Cooling advice - What are the Minimum fans needed for Fractal 804 w/ Nepton 240M?

JohnLBergqvist · 30 Jan 2016 at 20:28

So i've got a Fractal 804 case (which comes with 2x 120mm fans on the back and 1x 120mm fan on the front - no idea which are intake or exhaust, which is another one of my problems).

I'm planning on building a system with a Stock i7 cpu (no overclocking) along with a GTX Titan Graphics card: ** No Competitors **. Cooling the CPU will be a Coolermaster Nepton 240M.

I'm essentially asking where would be the best placement for the Nepton cooler (All the guides i've seen for the case & such coolers imply I can only mount the radiator with the fans facing down into the case (I'm mounting it on the top). Now should I mount the the radiator in the chamber where the mobo is, or in the other chamber behind the mobo where the PSU & cables will be? Will the radiator fans be taking in hot air, or blasting out hot air, or taking in or blasting out cold air? If they're going to be blasting out hot air then I probably don't want that above my mobo in that chamber, so i'd mount it in the chamber behind, otherwise if it's blasting out cold air, I might want that above the mobo.

Then what about the current fans? I would like to keep noise down to a minimum, so if the Nepton will be enough to cool the CPU on its own (I'm not looking for massively cold temps here, just nothing dangerously high), i'd like to remove as much of the fans currently in the case as possible, maybe having 1 fan as an intake to keep the rest of the mobo chamber cool perhaps?

What do you all recommend?

vince99 · 31 Jan 2016 at 01:23

Interesting looking case, has lots of cooling options. As you are not overclocking theres no need to go mad with it. The standard front 140 will be intaking the rears exhausting. This will probably be enough though i`d be tempted to put another intake fan in the floor.

It has lots of options for radiator placement but using a AIO cooler you are going to be limited by its pipe lengths, traditional position in the roof above the mobo with the fans below exhausting air through the rad and out the top of the case will do you fine

If the tubes allow a different position or you want to have the fans intaking through the rad its up to you, it really makes very little difference.

Can`t comment on the quality of the included fans, if they are cheap and noisy simple enough to swap them out for better ones.

JohnLBergqvist · 31 Jan 2016 at 09:54

vince99 said:
Interesting looking case, has lots of cooling options. As you are not overclocking theres no need to go mad with it. The standard front 140 will be intaking the rears exhausting. This will probably be enough though i`d be tempted to put another intake fan in the floor.

It has lots of options for radiator placement but using a AIO cooler you are going to be limited by its pipe lengths, traditional position in the roof above the mobo with the fans below exhausting air through the rad and out the top of the case will do you fine If the tubes allow a different position or you want to have the fans intaking through the rad its up to you, it really makes very little difference.

Can`t comment on the quality of the included fans, if they are cheap and noisy simple enough to swap them out for better ones.

So let me get this straight re. the Nepton 240M. If i'm mounting it at the top of the case, with the fans facing down into the case, what direction will the fans be blowing out into (back over the motherboard?) and will that be hot or cold air they'll be blasting? Because if they're blasting out hot air, surely that won't be good for cooling if i've mounted it in the chamber that also houses the mobo, so would it be better then to mount the radiator in the chamber behind the mobo?

vince99 · 31 Jan 2016 at 12:11

We are flowing air through the case, cool air in through the front and bottom if you put an extra fan there, warm air out the back and the roof through the rad.

Which way round you mount the nepton fans to the rad determines the direction of airflow. They will have an arrow on them. If they don`t. the side of the fan with the name sticker on will be the intake side. i don`t know if the fans are pre-mounted but all the pics i see of it on the net have the fans pushing air through the rad.

vince99 · 31 Jan 2016 at 12:26

An example of what i`m suggesting can be seen in this review, rad in the roof with the fans pushing air through it.

http://www.legitreviews.com/cooler-master-nepton-240m-aio-cpu-cooler_153955

If the pipe lengths allow you to mount it in the other chamber then thats great, or if you wish you can mount it on the front of the case with the fans pulling in air through it, efficiency wise there really isn`t much in it.

The trick is to maintain a nice steady flow of cool air through the case, you can control this through the motherboard fan profiles to increase fan speed when the cpu heats up, and keep them quiet at idle

JohnLBergqvist · 31 Jan 2016 at 13:46

vince99 said:
An example of what i`m suggesting can be seen in this review, rad in the roof with the fans pushing air through it.

http://www.legitreviews.com/cooler-master-nepton-240m-aio-cpu-cooler_153955

If the pipe lengths allow you to mount it in the other chamber then thats great, or if you wish you can mount it on the front of the case with the fans pulling in air through it, efficiency wise there really isn`t much in it.

The trick is to maintain a nice steady flow of cool air through the case, you can control this through the motherboard fan profiles to increase fan speed when the cpu heats up, and keep them quiet at idle

I can mount the cooler in either of the front 2 chambers actually (rather than on the top), although currently one of the 3 120mm fans are mounted in the mobo chamber so i'd have to remove that.

Still if the radiator fans are definitely pushing cold air IN to the radiator that's cleared one thing up. How does this sound:

Mobo chamber
2x 120mm fans on the front pushing cool air into the chamber.
1x Nepton 240M at the top, pushing some of that cool air into the radiator, with the hot air coming out the other side, on top .
1x 120mm fan on the back, as an exhaust.

PSU chamber
Nothing - just PSU, cables & SSD.

vince99 · 31 Jan 2016 at 14:47

Yes its a good start, when the system is up and running monitor the temps of your CPU and GPU, they will soon tell you if its enough.

JohnLBergqvist · 31 Jan 2016 at 17:45

vince99 said:
Yes its a good start, when the system is up and running monitor the temps of your CPU and GPU, they will soon tell you if its enough.

Thanks. Fingers crossed I might be able to lose one of the intake fans on the front too, or may be the exhaust fan. I mean I certainly won't be stressing the hardware with what I'll be running on it anyway.