After installing a Scythe Mugen in my i7 920-based first build I found that I couldn't fit the side panel on the Antec P193 that houses the system. The Mugen is around 5mm-7mm too tall and interferes with the P193's side-panel 200mm fan which protrudes 12mm inside the panel. I've looked at modding the case to allow the Mugen to fit and also considered a Cogage 140 low-profile horizontal heatsink cooler that someone else in these forums uses, though I've no performance figures for said cooler, and I'm not keen on modding the case just so a particular 157mm tall CPU cooler will fit. I'm very surprised that the P193 isn't designed to cope with the installation of a typical 120mm-fan based CPU cooler which usually ends up being 160mm tall given the 40mm height of the heatpipes from the heatspreader - the choice of CPU coolers is severely limited by this fundamental design oversight by Antec. If the side-panel fan protruded by 5mm then there'd be no problem. Someone mentioned a Corsair H50 water cooler which I've checked out in various reviews, including the one here at Bit-Tech. It looks very appealing but the Bi-Tech review mentioned that it performed poorly in a Coolermaster case that had two roof fans - my P193 has two roof fans so I'm concerned whether the H50 is right for me. Another forum poster uses the H50 with an Antec P182 and has the radiator fan configured as an exhaust fan rather than an intake fan (as recommended by Corsair) but which seems to work okay. If I was to install an H50 in the P193, do I need to use the Corsair-supplied fan or can I just use the existing 120mm exahust fan on the 193? I'd plan to turn the existing fan around so that it pulls in cool air over the radiator and the warmed air would be exhausted via the 2 140mmm roof fans. The 200mm side-panel fan would provide cooling for the mobo and passive-cooled GPU (a Sapphire HD4670 Ultimate) so I don't foresee any cooling issues, unless anyone does? Does anyone else use an H50 in a P193? I'd appreciate any feedback and advice from anyone using the H50 in their systems. As I mentioned, this is my first build and I'm still learning, but when it's complete I intend to post my experiences here for the benefit of others, particularly in it regards to compatibilities between components like cases and CPU coolers. TIA
Bi-tech? i saw that word mentioned in Bindi's tweet, and LOL'd. so, the p193 will have 4 fans in total: large side fan for intake, 2 roof fans for exhaust, 1 for H50. no more intake fans? i would imagine your plan would work fine. the hot air will be exhausted via the roof fans. and looking at the close proximity of the roof fan and the back fan, the hot air should be extracted pretty quickly. the problem mentioned in the review is the lack of intake fans, and the difference in air pressure inside/outside of the case. the p193 have intake fans and i know you can add 1 more in the front, just like p182. in any case, experiment and see which way works best. i think H50 works best with balanced air pressure and exhausting hot air as this will make sure no hot air is inside the case and airflow works as designed by the case designers.
Haha, I hadn't spotted that! I have added a front intake fan to cool the planned 2 HDDs in the middle drive bay. I'll later have a single 3.5" drive in the lower bay which has no intake fan but as that drive will only have occasional use (booting into 32 bit XP for running legacy scanning apps) it shouldn't get very hot. Thanks for clarifying the Bit-Tech review and for your other feedback in my previous posts.
Hmm, I've just realised that if I fit a H50 and setup the rear 120mm fan as an intake fan to draw cool air into the cae and over the H50's radiator, then the fan will also draw in dust and there's no dust filter on that fan (it's designed as an exhaust fan after all!) I might first try the install with the rear fan exhausting warm air from the radiator. I understand that cooling performance is somewhat worse but still very good.
as it is good to filter everything comin into your case, it is less important to do so if the intake is high above an surface, as there is much less dust buildup in the free air
True, hadn't thought of that. I'll try using the exhaust as an intake and see how much dust does build up
good plan, that's also the main reason i am using it as exhaust: dust. you should consider 2 fan push-pull configuration. as fans push air better, but if you want 1 fan exhaust, you won't be able to have a 1 fan push-exhaust configuration because the supplied screws require a fan in between the radiator and the case.
Two questions then: Are you using the stock fans in your P182 to cool the radiator? Can you mount 2 fans and the rad using the screwed supplied with the H50?
i got 2 noiseblocker branded fans, very quiet but doesn't perform as well as i hoped. the fans also underperforming when i had thermalright ultra 120 extreme with q6600 overclocked. so i had been planning to change it for a while. yes for 2nd question. 2 for each fans, screw diagonally.
