Case Fan Setup

Basic cooling as shown in the beginning will work. It's generally about 101% correct.

That kind of great cooling is generally impossible with most cases that can be purchased today. Case manufacturers will offer pretty (what they want us to believe is pretty), lot's of front panel plugins (to help block proper airflow), and slick lookin' front panels (to insure we block any real airflow) at an inflated price so we can all be cool.

Problem is, we're cool and our components are anything but cool.

Nothing wrong with a side panel fan blowing in if it really helps. If that fan just serves to give a false reading because it blows cool air on a sensor...we lose.

If that side panel fan disrupts proper airflow thru the case...we lose.

The Intel solution of a duct blowing directly on the hsf is a pretty good idea...much better that just tossing air at whatever.

Other solutions like the badong stuff kind of work; Sidney Wong's Chill Vent ducting does work; our homegrown solutions might work.

Good basic cooling as shown in first post of this thread always works...always.

Everything out here that we can consider a cooling solution depends on good basic airflow thru a case. Water, phase change, hsf...it all depends on air flowing over the top to carry heat away.

Consider what a friend once told me. We can have cool, we can have cheap, and we can have quiet. Problem is; we can only have two out of three.

Chips and chipsets are getting better. We will enjoy lower temps and power requirements in the future. The P4E made a bunch of us gun shy when asking for over 100w and giving us hi temps in return...but that's just a chuckhole in the road to progress. It's hard to build this stuff and make it work for the general public, but we'll all benefit in the long run.

My stuff all runs in the mid 40°C range...all verified by a thermocouple, blah, blah, blah...and I feel I'm somewhere in the ballpark.

The drawing in the first post does not mean you need a fan in the bottom of your case...just that anything in that general area needs to intake cool air. Same applies that exaust fand need to be somewhere near the top or rear.

Reversing airflow thru a case works too. Cases that allow this do require a pretty good paycheck to purchase and the same basic understanding of the concepts in the first post of this thread to make work. The mechanics of hot air rising just does not go away...and will not.

I'd like to hear more discussion here...
 
Skip Cox said:
Basic cooling as shown in the beginning will work. It's generally about 101% correct.

That kind of great cooling is generally impossible with most cases that can be purchased today. Case manufacturers will offer pretty (what they want us to believe is pretty), lot's of front panel plugins (to help block proper airflow), and slick lookin' front panels (to insure we block any real airflow) at an inflated price so we can all be cool.

Problem is, we're cool and our components are anything but cool.

Nothing wrong with a side panel fan blowing in if it really helps. If that fan just serves to give a false reading because it blows cool air on a sensor...we lose.

If that side panel fan disrupts proper airflow thru the case...we lose.

The Intel solution of a duct blowing directly on the hsf is a pretty good idea...much better that just tossing air at whatever.

Other solutions like the badong stuff kind of work; Sidney Wong's Chill Vent ducting does work; our homegrown solutions might work.

Good basic cooling as shown in first post of this thread always works...always.

Everything out here that we can consider a cooling solution depends on good basic airflow thru a case. Water, phase change, hsf...it all depends on air flowing over the top to carry heat away.

Consider what a friend once told me. We can have cool, we can have cheap, and we can have quiet. Problem is; we can only have two out of three.

Chips and chipsets are getting better. We will enjoy lower temps and power requirements in the future. The P4E made a bunch of us gun shy when asking for over 100w and giving us hi temps in return...but that's just a chuckhole in the road to progress. It's hard to build this stuff and make it work for the general public, but we'll all benefit in the long run.

My stuff all runs in the mid 40°C range...all verified by a thermocouple, blah, blah, blah...and I feel I'm somewhere in the ballpark.

The drawing in the first post does not mean you need a fan in the bottom of your case...just that anything in that general area needs to intake cool air. Same applies that exaust fand need to be somewhere near the top or rear.

Reversing airflow thru a case works too. Cases that allow this do require a pretty good paycheck to purchase and the same basic understanding of the concepts in the first post of this thread to make work. The mechanics of hot air rising just does not go away...and will not.

I'd like to hear more discussion here...

Nice on Skip. I've posted a picture in the section on cooling wiith a picture of my cooling (basic I know....but its what I can afford!)



