How Many Case Fans?

adamguk said:

• Asus M5A78L/USB3 AMD Socket AM3+ 8 Channel HD Audio ATX Motherboard
  
• AMD 960T Black Edition 3.0GHz Socket AM3 Processor
  
• XFX HD 5450 Heatsink 1GB DDR3 VGA DVI HDMI PCI-E
  
• Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V unbuffered
  
• WD 500GB 3.5" SATA 6Gb/s Caviar Blue Hard Drive - 7200RPM 16MB Cach
  
• Samsung Optical Drive

That list of components shows nothing unusual.

You don't say what you intend to do with the PC.

With no more information, I'd say 1 good exhaust fan is all you need.

Monitor your temps. If they get into dangerous levels, reconsider your situation.

I do use a slow (500 rpm) 120mm fan on the front side blowing over my hard drives, but it's hardly a requirement. HD temps rise only a few degrees without the fan.

Of course, if you are temperature-obsessed and believe that 32 degrees is by definition superior to 39 degrees, then load up with 6 or 8 fans.

Or, if you just like to tinker, get 6 or 8 fans for no particular reason.

mickey megabyte said:

why do people need so many fans? just how hot does your case get?

if i were to put my mobo in the oven, i may need five, ten, thirteen fans to keep it cool, but i don't.

maybe too many fans start to cancel each other out? i like quiet pc's, me.

or maybe i'm lucky, and the fact that my psu sits in the bottom of my case really helps air flow a lot, allowing me to run cool with just two fans, even though i overclock and play games?

My case has openings for 7 case fans, and gentle typhoons on a fan controller are not that loud. I have a watercooled setup, so 2 fans are for the radiator. Mountain mod cases you attach up to 3 hard drives per 120mm fan with a bracket. I have 3 platter HD's and one SSD, so you could say one of my fan is for the HD's.

My old case with 4 fans was way louder than my current setup with 7 fans, plus my HD's run considerable cooler, and my radiator gets fresh air from outside the case. My cpu temps are way lower than my old Cosmos 1000 case where I had to mount the radiator on the inside top of the case. That meant warm air from inside was blowing through the rad.

Again in hot (eg Australian) weather I think
1) 1 good rear exhaust fan
2) 1 good CPU fan (eg. low cost but good Hyper 212+). I really don't think the Intel stock coolers are good enough.
3) 1 low noise intake fan blowing over the HDDs. In my climate these drives can easily hit mid 40C without a bit of cooling.
4) Make sure your graphics card is positioned in a well ventilated slot position.

Also don't block the PSU intake vent by sitting you case on thick carpet.

profdlp said:

profdlp said:

I have a hard time resisting the urge to fill a blank space with a fan when the case has one available. I do try and get quiet ones, though.

smarteyeball said:

I had a hard time resisting putting a fan in any blank space - whether it was meant for a fan or not

I know what you mean.

I had cases where the better part of them went into the trash in the form of round pieces I shook out of the hole saw. I wondered sometimes why I even bothered with a case at all - it would have been easier to build the thing on top of the motherboard box and point a giant box fan at it.

The Mountain Mods Extended Ascension was made for people like us. I went with the U2-UFO partly to save money on fans.