Stick with current CM fans or upgrade/sidegrade ?

Minusorange · 30 May 2018 at 21:08

So I've had the fans in my Stryker since I got it 4 years ago, there's nothing wrong with them they still spin just fine and the leds on the front pair light up, but seeing as though I'm in the middle of a project to bling the inside I was curious whether there's any benefit to switching them out for something better/nicer looking without breaking the bank ?

If so does any one have any suggestions, fans I like the of are

BeQuiet silent wings 3
Corsair LED mag levs
Bitfenix Spectre pro (non pro is ok too)
Thermaltake RIING

Or should I just stick my Phanteks PH-F140's from the soon to be relegated cooler in the front and build my own LED lighting ?

Minusorange · 30 May 2018 at 23:27

@doyll your thoughts ?

doyll · 31 May 2018 at 13:06

Of your list I would go with Silent Wings 3 .. PWM high speed.
Have you looked at Phanteks PH-F120MP and PH-F140MP? OcUK has them on special at very good prices and they perform well.
Educated guess would be 2x front and 2x bottom PH-F120MP, remove all PCIe back slot covers with no rear exhaust fan and unplug top fan.

Minusorange · 31 May 2018 at 13:43

doyll said:
Of your list I would go with Silent Wings 3 .. PWM high speed.
Have you looked at Phanteks PH-F120MP and PH-F140MP? OcUK has them on special at very good prices and they perform well.
Educated guess would be 2x front and 2x bottom PH-F120MP, remove all PCIe back slot covers with no rear exhaust fan and unplug top fan.

Top fan is getting removed to be replaced with an X62 Kraken so that's 280mm of fans on top I was going to use as intake

The other 3 fans are all the stock ones with the Stryker so 140mm rear and 2 x 120mm front

I can put another 2 120mm on the bottom as well though as either intake or exhaust

Does removing PCI covers have any negatives ? (dust maybe ?) Is there any benefit to modding another exhaust fan over there ?

I know the Silent Wings are probably the best in terms of performance/dB.... but are they worth the 100% price increase over say some Bitfenix spectre pros which have a comparable CFM (according to bitfinex) but are likely 4 or 5dB louder ? I'm not really fussed on noise as I'm always with headphones

doyll · 31 May 2018 at 15:32

Minusorange said:
Top fan is getting removed to be replaced with an X62 Kraken so that's 280mm of fans on top I was going to use as intake

The other 3 fans are all the stock ones with the Stryker so 140mm rear and 2 x 120mm front

I can put another 2 120mm on the bottom as well though as either intake or exhaust

Does removing PCI covers have any negatives ? (dust maybe ?) Is there any benefit to modding another exhaust fan over there ?

I know the Silent Wings are probably the best in terms of performance/dB.... but are they worth the 100% price increase over say some Bitfenix spectre pros which have a comparable CFM (according to bitfinex) but are likely 4 or 5dB louder ? I'm not really fussed on noise as I'm always with headphones

Using radiator with 2x 140mm intake fans will throw overall intake to exhaust venting way out of balance in favor of intakes, and as case maximum flow is the less or intake and exhaust, your case airflow will be whatever airflow the 1x rear exhaust and area of PCIe back slot covers assuming they are removed. So not only will your overall case airflow be extremey limited, it will also be made up of mostly the heated air coming out of 280mm radiator.

The only possible negative of removing pCIe slot covers is if case intake airflow is not high enough to over come the draw of GPU fan near back of case GPU fan may draw air in through PCIe slot and can bring in dust. I've only seen this happen when case is not setup with good front to back airflow .. as in not enough intake fans or intake fans not spinning up as GPU fans do.

I have no idea what your stock case fans' spec are, but most case fans are not much good so unless CM case fans are better than most they are not much good.

With air cooling every degree warmer the air is translates into about a degree hotter component is at full load. radiators are more like 2-3c increase is air temp is 1c increase in component temp. I'm guessing you will need to worry more about supplying your GPU with cool air than supplying yoru 280mm radiator with cool air .. meaning top exhaust, front and bottom intake, probably leave rear vent without a fan because if you use a fan there you will have 2x 140mm (on radiator) and rear 120mm as exhaust with only 3x 120mm as intake .. more exhaust than intake .. dust leaks in instead of filtered air leakingout.

Minusorange · 31 May 2018 at 16:16

Ok cheers for the advice, I'll see how it goes with your suggested setup

As an unscientific reference point currently idle is around 40 on CPU and 41 on GPU, so I'll use that as a rough estimate to see if it's better or not

doyll · 31 May 2018 at 16:22

Please let us know what you end up with. Always good to hear if advice was sound or not.

Sometimes I goof, especially on cases like this that I've never built .. meaning it's all educated guess-work.

Minusorange · 14 Jun 2018 at 20:25

doyll said:
Please let us know what you end up with. Always good to hear if advice was sound or not.
Sometimes I goof, especially on cases like this that I've never built .. meaning it's all educated guess-work.

