Installation

All this, in there?

I have to admit, while looking at all the parts spread out on the table, it seemed that the installation was going to take a little while.  It did.  I ran into a few minor glitches along the way that slowed the process considerably.  No show-stoppers, but glitches nonetheless. I started by mocking up the various configurations.  There a quite a few different configurations possible depending on how you want to orient the three fans.  The large rectangular bracket forms a backbone for the fans.  It has a ladder configuration on the big surface that allows you to mount a fan directly to the bracket in one of four different locations.  If you want the fan to pull air through the bracket, you're out of luck, as the fan won't turn if it is installed upside down due to interference with the bracket.  A little Dremeling could fix this, but I elected to just have it force air down through the bracket.  I've only pictured a couple of different configurations, but you could put two fans up top, as well.  The hanging brackets allow you to orient two of the fans at right angles to the large bracket. The folks at Logisys are obviously proud of their kit, as there is no less than 6 Logisys logo stickers plastered all over the hardware. I left them on for the photos, but I will most likely remove them later.

The kit includes all the screws you need, but here's a little advice for the manufacturer:  Paint the items, and then tap the holes for the screws.  The screws could just barely be forced to screw into the holes without stripping out the screw heads.  If your kit is like this, I advise running a single screw through all the holes before you try to install  the fans so that you don't have to use so much force.  That way you'll only have one mangled screw instead of five or six.  I strongly advise only attaching one or two screws to get the assembly ready for installation into the case, as it might take a few tries to get the arrangement right to avoid interference with other objects within the case. Once you figure out the final arrangement, you can take it out and install all the hardware. It worked best for me to get all the fans assembled outside the case, and then install the bracket as a single assembly.

Installation - Cont'd

The pictures below illustrate the final arrangement for my case.  The large bracket has little feet on it that will slide over an open PCI slot, but try as I might, I wasn't able to get the bracket to live happily in my case in any of the PCI slots.  I had to put the bracket in the very top slot, above the AGP area, in order to get all the stuff to coexist with other cards, etc.  I tried every possible configuration, and the only place it could go was encasing my video card.  This struck me as odd, because without the support of a PCI slot under it, the bracket kind of sags under the weight of the fans. I fixed this problem by hurriedly fabricating an aluminum bracket in the shop.  I know, the workmanship of the support bracket is sub-par, but by the time I was finished, the project had been going on for an hour at least and I was getting impatient. At some point, I'll make a nicer one.  If you have a nice video card that you want to show off, it is likely to get buried under all the fans, so take note. I'm also not a fan of chrome fan grills unless the fan is exposed to the outside of the case.  Until they start having safety inspections at LAN parties, I'm going to leave them off.

I'm not real crazy about the final arrangement as far as airflow is concerned.  It's no doubt blasting a lot of air onto the video card, which is good, but I'm not sure that it contributes to better overall case flow.  The fan on the end of the big bracket is helping to pull air through the drive cage, which is good, but then it gets trapped in the PCI slot area.  I'm sure it finds its way out eventually, but I would have rather had it helping to move air through to the exhaust fan already in the case.  Swirl is good, too though, so I'm not worried about it actually harming overall case temps.

Once I got all the mechanical hookups configured, I set about attaching the electrics.  I took some time to rearrange some other cables (especially the monster ATX power cable I have).  The wires on the fans have three connectors, but not surprisingly the harness provided to hook them up does not pass-through the speed-sensing wires of the fans.  I'm sure this is because you can't collect the fan speed wires into one bundle like you can the power wires.  Your motherboard or fan controller will need three dedicated circuits to read them all. If you do elect to hook the fans to another source of power, you'll probably have to extend them to reach a fan controller, as the individual leads aren't very long.

Here are a few shots of the completed installation.