As mentioned up there, a stock Phanteks Enthoo Pro M can hold only up to two 140 mm fans at the front. A third fan of that size cannot fit there. In fact, even a 120 mm fan cannot fit well there, when two 140 mm's are already in place. There's also that bunch of cables for the front IO panel going all the way across the front, which effectively prevents a straightfoward installation of *any* third fan. Since very early on, when I first put together this build (early 2017,) I saved a mental bookmark: "Some day I might move those cables out of the way, maybe even do some mods to be able to mount a third 140mm front fan."
And that day happened a couple of months ago. Pretty much a decade after the original build :)
Photoblog
Here photos of how the project evolved. Starting with some few photos of the original build (2017), and some of earlier modifications:
- AIO cooler placed at the front, and no RGB yet (2017)
- AIO moved to the top, GTX 1070 -> GTX 1080 Ti, RGB strip added (2018)
- 120mm fan added to the acrylic side panel (~2021)
- AIO taken out, replaced with a Thermalright air cooler, plus lower front scoop (2025)
- GTX 1080 Ti out, RGB strip out, RX 6700 XT in (2026)
- NAS disks + Front panel mods (2026)
Some context and history
This PC was built in early 2017. Back then it had Windows 10, a GTX 1070, an AIO, and at some point also some RGB. Late last year (2025) it no longer had any RGB, and had been running Fedora 44 for a couple of years, also with a pfSense VM. It was my main linux gaming rig, but also my home firewall/router. Now it had an Nvidia 1080 Ti (for several years, since the 1070 had gone to a relative's computer years ago) but an Nvidia GPU bothered me for a linux system. So I recently got a more linux-friendly suitable replacement for it from eBay: an AMD Sapphire Pulse RX 6700 XT. The host Fedora OS also has had an NFS share which I could access from my laptop and from a RaspPi for long now. So the PC, besides gaming rig and firewall, was also functioning as a humble file sharing server. But for some time I have thought of having a higher-end storage option: more serious capacity, and more serious reliability. Thought of building a NAS, but the PC market has been so bleak for so long, specially lately. On the other hand, this PC has been quite stable, and reliable... Why not just add some actual NAS-grade functionality and hardware to it? That sparked the thought of maxing out the overall ventilation in it. Not that it was inadequate, but any internal NAS-grade upcoming harddisks would obstruct airflow somewhere, and would also warm up things. The system overall thermals could go up a bit. And so that old mental bookmark about a third 140 mm front fan for this case had been summoned, resucitated, and it would not budge.
For the NAS functionality: instead of just an ntfs or ext4 partition shared through nfs, I could use the highly reliable ZFS to configure a large mirrored storage pool, and share that through NFS directly from the Fedora host. However, I quickly learned that ZFS cannot keep up with the rapid upgrade paces of Fedora versions. If I wanted to run ZFS directly on this PC, I would have needed to downgrade the Fedora version by quite a few numbers. That was something I definitely did not want to do. So instead, I configured yet another VM, which would run TrueNAS Scale, which uses debian+ZFS under its rug. For that VM I got a second 1 TB HGST disk (the system had already one,) and eventually got two 12 TB Western Digital Red Plus used disks with 0 reallocated sectors from eBay. These disks are EFAX and EFBX models, actual helium filled, NAS-grade disks, just a lot less noisy than their "pro" cousins, so perfect for a home NAS. Eventually I also passed through the entire SATA controller of the motherboard to this VM, which is the recommended, best practice way to let TrueNAS handle SATA disks from a VM.
So running on this PC now
- pfSense Firewall VM (2 logical cores, 2 GB RAM, 12 GB vdisk on the SSD, passed-through Intel 2x 1Gb Eth add-on card)
- TrueNAS Scale VM (3 logical cores, 10 GB RAM, 40 GB vdisk on the SSD, passed-through SATA controller, two 1 TB SATA disks in one mirror, two 12 TB Home-NAS SATA disks in another mirror)
- Fedora 44 + KDE Plasma host (~remaining 3 logical cores, remaining 20 GB of physical RAM, 1 TB NVMe SSD). CoolerControl software installed on the host to manage all fan curves and monitor fan speeds.
New DIY Front Panel Project Objectives
- Front I/O panel cables should no longer go all the way across the main front opening.
- New DIY Front panel for the fans and filters should comply with whichever new front I/O panel placement, while also being able to hold three 140 mm fans.
- Max-out air cooling all over, while mitigating any possible sources of noise, turbulence, resonances, and vibration.
Criteria about the mods
Phanteks decided to go with a maximum of two 140 mm front fans for this medium-sized tower case. When removing the stock front panel and front fans, the actual rectangular opening there is still quite tight for the footprint of three 140 mm fans. Given the cost of materials, tools, and time needed, these mods are for sure not optimal, neither in general nor specifically for this case. A larger new case would have been a much simpler alternative, in fact, also a more cost-effective one. But I did not want to transfer/redo this build. Plus I also wanted to try some DIY frontiers that were slightly new to me. Which means: did it mostly just for the fun of it :) In my mind these mods were however not only a very good fit for what this PC had transformed itself into, they also offered a perfect combination of challenges, materials, and tools that I have wanted to tinker with for some time now.