A 120mm fan in the front blows air into the case (my wiring is as much out of the way as possible) so there the "in" air. I'm just about to cut a blowhole in the side of the case so hopefully this will get those temps down some more! :wavey:

The chipset cooler will be a Thermalright XP-120 with a 120mm Panaflo fan on it and I forgot to put my GPU on this which blows air quite rigorously out of the case (already lowered my CPU temps by around 4degC!).

Anytime you wanna give advice then its always appreciated....
 
You're on it. Remember that a blowhole (like in the top doesn't need a fan running at full speed...just run an inexpensive fan at +5vdc to evacuate the warm air that collects at the top of a case.

The best solution is not always the Intel, AMD or my solution...it's the one that works.

Compaq, HP, Dell, and many others have come up with some pretty workable designs in their efforts to cut manufacturing costs. Many of us simply look for a difference instead of a certain temp range because bios reporting is very inaccurate. Those of us who go to the trouble of measuring temps on all our chipsets and cpu's really have no idea (beyond placing the thermocouple in the center of a chip) of where the hottest spot on a chip might reside.

If you or I say one heatsink compound solution is better than than another solution, it's unlikely we know what the hell we're talking about. It's very difficult to report that difference with any accuracy and even more difficult to report that difference in the short period of time we usually have to evaluate that difference.

Arctic Silver or Radio Shack?

Is a Chill Vent II worth 30 bucks or so?

When's the last time you saw a case on the shelf of a typical vendor with a big hole in the front and a 120mm fan sitting behind it?

This thread is important to stress the importance of good basic airflow thru a case.

This thread applies to any form of chipset cooling; certainly air and certainly water.

GPU's, memory, cpu's and pwm circuits depend on this kind of airflow to stay alive.
 
Skip Cox said:
You're on it. Remember that a blowhole (like in the top doesn't need a fan running at full speed...just run an inexpensive fan at +5vdc to evacuate the warm air that collects at the top of a case.

The best solution is not always the Intel, AMD or my solution...it's the one that works.

Compaq, HP, Dell, and many others have come up with some pretty workable designs in their efforts to cut manufacturing costs. Many of us simply look for a difference instead of a certain temp range because bios reporting is very inaccurate. Those of us who go to the trouble of measuring temps on all our chipsets and cpu's really have no idea (beyond placing the thermocouple in the center of a chip) of where the hottest spot on a chip might reside.

If you or I say one heatsink compound solution is better than than another solution, it's unlikely we know what the hell we're talking about. It's very difficult to report that difference with any accuracy and even more difficult to report that difference in the short period of time we usually have to evaluate that difference.

Arctic Silver or Radio Shack?

Is a Chill Vent II worth 30 bucks or so?

When's the last time you saw a case on the shelf of a typical vendor with a big hole in the front and a 120mm fan sitting behind it?

This thread is important to stress the importance of good basic airflow thru a case.

This thread applies to any form of chipset cooling; certainly air and certainly water.

GPU's, memory, cpu's and pwm circuits depend on this kind of airflow to stay alive.

While I agree about the dlow of air through a case, I diifer in opinion about the major manufactorer's case design/components.

I agree that they do design fairly decent cases, but the latest Dells DO have holes in the front with fans there....my friends brand new PC has just that. Also I think that while Dell and the like make perfectly ok machines, they are not designed to push the realms of what the hardware can do....so they deisgn them to run fine at stock and no higher (fair enough - we here are a minority). Therefore the components are cheap or OEM (like coolers) which perform well for what they are designed to do...but not much further. So basically where they can skimp on costs they do. The average user isn't likely to open his/her case and see the crap inside, so fair enough.

So we endeavor to make our cases better than they were...and I'm trying to get the airflow better in mine!
 
I didn't intend to say the design any major manufacturer might try to shove up our ass is the answer to cooling...just some weird alternatives that might work if properly executed.

If we had time to look at a thousand cases tomorrow, it's unlikely we'd find a couple with good coolong charactistics at any price. One would probably cost $14.95 and the other $169.95. :(

Most in between would look like a dragon with his nuts kicked into his throat, come in twenty two "lan party" colors and not do anything to keep the gear inside alive.

Like you, we have no real choice but to make the one we have work. At least we keep tool manufacturers alive and showing a profit.
 
