Corsair 300R - Need advice on fans selection.

hernaldo

hernaldo

hernaldo

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How do there,

Rightey, used to have a CoolerMaster HAF-X case and downsized to a Corsair 300R, that's basically just got the stock arrangement of fans (1 front, 1 top back), the HAF-X had good cooling, this doesn't, well doesn't currently, also much noisier...

Not a problem, HAF-X was ridiculously big and since I'm nearing 30...well, don't really want something like that knocking around anymore...However, have just got a couple of 780 Ti graphics cards, so need some airflow.


The available fan placements on the 300R are as follows....

2 x 120mm front fans
1 x 120mm back top fan
2 x 140mm top fans
2 x 120mm side fans

I would appreciate some advice on which fans to go for pretty please :)

If it's any help the 780 Ti graphics cards are of the blower variety (decided this on purpose as SLI is a joke in terms of heat unless you have a fantastic airflow which I know I'll never get).

I have a noctua tower cooler with the fans pointing upwards.

Please help, thanks for any recommendations and advice. I'm not after super cooling at the expense of noise, I'm also not after absolute silence. One other thing is that the side fan mounts on this case don't seem to be dampened very well so maybe I will need some rubber damper grommity things or something :p

Thanks again,
 
I am going to assume you have the psu with the fan facing down.

In terms of which ones to go with first I would say the front fan panels can accept 140mm fans (so can the sides) so put another 140mm fan there. If that doesn't give you enough airflow you could add a 140mm fan at the top to extract the heat. If that doesn't cut it I would either add a 140mm fan on the side or one more on top. If you are still having heat problems after that I would look into watercooling or replacing the stock fans.
 
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I had my fans in my 300r in at the front and side and out at the top and rear.

When i fitted my h80i i had to do away with one of the side fans because i fitted it on the rear and the rad got in the way.

When i fitted my 780Ti SLI i had to get rid of the other side fan as the vga power cables kept working their way into the fan and the braid would catch on the fan.

To improve air flow i removed all the hdd trays from the rack and got adapters so they fit up in the 5.25" bays.

I still wasnt happy so i went and got the corsair 540, is not as tall or long as the 300r but obviously wider.

Check out my project thread, the first few pictures are from my 300r.

I love the 300r so im keeping it, im sure ill do something with it one day.
 
I love my 300R, great temperatures.

I have my case as a 140mm fan intake at the front, 120mm exhaust at rear, 140mm exhaust at top and a side panel intake for cool air for the GPU. I found that putting more fans in than this did not help with my cooling personally.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone :)

Yes, I have PSU with it's fan pointing down.

I suppose my actual question though is....

Which fans should I be looking at? (140mm ones).
Those Noctua ones which are rounded but with square bits just to mount look quite appealing if a little pricey for example, but maybe don't need ones that expensive as getting 4-6 of those will work out an extra £40-£60 over bog standard quiet ones.

Lots of choice and I've been out the loop for a good few years on the old overclocking/tweaking and what not and thought why not actually get things going nicely.
Not too concerned with getting amazing fantastic airflow, i.e I'd chose quiteness over a small increase in air flow any day of the week.

(My days of using Vantec fans are 15 years ago lol :p)
 
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I am actually in a very similar position and am looking for 140mm fans for my corsair 200r. At the moment I am looking at either:

Corsair high air flow
Fractal Design Silent Series R2
Akasa 140mm Apache Black
Akasa 140mm Viper High Performance S-Flow Fan
Arctic F14
Antec twocool
 
I really rate the Noctua fans. Very quiet, never get that rough, growly tone that bearing fans eventually get (and I've got some Noctua's that have had heavy use for five years). Apart from the silly colour, the fluid bearings are great.
 
I'd suggest a 140 on top, a 120 in the front and a 120 in the back, and see how you get on. Stay away from the ultraquiet version, and the 140 that has 120 mounting holes. Given that you have two graphics cards, you might want to consider a 120 side fan to blow air directly onto them. You can always get more fans later on if you feel you need them, but obviously more fans means more noise.

Depending on your motherboard, you might want PWM fans. Ideally you would use the motherboard to control the fans so they can speed up when they system is hot, and slow down when it's cold. Even with the quietest fans, you still get some airflow noise.

The Noctuas come with a couple of little cable adapters you can use to limit your top speeds if your motherboard isn't clever enough to run them well. Leave them off and you get normal speeds, but the low-noise and ultra-low-noise adapters just plug in line and slow the fan downs.
 
The corsair does have 140mm fan mounts, the only fan mount that is 120mm is the back one?

Edit:
2 x 120mm/140mm front fans
1 x 120mm back top fan
2 x 120mm/140mm top fans
2 x 120mm/140mm side fans
 
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electriclinux said:
The corsair does have 140mm fan mounts, the only fan mount that is 120mm is the back one?

Edit:
2 x 120mm/140mm front fans
1 x 120mm back top fan
2 x 120mm/140mm top fans
2 x 120mm/140mm side fans
Click to expand...

Cheers mate, yeah it's all good went for 1 x 120mm noctua FLX fan and 4 x 140mm FLX fans, will have a play around see how it goes on friday.
 
Righty....got all the fans...few problems, well 1 really...
Plonked them all in at full speed, hmmm very noisy.
Put the "ultra low noise" adapters in the front fans, seemed to make a massive difference. I think this case isn't very good for noise - when air is being pulled through it's structure it's a terrible racket.

So setup as...

2 x 140mm - Front
2 x 140mm - Top (had to remove one drive)
1 x 120mm - Top Back

1 x 140mm - Side....here's the "problem" one. Basically I've "modded" the side panel by getting a screw driver and smashing out a square as the holes that were there as vents that the air gets pulled through made a terrible noise - very bad design by corsair - should have used a mesh of some kind imo.

Anyway, the other problem is that the 140mm fan will only fit in the side mount closest to the front, so the graphics cards in SLI aren't getting much love, this is because my tower cooler (noctua something or other, it's their best one from a 3 years or so ago, pointing up) is in the way.

Not really happy with the side setup, even after putting the 140mm in the front side bit, had to snap off a corner of the fan to stop it hitting the CPU cooler fans....

Not sure how should go with this...on the whole it's very good, can feel the breeze just sitting next to this setup on my legs...so happy there, and temps are down a good 5c on the CPU under load compared to case side open and about 8-9c with case closed from before.

...It's just the graphics cards really...

Should I maybe move the 120mm and place that on the side there instead? Bit too lazy to try right now, but is that what people do? Thanks

:)

(Sorry for the rambling and poor sentence structure, just woke up and a bit duhhhhhhh)

:)
 
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