Share your Case airflow / Fan setup!

[Bones]

Size matters. Mines bigger than yours.

Wanna bet?

 

[Retrorockit]

I knew that would get a response. That's some wild sh!t there.I see plumbing going through the wall! Nice.

 

[Vario]

This is how my PC A05 flows:

I tested everything and this gave the best result overall.

If the front fan is switched to exhaust, the power supply cannot vent because the front bezel is over pressurized (Theory of constraints). Therefore the front fan must be intake, which pulls that bezel air out. The rear fan has to be exhaust. If rear fan is exhaust, the top fan has to be intake. If top fan is intake, videocard fan has to blow downwards. I had to add a hole under the power supply for its intake.

It works well because the case is so small. The top 140mm fan is rated for 140CFM and can easily pressurize the case. The exhaust fan is a 120mm Delta rated for 102CFM. Everything is PWM so it doesn't make a lot of noise unless under load.

 

[jboydgolfer]

fwiw,I'm confident I could remove/disable every fan mounted on my case ,and still have perfectly reasonable temperatures.

My set up is exhaust out the top ,intake pulls (from inside)over a 280mm radiator (behind the front bezel and dust guard), this way I kill two birds with one stone ,intaking fresh air from outside ,which cools my radiator, and provides airflow Albiet slightly warmer, but airflow for the top fans to exhaust none the less. Finally I have a 140mm (very high CFM fan) mounted at the rear, that is set only to turn on in high temperature situations ,because of its noise level is too much,and because it's not needed unless an emergency arises (which it never has.)

 

[Athlonite]

pleas excuse the dust I've been a wee bit lax in keeping it clean

 

[Dia01]

Phanteks Evolv mATX TG:

Improved airflow is a must with the evolv cases, I don't want to drastically change the look of the case so there are only limited improvements to made. Some of the improvements are:

Current setup:
Front Intake - 2 x Noctua NF-A14 Industrial PPC 140mm 2000RPM PWM Fans
Top Exhaust - 2 x Noctua NF-A14 Industrial PPC 140mm 2000RPM PWM Fans (replaced stock fans on H110i GTX Radiator)
Rear Exhaust - 1 x Phanteks 140mm (came with case)

Mods done to help improve airflow:
- Installed 60mm fan for active VRM cooling (the X229m VRM heatsink is absolute crap - bad temps even at stock)
- Shimmed front aluminium panel approximately 15mm to allow a little more intake air
- Removed rear plastic shroud which sits between the top cover and the case frame as it restricts the exhaust air quite a bit
- Covered void in top case where the 280mm rad is mounted which helps to reduce warmer exhaust air recirculating back into the case
- Phanteks PWM Fan Hub used to control all fans

Further mods planned:
- Fabricate a supporting bracket to mount a 92mm fan beneath the two front 140mm intake fans (the front mounts only support 2x140mm or 3x120mm - not enough real estate to mount another 120 or 140mm). Need a little more positive pressure I think.
- Fabricate a supporting bracket to mount 2 x 50mm fans for better VRM cooling
- Fabricate bracket to replace the plastic shroud removed from the top panel to secure to the panel. Without the shroud only the front mounts hold the panel in place, the bracket needs to also still allow maximum exhaust out possible

 

[peche]

Gelid slim 120v fans are epic for cases with limited top exhaust panel, also for tight front panel configurations!

 

[John Naylor]

Sup people?!


Case fans:
front intake: 3x 120mm thermaltake Thunder blade blue fan front intake fans, [had to use a ghetto mod]
Bottom intake 1x120mm thermaltake Thunder blade blue fan,
Top exhaust: 2x120mm Gelid extreme slim profile UV fans,
Rear exhaust: 2x120mm Thermaltake riing 12 fans on water 3.0 Pro AIO kit.

That's should work well under most circumstances but perty close to not having positive air flow. In testing (using a fog machine), have found that intake fans can lose as much as a third or their air flow from inlet filters, the amount depending on how dirty they are .... so 4 fans in, worst case, can result in 4 x 2/3 or 2-2/3 "fan equivalents" blowing in and 3 blowing out. While this slight negative pressure situation is one folks generally worry about with regard to dust, the bigger concern is this. When you do have negative pressure, its not the lil nooks and crannies that are the concern. It's the HUGE rear case grille. And when air comes in to that way, think about the air source ....what's spitting out a significant amount of air right below those openings ?.... your PSU and your GFX card(s). With the fog machine, you can see this quite clearly. In your case, assuming all the fans were equal in air flow / SP... you should be fine as long as filters aren't too dirty ... the slim fans likely push less air so that would help.

