PC Cooling upgrade

Alasdairhurst · 8 Aug 2011 at 19:05

Just looking at upgrading my pc cooling to the most powerful cooling i can for my PC.
Bigger fans are quieter and push a lot more air than smaller fans, so i'm looking at a Haf X case with all the fans replaced with the most powerful cfm and as silent as possible fans. i will include a fan controller so i can turn them down to the minimum - they will be extremely silent then, and still push more air than a regular 140/120mm fan (i can turn them up for extreme cooling too) Also looking for the most powerful silent gpu cooling i can find.
i say powerful and silent - these 2 arent really interchangeable, but what i mean is that if i find somehting that pushes 100cfm and is 30db and one that pushes 90cfm and is 10db i'd go with the latter.
basically i have looked around and this is what i have found:

Haf X case
Nzxt sentry
Apache Black 120mm x3 (2 for my H70 and one for the cooling duct)

200mm antec big boy x3 (2 top and 1 side)

230mm bitfenix spectre red led
700 - 900 rpm
115 CFM
20 dB

Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus II VGA Cooler
Corsair Airflow Dual-Channel Fan (best ram cooler i can find, though i really want something quiet without LED's)

any ideas or is that really the best i can go for?

Reaper 392 · 8 Aug 2011 at 19:18

whats your budget for the whole cooling package?
(case, fans, fan controller)

also, have you already got the H70, or are you looking to buy a CPU cooler along with a new case + fans + controller?

*edit*
dont bother with a RAM cooler, they really arent needed with 99.999% of RAM

Alasdairhurst · 8 Aug 2011 at 19:29

No real budget yet, just checking out what i can really get.
at the moment it comes to £370 fo everything - including some black extention cables (£16)
i have the H70 at the moment - just got it for £50

i know about the ram cooling, and i thought - and saw myself that it wouldnt really be necesarry, but i just got a new motherboard and the ramsinks are really hot to the touch on hte same settings - the northbridge burns to the touch as well, which it didn't before (well that was a different NB, but smaller)
it was just a small mobo upgrade from a 785 chipset to a 890 chipset. (i got it for free

)

i would like to make it look pretty neat inside, too, so a black ram cooler would cover up the slots to make it look neater.

Reaper 392 · 8 Aug 2011 at 20:27

ok, reason i asked is because if you want the best cooling and quietness i cant think of anything better than the silverstone fortress, but at £220 i thought it might be a bit expensive. it doesnt have as many fans as the HAF X, but the motherboard mounting has been rotated 90 degrees, with the outlet at the top. since hot air rises its fantastic for cooling.

as far as i know the three 180mm fans at the bottom of the fortress are pretty good, but you might be able to find better ones

with this case i would also go against corsairs recommendation of making the H70 suck the air in from outside the case as the only 120mm fan slot is at the top, which is where you will really want air to be flowing out. (the air going into the cooler wont be hot anyway)

the 120mm fans you've chosen seem to be the OcUK favourite for heatsink fans. if you choose the fortress you will only want two (for the H70) as there is nowhere else for them. if you go with the HAF X you will also only want two as they are not great as case fans because they push so much air. with case fans you can happily get away with fans that push very little air through them, so some low RPM gentle typhoons or some fractal design fans will be great as case fans for the HAF X (not sure what they go up to size wise)

how many CPU_FAN sockets do you have? if you have two then that will be great, but if you only have one then you might want one of the akasa PWM fan splitter cables so you can power both fans off of the CPU_FAN socket.

Alasdairhurst · 8 Aug 2011 at 20:43

thanks for your input.
I'd seen the silverstone before, but never really thought of it for this (as i was looking for the huge high cfm fans) so i'll take a look into that too.
my H70 already blows air out of the case, so that's not too much of a problem either way.
basically the other 120mm on the haf x brings air in from the front fan, through the hard drives, and onto the front of the gpu, so it's not really an fan on the sides of the case.

i just have 1 cpu fan header, but the h70 needs 3 (2 fans and 1 pump) so all the fans would be powered from the fan controller.

Alasdairhurst · 8 Aug 2011 at 21:04

i think i like the HAF X a bit better than the silverstone. The 90 degree mounting is a great feature, but it misses out on a few things that i would prefer that the haf x has:

window on the right side
fans at the bottom - makes the floor underneath the case dusty (had that problem with the cm960II without fans at the bottom due to the gap that air gets sucked in and dust drops down.
airflow positioning - i prefer to have load of air sucked in the front and dispersed up and to the back, as well has having a tonne of air pumped onto the gpu from the side.
haf X has more room for stray cables (big box next to the psu for hiding it)

i know it isn't the best for cooling, but what does evenyone htink about the TT Level 10? It looks pretty awesome an unique.

Reaper 392 · 8 Aug 2011 at 22:30

not sure about the TT level 10, but the silverstone has plenty of room behind the motherboard for stray cables. no need for a box infront (or in the silverstones case, below) the PSU.

fair enough if you dont want it, but its pretty much the perfect case for good airflow and low noise with its motherboard rotation and insulated walls