3. Front Blowhole
After I cleared up the air-flow in the rear of the case, I had to clear up the the flow in the front of the case so I could fit the 120mm Panaflo in there. As you can see it's gonna be a tight fit, but I'll work. Before I did that though, there were a few things to consider:
1. The latch that the bezel uses needs a small part of the frame to latch onto, right where we want the 120mm to go, plus the bezel latch goes in about 1/8 of an inch or so, so I will need some spacers for the fan. So I must make sure that I leave that space for the bezel latch alone.
2. When cutting out the opening in the frame, I need to make sure to have secure places for the screws to grab onto. What I did was use a template of the fan, cut out on some paper, to make sure the holes for the screws would be in the right place, and not in an area that is already void of metal.
First thing I did was cut out the raised portion of the stock blowhole, so I could place the 120mm fan template on a level surface. Once that was done, I laid the template down and made sure everything was lined up and traced out where I was going to cut. Make sure you check it 3 times, 'cause once you cut, there is no turning back. Make sure when tracing that you leave enough metal for the bezel latch to still function and for the drive tray screws. Also put the bezel back on to make sure that it will still fit given your cutting lines.
Now that everything is traced out, lets cut! After cutting, I drilled the holes for the fan screws. Once everything was done, I sanded out all the rough edges the same way I did with the rear blowhole. When I was done, I lined up the fan once more to be sure that the placement is correct, hoping that it was.
As you can see, the front hole is not that pretty. Who cares, it does its purpose and lets air in, while keeping the front case structure strong. From here, I was done modding the front for the 120mm Panaflo, so now I could get that fan ready to be mounted in the front along with some cool fan mods.
