Arctic liquid freezer 120 using just 1 fan?

gizmo1990

gizmo1990

gizmo1990

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I'm looking to get one of these for my Silverstone SFF SG05 chassis, running a stock i3. I've modded the case so that there's space for the radiator and 1 fan, 2 is just too big. I'd read somewhere that this is fine, but can I find it, to double check? No I can't. :(

Does anyone know if this is actually the case? All the reviews I turn up make no mention of it, and I'd just like to be positive before I buy. AFAIK, it should be fine. I'm only running a stock i3 with no overclocking, so a 1 fan setup should provide enough cooling.

Any advice greatly appreciated.
 
Well yes, it will work. It will reduce the cooling ability of the system by, maybe not 50% but something close. Could you not get a I'm fan, or put it on the other side?

Just spotted is a single rad. You will get most of the cooling performance, albeit the fan will work harder to get there. It will be noisier. On a low power CPU it might work out nicely. Why not buy a single fan 120 cooler?

I often consider having extra radiator space without fans for noise purposes. Adding thermal mass, and passive cooling, will contribute to good cooling. Just won't contribute nearly as much as am actively cooled rad.

How come you went with a double fan liquid cooler in an i3?
 
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Thanks for the reply @LuckyBenski I could go with a front mounted 120 fan again, but then I'd have to get another fan cpu cooler, so that's 3 fans in all including the psu's one. There's not a lot of space inside a sg05, especially above the cpu where the psu sits. It gets very cramped, plus the cpu fan always gets its share of dust and its a bitch to clean cpu fans in my experience.

The AIO route just seems really nice, clean and simple. Air flow will be much better and I'm hoping the AIO fan won't need to run too quickly to cool an i3.
 
But I mean, why not buy an AIO with a single fan? Ultimately it's the same thing as buying the Freezer 120 and taking a fan off. Except this radiator might be optimised for two fans (higher fin density) when something else could perform better with one fan.
 
@LuckyBenski Ah sorry I misunderstood. Well, I've read lots of good things about the Arctic 120, quality unit, good fans and huge radiator, which might help in a single fan setup. Plus I may upgrade the chassis eventually so could use the other fan at a later date.

I'm open to good single fan AIO suggestions tho! Main requirement is decent overall build quality and most importantly low noise. Perhaps a new thread is in order..
 
I would be conscious of the fact push/pull coolers might have a radiator with denser fins. That means it will respond better with two fans than one. But YMMV, definitely recommend starting a thread. Some people can probably recommend an AIO vs CLC, meaning it's better quality parts and expandable.
 
I've been running a 1st gen Corsair H60 in my SG05 for years to cool a 2500K with zero issues. Plus having modded the case to fit a GTX Titan and remeasuring for some major mod work recently, I'm pretty sure you can fit that cooler in there. Your cooler is 99mm thick with both fans, I'm sure there's 102mm from the inner wall to the motherboard.

What mod have you made to the case? Or you could try changing the fans. Noctua do the NF-A12x15 which performs as well as its 25mm brethren so you could push-pull a pair of those and save 20mm thickness.
 
@LePhuronn You got my hopes up there! Unfortunately, I double checked my measurments and make it 97mm from the inner front wall to the center of the first motherboard stand-off. :( I'm also betting on the power connectors being just that 'tiny' bit too high so they're too proud. If they're not then awesome, 2 fans ahoy, but sods law n all that. ;)

Mod wise, I've removed the 2.5 inch cradle underneath the top 5 1/4 CD one, so that there's no surprises fitting the fan and radiator. The less said about that evil 3.5 inch cradle the better! I've also removed the metal tabs of the 5 1/4 bay and drilled some holes to secure an SSD there.

That is a great idea about using slim 120s! Bit expensive, but might be worth considering later down the line.
 
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Sorry dude, I guess I got my own measurements wrong; 5mm is a lot for me to be out by :( So front wall to motherboard edge then will be 92.3mm then, and even if you rotated the AIO horizontally you probably couldn't lift it up enough to clear the cables over the 24-pin ATX.

You're going to need to remove the entire optical drive assembly to fit the AIO in the front as the end tanks make the radiator assembly pretty much as tall as the case internal. here's mine before the Titan was removed.

sugo-top.jpg


My 2 SSDs, by the way, are in a dual drive caddy attached to the underside of the PSU.

