate ! I've had a windows update waiting for a while, so tonight I decided to it... I chose update and shutdown ... Seemed to go ok, until I decided to turn my G5 5000 back on only to get zip, nada, nothing ... No light or anything on the power button. The only sign of activity is when I plug the power plug in ... The PSU light is green, the power switch light comes on and the fans spin for about a second or two and that's it... But that's always been the way it has been. Only difference is now absolutely nothing happens when I push the power button. I did a search about a cold start which dissipates any residual power, and then try to restart it. Still nothing. I guess tomorrow I'm going to go component by component and try to check everything out, but I was just looking to see what you guys might know or think or have any ideas or experience, yada yada yada yada ... Wish me luck Hope to hear something from you guys.

@LikeHerdingCats @Jon-62 @studmonkey77 @svdgabriel @Own8940 @bertro514

Never mind !!! Everything is working perfectly once again !! Apparently some ID10T (that'd be me) didn't properly attach the front panel when I took it off to clean the front filters a week or so ago... The upper right corner near the power button wasn't hooked completely into place, and therefore the power button wasn't able to be pushed in completely !! As I was pulling the computer away from the wall to lay it down on it's side, I could visually see this.. I snapped it into place and all is right in the world again !!

-- Steve

That's a good one @SteveK318 ! lol. If it makes you feel any better, I was walking home one morning after taking my kids to school and had a full on panic attack that someone towed/stole my car when I saw my parking spot empty. It took no more than 30 seconds for my brain to catch up that I had left the car at the dealership over night for some repairs, but those were friggin intense 30 seconds!!

Loved your video, Paul! @LikeHerdingCats  Also, your "Vacationland" t-shirt made me miss the road trips I'd take to Maine beaches almost every summer before the pandemic. I hope to restart that tradition next summer.

If you want more "cooling" on your GPU, I recommend a slight undervolt. You can easily do it in the free MSI Afterburner app. I gained about 5-7 degrees in games by capping the max voltage to 975mV @ 2000MHz (before the undervolt, it would ramp up as high as 1100mV at that frequency).

@SteveK318 , thanks for linking the other video too. Interesting to watch. And we both should feel famous, our usernames appear on screen when he's scrolling through the forums at the beginning, lol. 

I tend to agree with him that if you've spent $100-$150 extra on the K CPU and cooler, it's probably not worth paying $60-70 more for a tiny airflow and noise upgrade to the Noctua. However, coming from the pancake cooler, the improvement is very visible. I also believe a CPU cooler is only as efficient as the case aiflow enables it to be. He didn't upgrade his case coolers in this first video, so the tiny 80mm at the back is the bottleneck.

@bertro514 - yup, it was an uncomfortable couple of hours as millions of thoughts raced through my head !! I'm just glad it was something stoopid like that !

I've had similar experiences with my car, like many many moons ago going to the work parking lot and not finding my car where I parked.... forgetting that my wife (at the time) either swapped out our other car in a different spot or just used it during the day and parked it elsewhere ! I think both actually happened !

-- Steve

@bertro514 - yeah, I found his videos interesting, but he was looking at the computers from a totally different perspective than most of us here in that we had the crappy cooler to start with... and for me at least it turned into a project of sorts where I wasn't in the game to recoup any monetary losses - just make it work better ! 

-- Steve

Hi @bertro514 ,

Maine is a wonderful place to get away from it all.

I'm aware I could under volt but I like the idea that great gains can be made with fans and a much more efficient CPU cooler.

As you mentioned to @SteveK318 , cooling the CPU is a huge part of it, blasting that hot air out the back is quite important too

And after watching that video again...ugh, I just can't take whining and complaining.  "Big YouTubers" and such.  Heck he has way more subs than me and I didn't take a shot at him!