Fan grills

craigxt22 · 7 Oct 2012 at 17:26

Hi,

Is there much benefit in cutting the honey comb grills found on most cases where you mount the fan? Better air flow? More quiet?

I'm thinking of doing it on the front intake fans of my Antec 300, the blades of the fans won't be exposed as there's another panel that goes in front.

Thanks

BrianB · 7 Oct 2012 at 19:22

It makes mine much quieter and greatly improves the airflow! My quiet fans would whine in my old case, thanks to the honey comb grill in front of the fan. After cutting it out with tin snips they were quieter at much higher RPM and moved much more air.

dfour · 7 Oct 2012 at 19:23

IMHO it should help reduce turbulence and therefore increase air flow and lower the noise level. Maybe not much but I always do it.

BrianB · 7 Oct 2012 at 19:34

Much less turbulence, it was one of the mods I had planned but in the end I didn't get a 300...

Some fan grill makers claim that their grills increase airflow by up to 50-75% compared to honey comb. I found having no honey comb very worthwhile.

I was also going to turn the hard drives around and drill cable management holes in the motherboard tray.

Resident · 8 Oct 2012 at 00:29

My HA-900b had a honeycomb grill in the front. It's removeable to get to the filter.

The holding clips hold the filter just fine so I left the honeycomb out and there was a definite drop in noise and a 1-2°c drop on HDD temps.

The flow is definitely more noticable. Sounds daft but with the fan at 1200 (it's a 2000rpm Zaward Golf) I can actually sit a can of pop in front of the intake and it keeps the can cool!