More fans at lower speed or fewer at higher speed?

Deep

Deep

Deep

Soldato
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I was just wondering if I had this case and I was going to have a lot of hardware in there.

Would it be best to use every available fan mount and have the fans run slower or would it be best to only have a few fans running at maximum capacity?
 
More, big fans at lower speed. Make good use of those 3 140mm front mounts. You're gonna need a fan controller but yes, use as many of the fan mounts as possible. It's great to have lots of air moving in and out of the case.
 
I have a lot of slow (850 rpm) fans cooling the rig in my sig.
I have 17 120mm 900 rpm fans and 1 140mm 900 rpm fan. PC is silent and cool, even under load.
I had PWM fans before and they were speeding up sometimes to 1500 rpm and were pretty loud.
 
I have 9 fans going in my Corsair 500R... plus the three on the GPU.
I monitor temperatures in 4 locations via the fan controller, as well as watching the actual component temps in HWMon.

Some set ups work better with higher speeds than others, although I generally keep all fans below 1000rpm anyway. It's a bit of trial and error, to find what suits best.

However, I also vote for many fans at low speeds as I find maxing them out can actually increase temperatures!
 
AuriconXS said:
Yeah, if you've got intakes and exhausts fighting each other you'll see that behaviour.
Click to expand...

Or intakes battling each other. I found that using certain fans above a certain rev range, with everything else completely off, the airflow passing over the components countered the cooling.
I get the same effect on the motorcycle sometimes, or even if I have the car window open - Cooling drops above certain speeds.

I have twin 120 StatPress intakes at the case front. The upper one just blows clear into the case above the GPU, as I've removed the top HDD cage.
There's a second stronger StatPress fan pulling the lower intake through the HDD cage and then pushing it in below the GPU, but there's another StatPress intake in front of the PSU as well, which adds to the flow.
Lastly there's a pair of 120s intaking on the side panel, one above and the other below the GPU. The lower one feeds in at 90º to the other lower ones mentioned above.
Exhausts are the usuals one at the back and two up top, pulling up through the H100 rad.

Mostly my temps are pretty good. Everything idles below 28ºC even in this heat, But if I run the two strong StatPress fans too fast, the area below the GPU gets several degrees hotter than the rest of the case. It surprises me a bit, as I'd expected the hotter air to rise and/or be drawn up through the GPU cooler.

I'm still trialling different configurations...
 
Oops, sorry, I missed that.

Have you tried pulling cool air in through the H100 at the top and keeping the rest the same?

So your front intakes cool the drives + help general airflow. The top draws cool air through the rad and cools the CPU and exhausts out of the rear. And the side gives cool air around the GPU which pushes air out of the back and the PSU with the help of the front fans.
 
It's a combination of factors. You can run a larger fan at lower RPM and get an identical CFM to a smaller one, but static pressure (other than from blade design) is pretty strongly linked to RPM.
 
AuriconXS said:
Have you tried pulling cool air in through the H100 at the top and keeping the rest the same?
Click to expand...
No.
Warmer air rises, so the sporadic extra few degrees on the CPU should mean I eventually vent most of the heat.
Also, I'd have two powerful intakes battling against a single exhaust and blowing the heat back down toward the GPU.

AuriconXS said:
So your front intakes cool the drives + help general airflow. The top draws cool air through the rad and cools the CPU and exhausts out of the rear.
Click to expand...
That'd make it 6 intakes and one poxy little exhaust, in a case which has a load of holes and mesh anyway. More likely it would instead blow air all over the place and the fans would counter each other. I'd think I'd have too many dead spots and heat traps.

AuriconXS said:
And the side gives cool air around the GPU which pushes air out of the back and the PSU with the help of the front fans.
Click to expand...
Nope - MSI GTX780 Lightning.
Its 3 fans mainly vent heat all out the sides and into the case.
 
I'm all of more fans and less speed. Work with convection also, heat rises so intake front and low and exhaust top and rear. Efficient cooling and nice and quiet.
 
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