So do you have 3 out and 2 in? I prefer positive pressure myself, just 2x140 in and 1x120 out currently. I generally just go 2 in 1 out.
For actual useful input: There's nothing inherently wrong with a negative pressure setup. It's actually probably better from a thermal perspective, as you're evacuating as much hot air as possible. I would however, move the 2 intakes to the very front of the case to pull air in. If they're located that far into the case, they're not going to do a very good job of bringing fresh cool air in. They're more stirring existing internal air about. I would also look to connect all the fans to your motherboard headers, to better control them dependant of temperature.
That's an interesting question. Can those Antec fans with manual switches be controlled by pwm? If they can then I would expect you'd have to have them on max so they can attain that speed. This is guesswork based on when I had a P183..
A quick look shows the tricools max speed to be 1200/1600/2000 on the 3 settings. Maybe go with the middle one as around 1500 is when most fans start to get noticeable/loud. If you only have 4 fan headers to use, maybe set 1 of the exhausts to just run at 1200, keep it in check. You would likely need to play with the fans profiles a little to find which suits you best in terms of noise: performance ratio.
I'm sure the low/high setting little boxes were attached to each individual fan that were screwed inside the case, some (all?) accessible from outside (iirc one was near the i/o shield). Best ask @The_Crapman as he has it now although i'm not sure any fans were in.
I'm too crippled to lift it out the box They're only 3pin fans so it will just be voltage control, with the switch limiting the max rpm.
If you plug the 3 pin (or 4pin) fan connector into the motherboard, you don't need to use the 4pin molex as well, it will get power from the motherboard.
Fan connectors can get a bit confusing. To simplify things, a fan will have either (or both) the latching connector (small) or the Molex peripheral connector (large). Every fan needs only one power source. Some fans (like the Tri-cools) have the pictured two-way Molex connector that allows daisy-chaining, which is what I do with my case fans. One fan is connected to the motherboard via the small latching connector, and the other two fans are connected to the first fan via Molex. Daisy-chaining has a couple of disadvantages: you can't monitor or control the speed of each fan separately. I don't mind this as I have all my fans running at low speed, but some people prefer being able to control each fan individually.
Correct. However, the 4 pin variant will function the exact same way as a 3 pin if it is connected to a non PWM source.