1. Front and Bottom Blow In2. Rear Fans Blow Out
3. Side (depends on location and other numbers)
4. Top Blow out out except when 3 in / 2 out ratio cam not be maintained.

Water cooled, as above except rad fans always blow in.... (No CLCs)

I don't understand the performance PC industry's love of push/pull fans. I know of no other industry that does that. The serial fans in servers are there for fault tolerance. Personally, I like filtered intake fans and I'll let the air go out anywhere it wants, although I like an exhaust fan near the CPU.

In air cooled builds, exhaust fans are not a requirement, the rear case grille provides plenty of open exhaust area. For a quiet system, and by that I mean, you can't tell if its on w/ your ears, I look for (1) 140mm case fan for every 75 - 100 watts (for 120mm, 50 - 75 watts) of connected components. (CPU, MoBo, GFX Cards, pumps, drives). The rear fan mount can take an exhaust fan and all else can be intake.

With water cooling, it's a math thing; how many mounts you have versus how much heat you want to remove. Calculate the watts ya need to remove and then look at the rad data to determine how much rad ya need at what fan rpm you are willing to live with

http://www.overclock.net/t/1457426/radiator-size-estimator

As for our builds ... (air cooled)... So let's say the build w/ OC'd X99 CPU and GFX card (CPU, MoBo and 2 GFX card blocks) needs build totals 635 watts and the plan is a 260 + 240mm radiator. About 40% of that "theoretical" heat will not actually be generated as not everything will be at max output at the same time or radiate off the componentry, tubing, radiator shrouds etc into the case, the remaining will need to be handled by the radiator. That leaves 381 watts at a target delta T of 10C. From testing @ MartinsLiquidlabs, we know that @ 1250 rpm, a 240mm will handle 122 watts and a 360 will handle 188 watts ... 310 total. If we stop there, our delta T will rise from 10C to about 12.5C. No bigga deal. Or ... if you add a 2nd fan on each rad mount in push pull, the rad will handle 152 +227 or 389 watts maintaining the 10C delta T target.

In short, push pull on a rasiator will add an extra 30% cooling, depending of course on the type of radiator (low - medium fpi) and the fan designs

 

[peche]

That's should work well under most circumstances but perty close to not having positive air flow. In testing (using a fog machine), have found that intake fans can lose as much as a third or their air flow from inlet filters, the amount depending on how dirty they are .... so 4 fans in, worst case, can result in 4 x 2/3 or 2-2/3 "fan equivalents" blowing in and 3 blowing out. While this slight negative pressure situation is one folks generally worry about with regard to dust, the bigger concern is this. When you do have negative pressure, its not the lil nooks and crannies that are the concern. It's the HUGE rear case grille. And when air comes in to that way, think about the air source ....what's spitting out a significant amount of air right below those openings ?.... your PSU and your GFX card(s). With the fog machine, you can see this quite clearly. In your case, assuming all the fans were equal in air flow / SP... you should be fine as long as filters aren't too dirty ... the slim fans likely push less air so that would help.

1. Front and Bottom Blow In2. Rear Fans Blow Out
3. Side (depends on location and other numbers)
4. Top Blow out out except when 3 in / 2 out ratio cam not be maintained.

Water cooled, as above except rad fans always blow in.... (No CLCs)

i dont have a fog machine, but i have several vaporizers and drippers, so i was curious about my airflow, son have seen how vapor comes inside my rig and how it moves inside, my 3x 120mm front fans are normal clean, the dust filter needs to be cleaned like every 3 months, otherwise dust will screw my temps, the small or slim fans perform awesome, i was using 3 different models, then best results are for the slim ones,

 

[Retrorockit]

I'm starting to find some Dell, BTX, overclocking coolers showing up on the surplus market. 3 words you don't hear together very often. I posted links to my album at OCN because the files were too large to drop here. The Peltier assisted water loop was $20+$20 freight ( usually $100+). The air cooler assys. were $15 shipped. These were from the XPS series which predated, and then ran alongside Alienware versions. This is early 65nm LGA775 stuff. QX6850 max. CPU then.
http://www.overclock.net/forum/memb...bums-dell-xps-720-h2c-btx-hybrid-cooling.html
http://www.overclock.net/forum/members/441031-retrorockit-albums-dell-xps-btx-cooling.html
The water loop includes a 4 color LED light show. But without the proprietary Dell PSU,MB, and software to run it I can't demonstrate that.