R4 design sacrifice cooling for low noise

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24 Jul 2008
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Upgraded a few things over the weekend ive had my eye on for a while Picked up a new monitor , cpu and a new case fractal design R4 ultra low noise.

Main reasoning for the new case was my corsair 500R was just too open fans and vents galore and was so noisy.

Now I setup the case it came with two 160mm fans (back and front) I removed the sound dampening panels at the top and fitted them there fitted two noctua case fans at the front.

At the rear is my closed loop cpu cooler fans mounted to the case.

At idle its fine but once I jump in game its still noisy and basicly seem pointless buying the new case now.

It sits on the floor next to my desk not much space im almost sat on top of it.

Sorry about my long story but my main question is if I removed the two top 160mm case panels and re-install the sound damp panels it would fixed the issue but im worried id be sacrificing cooling/performance.

Would my system still be getting enough cooling with out causing over heating?

any thoughts.

SPEC

990FX SABERTOOTH
AMD 8320 @ 3.8GHZ (PROB PUSH IT MORE SOON)
390X R9 ATI GFX
16GIG VENGEANCE
256SSD
3TB DRIVE


hope to get some ideas thanks
 
I have the same case but don't have any top fans. I have a Corsair H110i on the front, a side fan and a rear fan. temps are fine and sound levels are good. I would close up[ the top vents and move the radiator to the front.

Sound deadening only works if you are closing the sound of from leaving the case. The tops vents on the R4 are large and let out a lot of sound.

If you want I could post some pics of my case later.

Also, look at your fan profile for the radiator and the top Noctuas. I have a very mild fan curve and it makes a lot of difference when battlefront/Civ Vi fires up. (Civ seems to send my system mad!).
 
Tbh im not quiet sure the cooler would stretch to the front mounting position there quiet small pipes tbh although I didn't actually test it.

I could try it I suppose to see if it would stretch, the two top fans one in particularly is position right above the cooler so this is the main culprit for noise.
 
Leave the cooler on the back vent as exhaust, close the top vents ad use the 2x front intakes and maybe a bottom intake. Use motherboard fan headers to control case fans so they slow down and speed up as need to supply air to components. I would also remove unused PCIe slot covers for more front to back airflow around GPU .. this usually helps getting the GPU's heated exhaust out of case.

That is basically what my sig rig is in a modified R2 with 140mm front intatkes. ;)
 
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