Cooling my Meshify C

neil_g

neil_g

neil_g

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I don't know whether I'm overthinking this, any help would be appreciated..

Currently I have the Meshify C with everything running off motherboard fan headers:

Front Inlet - 2x 12cm Noctua NF-S12B FLX
Top Exhaust - 1x 14cm Noctua NF-P14 FLX
Rear Exhaust - 1x 12cm Noctua NF-S12B FLX
CPU Cooler - Corsair H80i + 2x NF-S12A FLX push/pull

"Hot" Components - i7-4770k, 980ti WindForce

Frankly it's all a little loud even at idle. The H80i isn't doing well at keeping temps down, even idling.

Was considering:
BE QUIET Dark Rock Pro 4 135 mm Silent Wings CPU cooler
Front Inlet - 2x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140 mm PWM
Top Exhaust - 2x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140 mm PWM
Rear Exhaust - 1x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 120 mm PWM

Don't know if this is
a) Overkill
b) Going to be any quieter on the motherboard headers and if so..
c) Are there any good budget fan controllers capable of 5x 4pin
 
I have the same case sat on my desk.

I have the default fan that came with the case as the rear exhaust, and 2 x Arctic F12 120mm fans at the front (these are controlled by the BIOS and never run at 100%). CPU is cooled by a Alpenfohn Brocken 2 with 2 x 140mm fans running at 100%.

At idle, the case is barely audible.

Load up a game and things ramp up a little bit but that's mainly from my Sapphire Pulse Vega 56.

I suppose everyone has a different tolerance to noise and what they deem as silent or loud.
 
neil_g said:
I don't know whether I'm overthinking this, any help would be appreciated..

Currently I have the Meshify C with everything running off motherboard fan headers:

Front Inlet - 2x 12cm Noctua NF-S12B FLX
Top Exhaust - 1x 14cm Noctua NF-P14 FLX
Rear Exhaust - 1x 12cm Noctua NF-S12B FLX
CPU Cooler - Corsair H80i + 2x NF-S12A FLX push/pull

"Hot" Components - i7-4770k, 980ti WindForce

Frankly it's all a little loud even at idle. The H80i isn't doing well at keeping temps down, even idling.

Was considering:
BE QUIET Dark Rock Pro 4 135 mm Silent Wings CPU cooler
Front Inlet - 2x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140 mm PWM
Top Exhaust - 2x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140 mm PWM
Rear Exhaust - 1x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 120 mm PWM

Don't know if this is
a) Overkill
b) Going to be any quieter on the motherboard headers and if so..
c) Are there any good budget fan controllers capable of 5x 4pin
Click to expand...
Your proposed fan placement is more air blow than air flow. We don't want to be moving lots of air mixing cool intake air with heated air, we wand to supply cool air to components .. they are not the same thing. ;)

Dark Rock Pro 4 would be good.

2x Silent Wings 3 140mm PWM High Speed front intakes is all you need. Remove all PCIe back slot covers to increase rear vent area around GPU thus improving front to back airflow and supplying cooler air to both GPU and CPU. Block any openings in front fan mounting panel not covered by fans so the air they are pushing into case doesn't leak back in front.

Top exhaust will draw the cool air coming in upper front fan right out the top thus moving heated exhaust from GPU up into airflow to DRP4 raising it's temp and thus raising CPU temp.

Running both intake and exhaust case fans is similar to running push/pull fans on cooler or radiator. It raises noise level at same rpm and lowers temps 1-2c at the most. Using just intake fans or front/middle fan on cooler and running fan/s 50-100rpm faster give same component temps at same noise level. Only time the added fans help is at full speed, so not really worth it.[/QUOTE]
 
what fan profile are you using from your mobo? I think that all fans sound loud near to 100% of their max rpm, at 40-50% fans are usually reasonably quiet. For my ryzen 5 3600 I want the cpou temp to be <65ºC to allow the cpu to auto boost to its max - therefore I have changed the fan profile to being 50% from 20 to 60ºC and then to ramp the fans up to 100% from 60 to 65ºC (on my esports 34 duo air cooler). Most of the time the cpu temp is less than 60ºC and therefore is on 50% fan speed and fairly quiet. I suggest that you do the same/similar (perhaps you could even stay at 50% fan until 75ºC with your intel).
 
