Tricked out my old Dell tower with a blower fan and it fit perfectly

So I had this beat up Dell Dimension from 2004 sitting in my garage, and I wanted to stuff my Ryzen 5 build inside it. Problem was the GPU was hitting the drive cage and I couldn't close the side panel. After 3 tries with different fans, I found this old blower style cooler from a junk HP I had laying around. I ziptied it to the back exhaust vent and directed the airflow right over the VRMs. It actually dropped temps by like 8 degrees under load and I didn't have to cut anything. Has anyone else rigged up a weird cooling solution in a cramped sleeper case?

2 comments

2 Comments

palmer.henry21d agoMost Upvoted

Whoa, you seriously made a 2004 Dell run a modern Ryzen build without cutting anything?

taylor.jessica21d ago

and honestly it was mostly me yelling at the motherboard for three hours straight haha. The hardest part was getting the power supply to fit without any case mods, I had to flip it upside down and reroute every single cable. I feel like I'm a trash panda building a spaceship out of old computer parts, but somehow it booted on the first try. My biggest fear the whole time was that the thing would catch fire, but so far it's just running quiet and cold which is actually kind of spooky for a 20 year old case.