Regarding fans, Prolimatech also do a 15mm fan called the Ultra Sleek Vortex which should also work on your rad if you push-pull, but they're not quite as good as the Noctua for it.
 
Nice build dude! :) Yeah I don't think 2 fans are going to fit. I'm still going to go with the Arctic though. I contacted them directly and they said only 1 fan would provide a minimal performance drop and would actually be quieter, being one less fan running.

I'm not sure I'll have to mod my optical drive caddy more, as the arctic's tubing is on the bottom and it's less thick there height wise. The top might hopefully just fit as it's slimmer. Without exact dimensions it's hard to know, but I'll post here when it arrives.
 
gizmo1990 said:
Nice build dude!
Click to expand...

Cheers! The planned rework will be a lot nicer when there's a 240mm radiator and full custom loop in there :p Not for the Titan though, that's already moved to Asteria II.

Regarding your optical tray/AIO conundrum, while you're waiting for it to arrive you can do a little test:
  • The front 120mm fan is pretty much vertically center to the case.
  • The optical tray hangs down about 20mm when mounted.
  • The Arctic's end tank looks to be about 15mm tall.
  • So with a 120mm fan vertically-centered, measure up another 15mm for the end tank, measure down 20mm from the top case supports and see if there's an overlap.
The end tank is only 10mm on my H60, so that's half the height of the tube side, but you can (just about) that even half the height of the tube end will align it with roughly the midpoint of the case supports; that will conflict with the optical tray.
 
Pretty sure like most of the AIO's the arctic is an ASEtek standard AIO radiator with some branding and bundled fans. Any 120mm AIO would do about the same with the same fans attached.

See if you can find a cheap gentle typhoon as you're tight on space for the best rad cooling from 1 fan.
 
i bought some velcro with sticky rears for my SSDs ages ago and i will never go back to screwing them down unless their is something in the case that needs them screwed there to look pretty and stuff.
 
Thanks again for the replies guys. @LePhuronn Looking at those measurments it does look like some work on the cd cradle is needed. Bah! Rather than cut out too much of the cradle (I'd rather keep as much of it as possible as I think it's an important element to provide structural stability) what do people think about mounting the single fan 'behind' the cooler? And having it push air from inside the case through the radiator and out? I've had someone suggest that to me elsewhere. Doing this would allow me to not cut so much metal out of the cradle.

I immediately thought that the air inside the case would be hot, but after more thought, I don't think it would be that much hotter really. Especially if I mount the psu upside down so that it's not bringing any air into the case. Plus the side grilles allow quite a bit of air into the case anyway.
 
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The PSU would never be bringing air into the case would it? Just drawing air from either inside a case or through a vent.
My take on the fan/rad arrangement is that you have a blower cooler on graphics card. So that isn't ejecting too much heat into the case. So internal temperatures shouldn't be too warm, just whatevers coming off motherboard and rear of GPU. So, going with an exhaust radiator might raise CPU temps a few degrees but not terribly. However you would have lots of exhaust fans 2-3 with PSU) Vs no intakes I assume, so negative pressure. You may or may not find this pulls more dust in than usual.

Can you not turn the radiator upside down? Has that been gone over already?

Edit: sorry I derped again, which graphics card do you have? If it's an aftermarket cooler I'd be concerned that most of its heat would be then pulled through the CPU radiator. But that's a compromise, you trade CPU heat for exhaust capabilities.
 
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Ultimately it's up to you how much you want to chop, @gizmo1990 but trust me the case is plenty rigid without the full optical tray. I only used that single cross brace and she was thrown around (literally at one stage) for years without issue. But I don't understand what you're getting at with the single fan idea. The problem isn't the fan placement, it's the height of the radiator, so it doesn't matter where you put the fan or how it's oriented, the radiator is too tall when mounted vertically.

Where you make the chop depends then on where you mount the fan, but always set it up to draw air from outside the case. But I'll be honest, if you're worried about case rigidity it'll be far easier to just get a couple of strips of 0.7mm - 1mm mild steel and make a couple of new cross braces than chop up the multi-layered, folded optical tray.
 
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