Aren't those Noctua fans the low static pressure ones that shouldn't be used on coolers and filtered intakes? If so that could be your issue. I have the same case and it's silent at idle, it goes noisy under load but temps are good.
 
Alan1969 said:
what fan profile are you using from your mobo? I think that all fans sound loud near to 100% of their max rpm, at 40-50% fans are usually reasonably quiet. For my ryzen 5 3600 I want the cpou temp to be <65ºC to allow the cpu to auto boost to its max - therefore I have changed the fan profile to being 50% from 20 to 60ºC and then to ramp the fans up to 100% from 60 to 65ºC (on my esports 34 duo air cooler). Most of the time the cpu temp is less than 60ºC and therefore is on 50% fan speed and fairly quiet. I suggest that you do the same/similar (perhaps you could even stay at 50% fan until 75ºC with your intel).
Click to expand...
It's a Maximus VI Formula. Standard, Silent and Auto are all much the same. I've not tried the manual option yet.
 
Relentless81 said:
Aren't those Noctua fans the low static pressure ones that shouldn't be used on coolers and filtered intakes? If so that could be your issue. I have the same case and it's silent at idle, it goes noisy under load but temps are good.
Click to expand...
Noctua say P14 fine for coolers, cant see anything on the S12 one way or the other.
 
Relentless81 said:
Both the redux and current version state low impedance applications, I just edited my post after a quick Google
Click to expand...
right, I've found what you mean - https://noctua.at/en/which_fan_is_right_for_me

interesting they say they're okay for case cooling, but what case doesnt have filters these days.

to be honest, the H80i wasn't the best even with the old corsair fans. might just go back to air and try the 2x 14cm intake as mentioned above.
 
neil_g said:
"Hot" Components - i7-4770k, 980ti WindForce

Frankly it's all a little loud even at idle. The H80i isn't doing well at keeping temps down, even idling.
Click to expand...
H80i might have started to degrade.
Watertube coolers have many degradation/wear mechanisms lacked by heatpipe coolers.

But also Intel's toothpaste under CPU's heatspreader could be going bad.
Wouldn't be the first time on this forum.

At least without overclocking that CPU doesn't need any heavy duty cooling, because unlike in current Intels its TDP is honest.
 
That Noctua info doesn't seem to make sense. How much air a fan flows in our applications is strongly related to how much pressure the fan can make before it stops flowing air. Any fan that is able to move a good flow of air through the restrictions of a radiator will do a better job of moving air into a case through grill and/or radiator with their restrictions than low presure fans that stop flowing with low amount of restriction.. If anything fans on case intakes with fancy grills and filter restirction where even higher pressure ratings allow them to overcome restirctions to airflow much better than low pressure rated fans can.

Good rule of thumb is any fan that has lower pressure rating than 1.5mmH2O @ 1500rpm will not be able to overcome grill and filter resistance. Higher rating usually works even better because as fan speed slows so does pressure rating / ability to overcome grill & filter resistance. Keep in mind airflow ratings are mostly hype because of the way they are determined. They are how much air fan flows with no resistance. Some companies even use manipulate the intake and exhaust sides of fan so there is no pressure difference between directly behind and directly in front of fan, a condition that cannot even happen in actual use. Good news is while static pressure rating (how much pressure a fan can push into a sealed container so no airflow at all) not a condition we will ever use our fans, it does give us and idea of how well fan will be able to overcome airflow resistance.
 
neil_g said:
interesting they say they're okay for case cooling, but what case doesnt have filters these days.
Click to expand...
Did you think marketing would admit "their car being good only for downhill in tail wind?"
That's actually how advertised airflow of fans is measured: Literally "going down hill in tail wind" and just rotating there idle without doing any actual work to push air.

