Hardware The big air cooling investigation

Scythe used to do the Kama Bay, which was a 120mm fan in a single unit that could fill a 3 bay hole. But it's been discontinued I think... ebay?

 

Or Thermaltake do an iCage, a 3xHDD cage with a 120mm fan on the front, again fills 3 bays. I have 2 in my NAS box thingy

 

This is interesting. I found the stock fractal fans a bit pants personally but certainly the side fan intake being that much more effective and the front top blanking plate removed is good to know. I think I have a 140mm dust filter too.

I have my side panel fan on exhaust to get the hot air away from my card which works well.

 

Great article. Good work.

 

Based on this article's findings I'm feeling fairly safe in the general R3 recommendation of Silverstone AP front and Scythe GT(or equivalent) rear as the primary problem with the front-back cooling in your tests appeared to stem from the weak airflow through the case from the stock fractal fans, which the AP's shouldn't suffer from(hopefully).

 

With fewer fans, negative is generally better (see above quote from summary and conclusions page...). Get above 4 fans though and it doesn't really matter - you've got gales of air going through your case regardless of how they are set up.

 

I have the same case with 4 fans- 2x Fractal stocks in the front (intake) and 2x Xilence fans (the 'red fans' in this article in the back and roof as exhaust.

I'm thinking of making some changes to make the temperatures a bit lower. Should I replace the front two Fractal fans with ones with better airflow, or should I just add an extra fan onto the side of the case?

 

Excellent read, especially since I've been considering extra fans to add to the 3 it came with.
It seems my best option, as is, would be to move my front intake to the side or floor for the better chipset cooling more than anything.
Experimenting with the side and floor slots available should keep me occupied this weekend.

 

Ah, THAT my friends is a good old style Bit-Tech article. Very informative.
Keep up the superb work guys.

 

Thank you, I didn't see that. Useful, although an update would still be a good read

 

This! this is the kind of articles that you only find on Bit-tech and what most of us came to read! First time in a long time I have read the whole article. Great work, guys!

I would however like to know where the side panel fan sits according to the GPU and CPU. You could eventually swap out the pic of the red fan, with one of the notorious side panel fan?
Also it would be interesting to see what effect the removal of the 3,5" bays would have?

 

This is of course very true, and for the sake of a few degrees, you may well be better off using positive pressure. It all comes down to what is important to you really.

 

Will really help me out on my First Build

 

Except for sandy bridge e, perhaps. And the people who want to go "yeah, I've got watercooling!" and then spend 10 minutes explaining that the water doesn't cause short-circuits because it's sealed. I'd agree that air coolers have become more effective, so water cooling may be used less.. Who knows?

 

great article !

as Fractal R3 owner i found the "best" fan setup is 2 x 1450 Gentle Typhoons at front of the case and 1 1450RPM GT on roof (Back).

i don't have a fan on the rear of the case as it makes no difference in temps (i have 2 fans on my Venomous X so that probably helps )

 

Great article!

also gotta remember that one of the best air cooled cases out there is the FT02, a positive pressure case, so it's not always the case that negative > positive, it all depends.

 

Good principles too.

Decent article

 

Loved the read, great article. I have one query, if removing hot air is better than pumping in cooler air, I would be interested to see a 3 fan setup, rear, side and front, with the front in reverse being used as an exhaust. Just me thinking out the box (I know that was a weak joke), but would be interesting to know the results.