So… after all the hardware mounting work I decided to boot up the arcade and make sure its all in working order. The fans whirred up. Good. Bios boot screen. Check. Windows loaded. Nice. Everything looks to be in wor- black screen. Fans stopped. Silence.. No.. nonononoNONONONO!
After a quick burst of anger and a few tears I downloaded hardware monitor to see what was going on.
CPU temps where going through the roof and hitting 100 degrees and turning off the arcade. The single ventilation fan at the back of the arcade obviously was not going to cut it. I took a deep breathe knowing that my precious arcade was going to be again brought back to the wood work bench and began rummaging through my spare parts.
Not wanting more gaping swiss cheese holes in my arcade I decided on repurposing the Antec 900 PC case front fan slots into the sides of my arcade. This would save me having to make my own filters and covering for the holes. The PC fans would also fit perfectly in the the cages meaning no messing around with mounting fans inside the cab!
Once the arcade was gutted again I measured up the side cuts to ensure airflow would go across the CPU and motherboard and exhaust out the opposite side. I hoped this would be enough to stop the arcade from bursting into flames.
So in the end I didn’t butcher my arcade too badly and added a nice amount of ventilation. I like how they look like old school arcade speakers!
Now to boot up some Mortal Kombat to put it to the test!
Sub-Zero.. Wins 😉
Beer Snobbery, Gadgets, Video games and Other Nerdy Things! 
Great lesson in why planning is actually crucial. #lrn2plan
Agreed. I found the heat sink was loose (after cutting the holes). So one vent at the back would have probably been enough. At least everything will be running at optimal temperature no matter how much I push it 🙂 Also switching from using an old iMac to mounting a PC made things challenging.