Not very realistic scenario, because to get air moving fan has to always do actual work.
Meaning creating some pressure to push that air.
SilentPCreview hit into that with their original testing method with NF-S12 having been designed to fool impeller anemometer:
Most recently, we identified the Noctua's NF-S12 series as the fan with the best airflow-to-noise ratio. Naturally, we were surprised when reports began to surface that, while the Noctua was indeed
very quiet, some users were noticing their system temperature going up, not down...
https://www.silentpcreview.com/node/734/1​
It's easy for fan to be quiet per RPM, if it really can't excert pushing force into that air.

Air flows only when there's pressure difference between two points.
(that's why you get stronger winds when those isobars are closer together in weather maps)

Hence no fan ever reaches advertised airflow in use.
How hard drop is depends on how well that fan design copes with airflow impedance.
Likely there's variation in behaviour at different speeds, with lower speeds of course being always more demanding.
While if you crank up speed enough, any fan starts pushing at least some air.
(but likely at worser performance per sound)


Also that static pressure is another fully unrealistic measure for real usage:
Fan blowing into closed box with no air moving anywhere!

So out of always advertised (power/current aren't told for all fans) specs only size, weight and RPM are usefull information.
 
The silent wings are good fans, just make sure you an get them at a decent price. Failing that, the Arctic Cooling P14 are very good, and fairly priced.
 
doyll said:
Good news is while static pressure rating (how much pressure a fan can push into a sealed container so no airflow at all) not a condition we will ever use our fans, it does give us and idea of how well fan will be able to overcome airflow resistance.
Click to expand...
Even better pressure is no guarantee.
Different blade geometries behave different at different relative speeds between speed of blade and airflow.
Because of that fan could even have better both airflow and static pressure values than other fan, but actually lose in real world situation.
Visualized very well by these overlaid graphs:
https://martinsliquidlab.wordpress....w-specs-are-poor-measures-of-fan-performance/

http://www.arx-group.com/pq.html
That P-Q curve is rarely advertised thing, despite of its shape being the best real world performance telling information.
 
EsaT said:
Even better pressure is no guarantee.
Different blade geometries behave different at different relative speeds between speed of blade and airflow.
Because of that fan could even have better both airflow and static pressure values than other fan, but actually lose in real world situation.
Visualized very well by these overlaid graphs:
https://martinsliquidlab.wordpress....w-specs-are-poor-measures-of-fan-performance/

http://www.arx-group.com/pq.html
That P-Q curve is rarely advertised thing, despite of its shape being the best real world performance telling information.
Click to expand...
Very true. I was speaking in generalities. But even though GT is better in middle rpm range, the differences are not large. Variable that is equally as important is noise profile and level. Which of them I would use would depend on noise profile and dB .. which GT is the hand down winner.
 
neil_g said:
c) Are there any good budget fan controllers capable of 5x 4pin
Click to expand...
Isn't it obvious that there aren't much any decent fan controllers at low budget.
Aquacomputer Quadro is way best in configurability.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/aqua-computer-quadro-pwm-fan-controller-wc-338-aq.html
Anyway there's no sense to have intake fans connected separately.

And that case leaks out every slightest noise unmuffled.
So avoiding unnecessary fans is very important for minimizing noise and trying that "positive pressure" with more intake fans than exhausts while opening slots for airflow would be worth of shot.
Fans with good pressure characteristics should be able to force airflow through case without needing high RPM.

While that NF-S12 is no doubt one of the worst fans to put into any cooler.
Arctic P12s would certainly beat those while costing one third.
Wouldn't use those in much nothing else than in open holes without any grills/meshes.



doyll said:
But even though GT is better in middle rpm range, the differences are not large. Variable that is equally as important is noise profile and level. Which of them I would use would depend on noise profile and dB .. which GT is the hand down winner.
Click to expand...
P-Q curve has nothing to do with RPM variation.
It's all about fixed speed fan's ability to do work at various loads.
And actually general shape of curve doesn't vary that much between most speeds.
Airflow/pressure values corresponding to each part of curve just vary:
http://www.scythe-eu.com/en/products/fans/gentle-typhoon-120-mm.html
https://catalog.pelonistechnologies.com/Asset/p1238-7pcurve.jpg
 
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