Sufficient airflow/cooling?

Squeaks

Squeaks

Squeaks

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16 Jan 2003
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35
I’m putting together my first new build in four years and ideally want to hold on to my beloved eight year old Lian Li PC 60 (What can I say, I'm sentimental about the ol' dear). I’m looking to put in an i7 3770K with a Noctua NH-C12P SE14 and an ASUS 660 Ti DC2 TOP but I’m slightly concerned about air flow as the PC 60 is primarily fitted with 80mm fans (two in the front, one exhaust - in the back - and one in the roof). However, I do intend to install an additional 120mm intake fan via three empty drive bays, install vented PCI blanking plates and modify the case to enable discreet cable management (from manufacturers specifications I calculated an intake of 120CFM and an exhaust of 46CFM).

As I have no plans to perform any overclocking and with the choice of cooler, will this be adequate, if not the quietest, cooling solution? Surely an i7, with a stock cooler, has ended up in countless monstrosities.

I think browsing through a number of galleries that feature extravagant modified cases has made me somewhat paranoid.

As always, appreciate any and all input.
 
I personally think it will be fine... I've just finished putting my Girlfriends PC together and the temps are good considering the case only has 1 x 120mm front fan and 1 x 120mm rear fan (Xigmatek Asgard Pro). Her GPU is the KFA2 GTX 660 Ti EX OC which idles around 28c and reaches around 60c under load... Her i5 2500 CPU idles at around 30c and reaches around 55c under load using an average cooler (Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2).
 
Squeaks said:
I think browsing through a number of galleries that feature extravagant modified cases has made me somewhat paranoid.
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I'd like to confirm your self diagnosis and suggest that unless you have money to throw away you stick with what you have. IMHO if you're not going to be overclocking then your current setup is perfectly adequate especially if you're planning on modding the case for better cable management to aid airflow. There is a good article out there that shows the effect of various fan layouts the most interesting conclusion was that once you get past 3 or 4 fans adding more into the equation does not improve cooling exponentially so adding a 5th fan to your setup is probably not going to make that much of an improvement anyhow.
 
Nice case Squeaks!

Silver or black?

best way to improve airflow is with bottom intakes. Put case on casters for clearance and mount a couple of fans in bottom with filters and you would be pants! If you put 2x 140mm fans in bottom and a 120mm in 5.25 bays you could use everything else for exhaust. 2x 140mm fans will move about same air as 3x 120mm fans.
 
I have a silver one.

Around about the same time, many years ago, I built a system with a Cooler Master ATC-201 and a friend built one using a Lian Li PC 60. I didn't hide the fact that I was mighty jealous when I got to have a dig around it (much better than the ATC-201) so when he did his last build (including changing his case) he kindly presented me with his well looked after PC 60 (mighty chuffed).

That's not a bad idea at all doyll but how far would I have to raise the case of the ground for the fans to be efficient? However, I keep the chassis in a desk which has a section for the tower and it might look a little silly perched upon castors or larger feet. It's definitely something I'm going to look into though as it's a mighty fine idea!
 
Most makers only give 25-30mm clearance... which I don't believe is enough. I put 40mm casters on bottom or use a caster base with 40mm casters.
Phantekswithstockfans.jpg

This base is 10mm solid birth plywood strips with ends glued under side strips... so filter will slide out the the back ;)

Edit:
I can't post link but if you need, let me know. I found a couple of places with 30, 40 & 50m casters with pin, screw-on and stud mounts.
 
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Nice!

Hmm, 20-25mm wouldn't look too odd but 40mm would look a bit silly in my desk and my views on my desk is similar to that of my case. Now if it was free standing, that would be a different story entirely.

I think I'll give it a go as stated above and see what my core temperatures reach under load. If they're unacceptable I'll pull the castors of my chair or something (or hit you up for a link).
 
Squeaks said:
Nice!
Hmm, 20-25mm wouldn't look too odd but 40mm would look a bit silly in my desk and my views on my desk is similar to that of my case. Now if it was free standing, that would be a different story entirely.
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Your choice of course. But area of fan blades (Area of fan diameter - area of center hub over motor) is minimum area fan needs. Turning the airflow increases resistance too.

Easy way to demonstrate is to move a fan up and down above a flat surface. You will hear the fan noise increase the closer to surface you get. That's because it is starving for air. ;)

Squeaks said:
I think I'll give it a go as stated above and see what my core temperatures reach under load. If they're unacceptable I'll pull the castors of my chair or something (or hit you up for a link).
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Don't pull your casters! :eek:
New ones are less than the cost of a couple of pints. :p
 
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Me said:
I think I'll give it a go as stated above
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I probably should have said "in my initial post" to avoid confusion.

Fitting exhaust fans into the floor of the case is very much a last resort at this point (as I believe that the cooling stated in my initial post, reaffirmed by yourself (PieEater), should be sufficient without the need for additional fans in the floor of the chassis) and I would have to butcher it - which I have some experience with; minus the butchering of course ;) .
 
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It's something I considered but I thought it would likely look a little unsightly but it's another thing worth giving serious consideration if temperatures prove to be a problem.
 
Squeaks said:
I probably should have said "in my initial post" to avoid confusion.

Fitting exhaust fans into the floor of the case is very much a last resort at this point (as I believe that the cooling stated in my initial post, reaffirmed by yourself (PieEater), should be sufficient without the need for additional fans in the floor of the chassis) and I would have to butcher it - which I have some experience with; minus the butchering of course ;) .
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OK, your existing setup *will be fine*, I just wanted to highlight fitting floor fans as suggested is not only unneccesary but it would involve severe modification of your case which given that your fond of it I don't think you would want to do.

If for some bizarre reason you're not happy with your temps then my next step would be to look at replacing the fans with ones with higher airflow and some sort of fan controller to tune for your best noise / performance ratio. You don't say what Motherboard you're getting but one of the reasons I chose my Asus P8Z77-V Pro was because it comes with 4 case fan headers (plus 2 CPU fan headers) all of which are individually configurable through BIOS and Asus Speedfan software, meaning I don't need a hardware fan controller, this works really well.
 
I've decided upon the ASUS MAXIMUS V GENE (I know, strange for someone who has no plans to overclock but it's something I have dabbled with in the past and want to know the option is available) as aside from a brief stint with a Gigabyte board I've always had ASUS motherboards and the connectors fit into my cable management plans and budget. The mATX format also gives me a bit more room inside the case to play around.

This board has three 4pin fan connects (to be used by the 120mm front intake and roof and back 80mm exhaust fans) and two cpu fan connectors. The two front 80mm intake fans connect to the cases built in reobus which I will connect via molex.

As for fans, I'm planning to use Coolink SWiF2 PWM (apart from the two connected to the reobus which will be standard 3pin) fans as, on paper, they have a good noise to airflow ratio.
 
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