Lynxman

Blu-Ray Writer in my workstation. No optical drives in my gaming PCs. Used to have a HD DVD and Blu-Ray drive in my HTPC but have removed it and am using the drive as an external drive when I need it now.

Like I have shown before. PC fans don't spin fast enough to stretch. The forces are incredibly small unless you're into 50W Delta server fan territory, of which I have several (who also don't stretch after many years). I've been using PCs since the 80's, and still have fans from twenty years ago. Ive been using plastic fans that spin tens of thousand rpm in my hobby. The stresses that computer fans operate under are just insignificant even to ABS. The best fans even have glass reinforced plastic, and if you think they will expand significantly under pc fan speeds then you are just wrong. Do you even realize how little 0,2 mm is, as mentioned by the Noctua guy in the video? He's probably talking about a worst case scenario where the fan is operating at temperatures near the temperature limit of the material. No 120 mm computer fan will deform plastically from cold running at 2000 rpm unless it's very unbalanced or cracked. It's just absurd. Again. Why on earth worry about that anyway? If the fan should stretch the excessive 0,2 mm, which is just 0,008" if that makes it easer to understand, it won't even touch the printed rings. You don't need a 0,1 mm gap to improve the fan. Achieving a 0,5-1mm gap is a great improvement over the 2-3 mm gap many fans have. A gap of 0,1 would be perfect if it can be maintained, but it's not necessary. I wish I had kept my findings to myself at this point.

But look at the premise for the whole thread. I am talking about fans with exessive gaps, not fans that already have well optimized gaps. And if the fan starts touching in six years then make a thinner ring. One of the things I want to try is a ring that is secured to the fan and rotates with the fan. The concerns of blade stretch are exaggerated. Believe me.

You're right. It should be grounded in the motherboard end.

Use aluminum tape first for shielding and then a black tape over that.

Looks like the motherboard is about to short out on the tray where it sags down.

Not making sense.

Why even worry about the insignificant theoretical blade stretch though? If it starts rubbing after six years just make a thinner ring or remove it. If anything it's probably only going to close the gap even better than a new fan, considering how small the stretch will be, if any at all. It's not a problem, neither is PLA glass transition temperature, or any of the other concerns brought up. I'd like to try a bell mouth with an integrated ring next. Maybe I'll do it to the Noctua server fan I have on the CPU of my workstation and run tests.

Not sure why there's so much resistance to this idea here. He even says the growth is only up to 0,1-0,2 mm, which isn't anywhere near enough to touch the ring with my upgrades. The mod I'm doing is to reduce the 2mm+ gap of most fans to less than 1 mm. Here's a ring for those who want to make their own: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2730566

Here's a trick for improving fan efficiency. I have done this with two fans in different applicatins now, and the gains are pretty significant. By reducing the gap between the fan blades and the fan housing I rediced the load temperature of the GPU in the Nuke by 4°C. I did the same on a CPU cooler in my other rig and it lowered the temp by 2,7°C.

I did the same modification to the intake case fan on my Nuke build and it lowered the GPU temperature from 66°C to 61°C (Ethereum mining). That's a 5°C reduction. There are real gains to be made by this, people. The efficiency improvement is obvious. The Sickleflow fan had a 2mm gap originally. I printed a 1mm thick ring, with holes for the LEDs.

My arsenal is growing.

Here's both next to each other. Earlier today I laid the finished one on its side to look under it, and it looked awesome sitting there, so I'm going to design a cradle for it to have it sitting on its side as an option.

Here's a shot showing the PCIE cable coming around the side of the motherboard. I also replaced the noctua cooler with a Silverstone cooler. The CPU now reaches a peak of 96°C in Prime95, which is acceptable for such a load in this for factor. The ideal cooler for this case is probably a Thermolab ITX30. If a Pico PSU is used instead then a larger CPU cooler can be used of course. I wanted to install the 250 W PSU instead of the 450W one in there now, but the 250 W PSU doesn't have a PCIE power cable and I didn't want to solder any now. It should be enough though as the combined load of Prime95 and Heaven demo pulls 200 W from the wall socket.

Buy enameled wire. It's designed to touch without conducting, so if it does touch accidentaly it won't matter. It's why transformers and electric motors work even though they are packed with wires.