Hi everyone, I've finally found some time to get back to my build but before I start overclocking I could do with some cooling advice. I've got and I7 950 with a Corsair A70 fitted and am running a GTX 480. If I'm going for a modest overclock on both CPU and GPU do I: a) need some addtional cooling fans for my R3 case b) If yes what are the best ones? I'm planning on upgrading from the GTX 480 soon so I'd like to keep the whole rig as quiet as possible. Thanks
Scythe Gentle Typhoon 1850RPM (Rear Exhaust), Akasa Apache (Front Intake) and for the GTX 480 with rear exhaust a Silverstone Air Penetrator would be decent (Bottom Intake) although your cable management would need to be tops to install a fan at the bottom of the case!
What temperature is it running at at the moment? You can use free the Core Temp program to find out. Try and get a figure under load, then try overclocking it and monitor the temperature, if everything is within limits it may not be necessary to get more fans, howeve it is a law of diminishing returns the temperature may drop only slightly with each extra fan added. How is the CPU cooler aligned? The R3 stock has a fan exhaust at the back of the case so make sure it is exhausting air toward this. Another thing you gould try is removing the blanking plates in the top of the case as this opens the fan vents to allow more heat to rise out (but it does make it noiser as the blanking plates are insulated). If these measures do not cool the CPU more towards the desired temperatures then you should consider getting more fans. The 140mm Fractal fans are pretty quiet and match the white finned 120mm fans that come as standard, however installing them in the top and removing the blanking plates does make it noticably noisier.
Just to add my 2 cents... I took Blogins advice when I asked a similar question and I have to say, those fans do the job great. So take that mans advice, he knows what he's talking about!
Cheers for the advice with them! I'm getting around 60C after a few hours of gaming and it peaks at about 72C on a Furmark benchmark. I think the temps are pretty decent considering the fans only spin up to 40%
That is good! Never liked the CUII but I am beginning to warm towards the ASUS cooler on these cards, prices tumbling as well. Did you keep fans on silent operation or crank them up when gaming? I tend to flick it to turbo when playing Battlefield 2.
Thanks for all your advice guys. Have made an order for the fans from Scan so looking forward to geting them installed this weekend. cheers
DCUII is a great model, not seen mine hit 60c yet at 920mhz. if you dont need the extra slot its a good choice
ASUS hit on a good design with that cooler, the short heatpipe seems to eclipse the larger model of the MSI Frozr cards from what I read. Which fans did you opt for facwit?
Mines inaudible over the case fans which I have on turbo all the time (hot in herre) and even then its pretty damn quiet because of the fractal I'm pretty anal about noise aswell!
What's your total fan count in the R3? I'm currently building an R3-based rig and would be interested in what you're experiencing with the fans etc. I'm looking at using the scythe for exhaust (on my H60) and 1 (or maybe 2 Akasa's for the front intake - are you using just the one). Are you using the fan mounts at the top or bottom of the case (I'm thinking about using one of the Fractal-supplied fans at the top)? My set-up is Asus P8P67 Del, 2600K/H60 1 x 120GB Vertex 3, 1 x 570 (when the one I've ordered gets delivered) and all 4 mem slots used (Photoshop and video editing etc). Going to go for a small o/c to start with (after running the thing at stock to get it stable etc) then take it up from there and see how it goes. Can you PWM the scythe out of interest - are would it be best just to leave it at full speed? What controller/control set-up are you going to use for controlling the fans (and which ones controlled by what?)? I've been thinking about using the Fractal-supplied h/w controller for the non-exhaust fans (would the akasa's run on that ok?).
Typically with the H60 it's best to use the supplied radiator fan as an intake and then accommodate exhaust afterwards. I'd imagine with the Fractal R3 it'd be good to use the rear as an intake with the H60 radiator and then directly exhaust out the top taking one of the Modu-Vents out. I didn't like this idea which is the reason I stuck with air cooling. The Scythe is only 3 pin but the speed can be modulated from the motherboard bios if you have it on one of the case fan headers. Also in my experience the Akasa Apache doesn't play nice with fan controllers. At low voltages it simply falters and stops. I'm not sure how it would respond to the Fractal supplied controller specifically however.
