Hi guys, I appreciate all the help you've been giving me, and I've spent hours reading up and down the place so I've given up, I have work to do, but I want to replace 2 or 3 of the 120mm fans in my case. The arctic F12 as exhaust is OK, but I'm wondering if there is a possibility of getting higher CFM fan(s) for same or less noise? The stock 120mm Lian Li fan in the front doesn't seem to be pulling its weight. Everything is on a Fan controller though, so I don't know if that changes anything. I get confused between high static and high airflow, what do you guys think my best option is? Temps are ok, I just know they could probably be better. So you have an idea, all the intake I have... : The inside:
High static pressure fans are best if the fan is in a restrictive setting, eg where there is a grille, heatsink, rad etc. High airflow fans are best if the fan is in a non-restrictive setting. Unfortunately if you want higher airflow you have to put up with more noise. It may not be what you want to hear (no pun intended), but IMO 120mm fans have been superseded. I now no longer have 120mm fans in my case - everything, from the PSU to the CPU heatsink, has a 140mm fan in it, and it's the best upgrade I ever made. PS if you want high CFM I can give you a 250 CFM server fan - I have a few.
what size is the fan, 120mm? I will one day be doing a big case mod and putting in 140 mm fans or bigger. Thing is, the layout of my case, I can't quite get my head round how I'm going to fit any more fans in that will actually benefit the temperatures and air flow. I have a choice between a window or more airflow it looks like. And the fan/window combo IMO is not that pretty!
Please don't take this the wrong way, but coolers like yours are known for being problematic at keeping cool intake air separate from heated exhaust. Same for all GPUs except ones with reference blower cooler designs. A side vent lined up with your CPU cooler to use as intake or exhaust, depending on which way a the cooler fans are flowing, would be your best mod. I've found these "down-flow" / "pancake" coolers usually run cooler pulling air away from CPU instead of pushing air toward CPU. Reason is air going toward CPU turns out on motherboard, turns up at RAM, GPU, I/O socket housings, flows up past fans and is sucked back in. But if fans are pulling air away fro CPU this does not happen and everything runs cooler .. even without a side vent exhausting the hot air coming off of cooler. The front to back airflow of case tends to catch the heated cooler exhaust and move it out of case.
Thanks for the tip. Will be very easy to reverse the fans...A 5 minute job at most. I will see what difference it makes. It's working pretty well at the moment tbh, but if i notice a drop or rise in temps I'll let you all know!
Waiting for your results! I usually see about 4-5c better temps. Sometimes 7-8c better. Even on an open bench test system.
I haven't done it just yet. I tell you what really makes me mad though. I DL'd this software (CrystalDiskInfo) I saw someone on the forum using to check HDD health. (was getting some errors) It's installed something, Sophos went crazy and now Chrome opens yahoo everytime instead of a blank tab. I hate the internet.
I know what you mean. I'm still running XP and only update software if I absolutely have to. Seems like half the time it screws things up that have been working just fine for months.
You have to be careful when installing that. If you don't tell it not to, it installs some useless search bar...
It didn't give me any options to speak of..... It's yahoo community smart bar apparently - PUP So...yay now I have to try and remove it. EDIT: htf am I supposed to remove this thing without using 2 more programs I haven't heard of?
You could also try cutting a hole in the sidepanel and making a little fan duct over over the cpu cooler, so the cpu fans are drawing ambient air directly from outside the case. Maybe try doing it with a faux sidepanel made from cardboard to see if it will actually help your temps before cutting your case.
An idea, though I'm likely to want to do a window mod in the next year or so. Finally got rid of that crap on my PC. Stupid downloads. screw new software! Ill do the fan swap tomorrow probably provided it's easy enough to maneuver. I have buckets of writing to do for next week. A good 5000 words
Hi everyone. A bit of a thread necro but an update. I finally switched out my mis matching kingston and corsair so I have 4x corsair XMS3's I flipped my 140mm fans on my cpu cooler and have noticed a 3-5*C variable drop immediately. I also took the restrictive fan filter off the rear exhaust fan and replaced it with a simple grill and the increased air flow is so noticeable i was astonished. These simple changes have stopped me from thinking about buying a new case, corsair fans etc. etc. Thank you everyone. My airflow now seems to be a gentle intake with a negative pressure system. The flow splits when it hits the cooler cooling the RAM and mobo, cool-ISH air is drawn through the cooler itself, and exhausted away from the CPU, caught by the airflow and exhausted by the top fan which is no longer restricted. The intake also cools the gpu and gets exhausted. The bottom fan cools the 2 drives and PSU and is exhausted by the PSU when it spins. I should have more temps tomorrow under load comparative to before and the ambient temp. For now I'm very tired and going to sleep. In addition, when the fan controller is at minimum, the system is nigh on silent. EDIT: after extended testing my temps have proven much, much worse. Hitting 50*c weith light use, its about 10*C higher. Switching my fans back again :/