Ah, very cunning. I'm kinda loathe to replace the P193's exhaust fan as I then lose the three-speed switch ability (which is nice to have) and am left with a redundant fan speed switch on the rear of the case (I'm a bit fussy like that but then I'm probably being a bit precious about my shiny new case)
Because of the protruding side-panel fan, I can't sandwich the H50's rad between two fans otherwise I can't close the case. (I'm starting to wish now that I'd blown an extra 30-40 quid for a Coolmaster ATSC 840 (?) One thing I could do is obtain shorter screws to screw the rad onto the case and then screw the original exhaust fan to the rad so that it pushes air over the rad which then exhausts out of the case by convection. No sure how effective that will be or whether there'd be a hot spot at the back of the rad ....
i recently installed an h50 in the p193 case and was too worried about the airflow from the top fans at the top fighting for the air that the h50 requires. I installed in the push/pull configuration and OC'ed my core i7 920 to 3.3-3.4Ghz, ran the Intel Burn Test and Prime95. My temperatures were not within my comfort zone so i stopped it at around 77-78C (ambient was 24-25). This difference/delta temp of at least 53C is NOT acceptable to be, and this is with all 5 fans (side, push fan, pull fan, top 2 fans) on full blast. I will try to turn down the top 2 fans and do a retest, or simply unplug them and retest with my results. At first i was planning to create a duct that would direct some of the air coming from the huge side fan into the 2 fans surrounding the h50 fans so that the top 2 fans would not fight for air. still designing that idea though. as for your clearance issues, you can mount the fan that is pulling the air outside the case with the same screws if this makes sense: <--- |Fan (pull)|--|Case wall|--|H50 radiator|--|Fan (push)| <----air flow if you have the p193 case you can also remount the side panel fan to the outside of the case so that the fan won't intrude on the interior space, which saves you that 11-12mm. in order to do this all you need are bigger fender washers (after you take off the fan with the tiny allen wrench, and remount the fan to the outside of the case you'll understand)
Thanks for that. I'd still need to use the H50-suppled screws to mount the rad to the fan though, unless I can source shorter screws to thread into the rad from the case fan's contact end. I've seen that advice about the side-panel fan elsewhere and I do intend to try it (if only I'd known when I first built my system ) in future. I'm having second thoughts about the H50 though, particularly as I've read about a number of failures involving coolant leaks, so I might go for a high-performance air cooler instead once I've sited the side-fan outside the case. I'm currently using an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 for cooling which seems to do the job until I decide to OC, then I'll replace it with a better air cooler.
leaks huh? haven't read any bad stories yet, but hope mine doesn't...haha. to be honest the h50 is pretty overkill, i think even some air cooled setups perform better OC'ed, but i'm just not sure they allow enough clearance for the rest of the case (big boy side fan, and ram). I highly doubt many people will be putting their cpus through a tortuous 100% load for more than hours at a time. when gaming your GPU is usually the first bottleneck I haven't tested the temps of the fans with the top fans off yet, but might get around to it this weekend along with a semi-made duct
At least one poster on these forums has his i7 OC'ed to over 4 GHz and has his rig running 24/7 at full load.
i got around to adjusting my fans, to PULL AIR INTO the case. it works much better, just make sure your top fans are pulling that hot air out. i ran the intel burn test again (a little more than an hour with 12gb of memory): 100% load running through 12gb of ram, finished 5 runs perfectly never going over 65c with ambient at 23-24c. i idle now at mid to upper 20s (correction: at idle i hover from 20-23c, at or below ambient!). i am trying to devise a way to filter the incoming air, might just buy a regular filter and cut it to the shape and tape it on haha. i just wanted to pass the burn test to make sure my cpu/mobo/ram are running with no errors, i will probably turn the fans back around to exhaust mode, since i will rarely ever run the cpu at 100% for more than an hour at a time . hope this helps you
Thanks, those temps _are_ impressive. Using the fan as intake is what's recommended by Corsair but until you try it you can't gauge what the impact will be on your case's cooling because you've swapped an exhaust fan for an intake fan. Pleased it's worked well for you though. If you do a search on dust filters you'll find aftermarket ones, in fact I'm sure that in a recent bit-tech hardware thread discussing the CM HAF 932, someone mentions a source of aftermarket dust filters
i did record my video card idle temp before i reversed the fans, it idled around 40-42c, and upon reversing the fans to intake, it still sits pretty at 40-42c. I currently do not have any games installed to do a gpu stress test, but i am starting to believe that the antec p193 case (or any case for that matter with 1 or more fans on top of the case) is ideal for the h50 in intake mode. the air that is drawn and then heated up by the radiator is immediately sucked out through the rearward top fan, while the 2nd top fan is left pulling out air from over the ram. the bigboy side fan then brings fresh air to the GPU which also in a sense pushes the hot air coming into the case from the h50 up. these findings maybe not be true, but they make sense to me haha if i put my hand over the rearward top fan while doing intel burn test, i feel significantly hotter air than the 2nd top fan. i was using realtemp to measure cpu temps, but then installed HWmonitor, and realized the temps were MUCH different...at least about 15-20c...wow. what temp monitor are you using?
