Side pannel

[Merlin]

I am thinking about putting a fan and sleeve on the left side of my case to bring some of the 70'F air directly to the heatsink fan as I have seen on a few X_Gamer cases online. What is the best tool to use to cut a nice smooth hole in the side of the left panel? I was going to use a Dremmel but its hard to get a really clean hole with one. I am trying to avoid needing any weather stripping or molding to clean up the hole if I can. I also thought about just laying out the holes and just drilling a bunch of holes in a pattern but that is inefficient. What do you guys think?

[Bio-Hazard]

Get youself a hole saw or borrow one......... :D they make the cleanest holes and are super easy to use, one other thing............alot faster also......3" for 80mm fans.............. :D

[Merlin]

Thanks Bio. Is there anything you don't do on computers? While we're talking case mods, I have always thought if you could improve the aerodynamics inside the case you would eliminate most heat problems. My biggest idea is to try and devide the inside of the case into two compartments. The IDE drives and Video card in one lower and the CPU and memory in another upper. I know this is not a new idea but I haven't seen or heard of anyone that has done it. What do you think and what have you heard about why we don't see cases from the Alienware/ FAlcon-Northwest etc. guys that do this on their custom made cases?

[Bio-Hazard]

As long as you have clean air flow inside your case, I don't really see any big reason to devide the case into compartments........ There are several new cases from Lian-Li that have this sort of idea though and they do look great. As a matter of fact I'm looking to get one for myself if and when I get the money together for a new socket 939 system later this year..........
http://www.lian-li.com/products/pcv1200.htm

[Merlin]

That is cool. I like how they turned the board and put the PS on the bottom. I twould take some getting used to though since the primary access is now on the right side rather than the left.

[capper5016]

The reason I picked the Cooler Master case was the overall room, using W/C the airflow isn't as big an issue, but the case also has the crossflow fan which directs cool air across the board and cpu, it also has multiple mounting spots for the PSU.
I have seen several setups that do what you want, bring cool air to the cpu. There are piping kits and some real interesting dividers you snap in that direct cool ait to certain spots and divide the case into sections. I'll try to post some links when I can find them. The cool thing about a few of those dividers is that they don't require any real mods to the case, like cutting or such.