So I've gone with 4 Bitfenix Spectre Pro's (They were cheap and one of the few to give a blue LED)

2 on front as intake
2 on bottom as intake
The X62 on top as push intake (Case-Fans-Rads)
Removed all the rear brackets and the 140mm fan

Managed to shave about 3 to 5 degrees on idle and it's a bit more quiet, load is about 10 degrees cooler, not sure if a reseat will yield better results :confused:

doyll · 15 Jun 2018 at 11:03

Bad news is with front top and bottom as intakes you have way more intake potential than case has exhaust vent area so your case airflow will be extremely limited by exhaust airflow area.

Good news is your CPU is running cooler than before.

Minusorange · 15 Jun 2018 at 13:40

doyll said:
Bad news is with front top and bottom as intakes you have way more intake potential than case has exhaust vent area so your case airflow will be extremely limited by exhaust airflow area.

Better for keeping out the dust though ? GPU is running 2 degree cooler on idle too so the change must be better than what I had previously

doyll · 15 Jun 2018 at 14:04

Minusorange said:
Better for keeping out the dust though ? GPU is running 2 degree cooler on idle too so the change must be better than what I had previously

Not really, because as long as you have even the slightest bit of higher pressure inside of case it keeps dust out. \Obviously it is better than it was before, but that doesn't mean it is as good as it could be. For example, If you had no bottom fans the radiator fans could move more air through radiator into case because there would be 2 less fans competing for exhaust area .. or .. if the radiator fans were exhaust they would not be heating air coming into case .. which is way I would never run a CLC as intake where it's warmed airflow may be going to other components versus usign it as exhaust. If radiator isn't enough better than an air cooler and need to be intake at the expense of causing everything else to run hotter I wouldn't use it (I assume you know my thoughts about CLCs). Easy way to check would be to just unplug bottom intakes and see what temps do. My guess is CPU at full load will be lower.

Minusorange · 15 Jun 2018 at 16:21

doyll said:
Not really, because as long as you have even the slightest bit of higher pressure inside of case it keeps dust out. \Obviously it is better than it was before, but that doesn't mean it is as good as it could be. For example, If you had no bottom fans the radiator fans could move more air through radiator into case because there would be 2 less fans competing for exhaust area .. or .. if the radiator fans were exhaust they would not be heating air coming into case .. which is way I would never run a CLC as intake where it's warmed airflow may be going to other components versus usign it as exhaust. If radiator isn't enough better than an air cooler and need to be intake at the expense of causing everything else to run hotter I wouldn't use it (I assume you know my thoughts about CLCs). Easy way to check would be to just unplug bottom intakes and see what temps do. My guess is CPU at full load will be lower.

What if I put one of the 120mm as exhaust at rear ? so it's 2 top, 2 front, 1 bottom as intake and 1 exhaust + the open brackets (or keep current setup and add 140mm to rear exhaust ?)

doyll · 15 Jun 2018 at 17:19

Minusorange said:
What if I put one of the 120mm as exhaust at rear ? so it's 2 top, 2 front, 1 bottom as intake and 1 exhaust + the open brackets (or keep current setup and add 140mm to rear exhaust ?)

Either you are not even beginning to understand what I'm saying about how airflow works or your are trolling.

1x exhaust vent with fan will only flow about as much air as about 2x intake vents with fans. So if you have 5x intake fans and 2x exhaust fans your exhaust fans will flow about as much air as 2 intake fans.

2x 140mm vents / fans are about the same size and flow about the same amount of air as 3x 120mm fans of similar design.

Minusorange · 15 Jun 2018 at 18:02

doyll said:
Either you are not even beginning to understand what I'm saying about how airflow works or your are trolling.

1x exhaust vent with fan will only flow about as much air as about 2x intake vents with fans. So if you have 5x intake fans and 2x exhaust fans your exhaust fans will flow about as much air as 2 intake fans.

2x 140mm vents / fans are about the same size and flow about the same amount of air as 3x 120mm fans of similar design.

Yeah I'm not understanding because it doesn't make sense

I understand there will be a tolerance on the amount of air that can be pushed through the back from the pressure built up in the case from just purely the intake fans

I don't understand why adding a fan as exhaust can not improve that amount because a fan should increase the rate of flow resulting in more air being exhausted than air exhausted with zero exhaust fans ?

Average temps with the 2 intake bottom fans OFF have increased temps by 2 degrees also :confused:

doyll · 15 Jun 2018 at 20:16

Think of air as a liquid, the case as a full tank and the vents as holes in that tank either flowing air into or out of tank. Now think of your 5x intake holes of water flowing into the full tank and and how much water ends up being able to flow out your one exhaust hole. Do you think that one hole even if it has a fan on it will flow at most the amount of water 2x holes with fans are flowing into your tank? That is how case airflow works. What flows in must flow out.

To give you a idea of just how extremely little pressure the 1-2 mm H2O our fans is.

Air pressure is 14.7 psi at sea level at 15c .. which is 10335.122801 mm H2O
Air pressure of 14.695 psi 9.41 feet above sea level is 10331.607453 mm H2O
9.41 feet above sea level and sea level is a difference of 3.515348 mm H2O

That is twice as much pressure difference than our fans make.