Some criteria/engineering thoughts I worked with:
- Be able to remove/replace any of the fans, any of the filters, or the mods themselves when necessary. Everything as modular, and as re-doable/replaceable as possible.
- Minimize/mitigate any possible source of turbulence:
- Adequate intake-side spacing between filters and the edges of fan blades (> 6 mm)
- Adequate "plenum" distance between the exhaust side of the fans and the front opening of the interior of the case (>= 6 cm)
- Build some smooth "tunneled" nozzles between the exhaust sides of the fans, and the front of the case. The openings in these nozzles would need to be circular on the fan-side, but rectangular on the case side. This required some geometrically complex sculpting. I even thought of 3d printing, but it would be relatively easy, cheaper and fast, if using hard-foam insulating boards, which in spite of their name, are quite soft and easy to work with (XPS or extruded polystyrene boards.)
- If possible avoid cutting any metal from the case, at least for the time being. (Cutting metal would be not only very neighbor-unfriendly, it would require disassembling the entire build first, plus taking precautions so as to keep all electronic components safely away from the risk of tiny metal chips flying under Murphy's law, short-circuiting anything that can be short-circuited.)
- Choose "high open area," well regarded filters, those with superthin nylon meshes and very small pores, for maximal dust filtering with highest possible airflow.
- Make sure air that gets into the case has been pulled in exclusively through those filters. So no leakage from any side gaps around the filter or panel edges.
- Choose well regarded, high static pressure + high airflow fans
- Dampen the acoustics of this new front assembly as much as possible. E.g. using window isolating foam strips as cushion between the assembly modules, or between the assembly and the case; using grommets between fans and the panels where they would be mounted; chosing combinations of materials that would not vibrate, resonate, or transmit/reflect any sound easily (this alone strongly favored XPS boards over any solid wood, or mdf, or 3d-printed plastic for any spacing panels.)
- Build first a new mounting assembly for the side-panel fan, as as sort of testing ground and pilot project for some of the ideas for the front panel, specially how to mount the filters. (I had modded the acrylic side panel in the past, attaching a 120 mm fan directly to it. The approach now was to replace that with a 140mm fan attached to an exterior wooden frame, which would be attached to the acrylic panel.)
- Build the new front panel in two modules:
- M1: the Fan Module (closest to the case) would provide the "plenum" between the fans and the frontface of the case. Front fans would be mounted on the outer side of this module. Its assembly would be something like:
- [Fans + wooden panel1 + spacing hardfoam1 + rings of window expansion joint-filler/weather-sealing foam stripes1] ->
[Metal frontface of the case] - M2: the Filter Module: to cover/protect the fans (dampening the acoustics while sealing the fans all around,) plus also to hold filters at some distance from the intake-side of the fans. The full assembly would therefore be something like the following:
- [M2: Filters + steelmesh + wooden panel2 + spacing hardfoam2 + foam stripes2] ->
[M1: Fans + wooden panel1 + spacing hardfoam1 + foam stripes1] ->
[Metal frontface]
Phases of the project
- Front IO Panel moved to the other side
- Side panel fan upgrade, from 120 to 140 mm + mounting frame (pilot/testing project)
- Multiplex-wooden boards for each module
- Sculpting the XPS spacing boards for each module
- Test-mounting both modules (unfinished)
- Sculpting an air-guiding "cross" (multiplex wood) for the drive cage's openings at the lower front
- Waterproofing/Glueing + plastering + sanding/polishing + painting + finishing the modules
- Final mounting of all finished parts of the assembly
PS. Current hardware - July, 2026 (after completion of these mods)
- Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M (2016,) with DIY front panel for 3x 140 mm fans
- PSU: Corsair RM750x
- Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Ranger
- RAM: 32 GB (4x8 Corsair DDR4 3000 MHz)
- CPU: Intel i7-6700K (4c/8t)
- CPU cooler: Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 V2
- GPU: AMD RX 6700 XT 12 GB VRAM
- Networking:
- 1Gb Eth (motherboard)
- Add-on PCIe Intel networking card with 2x 1Gb Eth ports (-> passed-through to the pfSense VM)
- Add-on PCIe Cudy-Intel AX210 Wifi + Bluetooth card (Fedora host OS)
- Storage:
- 1x M.2 NVMe SSD 1TB (Samsung) -> Fedora host OS
- SATA controller --> fully passed-through to the TrueNAS VM
- 2x SATA HDDs 1 TB (HGST 7K1000, 2.5") placed behind the motherboard
- 2x SATA HDDs 12 TB (WD Red Plus, 3.5"), placed at the case's stock drive bay/cage installed in the lower front area (replacing a former scoop mod)
- Fans:
- Front: 3x Arctic P14 PRO PST
- Side-panel (->GPU): 1x Arctic P14 PRO PST
- Rear Exhaust: still a stock DC 140 mm Phanteks airflow fan, but will replace it with another P14 PRO, so that all five case fans will be 140 mm PWM fans.
- The large top vent of the case is covered all the way from the front of the case till the rear part of the CPU cooler. So no airflow entering the case can escape anywhere else but through the rear of the case, and/or that last 1/3 uncovered part of the top vent after the CPU cooler.
- Filters:
- 4x Briefcec magnetic 140 mm Ultrafine Nylon 80 mesh (pores/openings of only 0.2 mm)
In a follow up post: lists of materials, parts, and tools used, plus the main difficulties encountered.
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