Skip Cox said:
I didn't intend to say the design any major manufacturer might try to shove up our ass is the answer to cooling...just some weird alternatives that might work if properly executed.

If we had time to look at a thousand cases tomorrow, it's unlikely we'd find a couple with good coolong charactistics at any price. One would probably cost $14.95 and the other $169.95. :(

Most in between would look like a dragon with his nuts kicked into his throat, come in twenty two "lan party" colors and not do anything to keep the gear inside alive.

Like you, we have no real choice but to make the one we have work. At least we keep tool manufacturers alive and showing a profit.

Yeah that we do, that we do... ;)
 
its always best to have the fans at the front of the case blowing air into the case and the fans at the back or top exhaust fans
 
well, heres my setup....

Intake: Antec SmartFan 80MM in HDD Bay Fan Clip.

Exhaust: Rear, Thermaltake 80MM SmartFanII pushin ~20 CFM @ ~17db

Top, Thermaltake 120MM SmartFanII pushin ~30 CFM @ ~15db

BFG 6800OC: 2x 40mm Loud LED Mothafuckas.

CPU: AMD Stock 60MM, Nice 'n Quiet.
 
Mines soon to be these three case fans:

A: 1 x 120mm SlinX fan - 58cfm

B: 1 x Antec 120mm (with 4 pin molex) hazard a gues at 40cfm

C: 1 x Antec 120mm (as above but with LED)

D: Also I have an Antec Neo Power with a 120mm fans pushing out air from the top and of course

1 x NV5 on my GPU pushing air out too!

I was thinking of having C (front) and A (side blowhole) pushing air in and having B, (rear) and D pushing air out (and the NV5). What dyall think? ;)
 
kempez815 said:
Mines soon to be these three case fans:

A: 1 x 120mm SlinX fan - 58cfm

B: 1 x Antec 120mm (with 4 pin molex) hazard a gues at 40cfm

C: 1 x Antec 120mm (as above but with LED)

D: Also I have an Antec Neo Power with a 120mm fans pushing out air from the top and of course

1 x NV5 on my GPU pushing air out too!

I was thinking of having C (front) and A (side blowhole) pushing air in and having B, (rear) and D pushing air out (and the NV5). What dyall think? ;)

NOOOOOOOO!

Don't get those crappy fans - look at the Thermaltake Thunderblade. Their about 78CFM at 21dB or something ridiculous.
 
muffin said:
NOOOOOOOO!

Don't get those crappy fans - look at the Thermaltake Thunderblade. Their about 78CFM at 21dB or something ridiculous.

Well the two ones with 4 pins molex's are on the case as standard. I will be replacing them...but not right now.

The SilenX fan IS a good fan so I'm getting that (nice spangly LED lights too). I'll get some decent fans later on...but I don't want my case sounding as though its gonna take off sometime soon.... I have to live with it ya know!! ;)
 
kempez815 said:
Well the two ones with 4 pins molex's are on the case as standard. I will be replacing them...but not right now.

The SilenX fan IS a good fan so I'm getting that (nice spangly LED lights too). I'll get some decent fans later on...but I don't want my case sounding as though its gonna take off sometime soon.... I have to live with it ya know!! ;)

Ah so. The SilenX one yes, I thought you meant you were buying the Antec ones :rolleyes:

Your case won't sound like its going to take off with a couple of those Thunderblades in there, at 21dB you can hardly hear them ;)
 
muffin said:
Ah so. The SilenX one yes, I thought you meant you were buying the Antec ones :rolleyes:

Your case won't sound like its going to take off with a couple of those Thunderblades in there, at 21dB you can hardly hear them ;)

Well then when I get round to replacing the Antec ones I'll take a look at them. Thing is....120mm fans are expensive and I've been spending too much as it is!
 
name='kempez815' said:
Well then when I get round to replacing the Antec ones I'll take a look at them. Thing is....120mm fans are expensive and I've been spending too much as it is!

The Thunderblades are £9 each :)
 
Just thought I'd add this as another thing for anyone looking at air cooling setups. I just did this today for another forum and thought I'd ad it in....pretty much repeating stuff but well.....

Red: fans out. Blue: fans in.

I prefer 120mm fans as they have a bigger surface area, higher airflow and create less noise (as you all know)

 
Back
Top