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Antec 1200 Airflow questions (I have pictures!)

S

Sekkai

Senior member
I recently purchased an Antec 1200 case.

I threw together the following picture to illustrate the current airflow.

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/402/antec.png

I apologize for the crappy diagramming, haha. The arrows indicate the direction of flow.


The blue blocks in the picture represent the 120 mm fans with the following specs (they have adjustable modes):

120mm Case Fan:
Low/Med/High
Speed: 1200/1600/2000 RPM
Noise: 25/28/30 DBA
Airflow: 39/56/79 CFM


The green block represents the following 120 mm fan (non-adjustable):

120mm Case Fan:
Speed: 1200 RPM
Noise: 20.1 DBA
Airflow: 49 CFM


The yellow block represents the following 200 mm fan:

200mm Case Fan:
Low/Med/High
Speed: 400/700/1000 RPM
Noise: 24/28/34 DBA
Airflow: Air Flow 83/127/168 CFM

And I also purchased this fan for my side panel (the purple ring in the picture):

120mm Case Fan:
Speed: 1300±20% RPM at 20°C, 2800±10% RPM at 55°C
Noise: 17dBA at 1300 RPM, 46.5dBA at 2800 RPM
Airflow: 38.6-93.7 CFM


Now, I recently purchased a fan for my heatsink (a Prolimatech Megahalem):

120mm Case Fan:
Speed: 1600 RPM
Noise: 33 DBA
Airflow: 88.11 CFM




My questions:

1. What direction should the side fan be blowing? I am assuming it should be taking air INTO the case (cool air in to help cool the gfx card, and then have all the exhaust go out the top and through the back. Is this incorrect thinking?)

2. How should I arrange my Megahalem + its fan? Should I have it pushing air up or back?

3. Am I arranging anything suboptimally or incorrectly?


Thanks for your help!


 
1. I would have the side fan blow in, for GFX card cooling, and extra cold air.

2. I would face the Mega upwards pushing the hot air up toward the big 200mm, also making the profile slimmer so air can flow through the case better.

3. With this set-up it should be fine. make sure ambient temp. is not high to get best cooling.
 
Thanks -- am I best off setting everything to high or are the fan setups, based on these orientations, not best set up for that?
 
if you have any 3-pin fans (your purple 120mm?) can be controlled through a program called SpeedFan or Nvidia program called nTune. (i suggest speedfan, because n-tune can act weird and its a hassle, there are a lot more programs out there too) from my guessing all the cases fans that came with the case are 4 pin molex so just control them with antec's adjuster

i suggest you monitor your temps. (can monitor your temps. on a program called RealTemp) on different levels of fan speed to see what sounds the best and keeps it the coolest to your favor, unless you want to keep the internal the coolest you can crank up the fan speeds to high.

 
Side fan blowing air in for sure = cold air on gpu and chipset

I would play with maybe removing one of the rear exhaust 120mm fans. I always run a program like prime95 for say 10 min and observe temps(cpu, gpu, ambient, etc). Remove or add a fan where it might work better and run p95 for another 10 min and observe temps again. Adjust fans accordingly. Sometimes a well placed fan or even removing them can affect temps greatly. If you have the time and patience try your heatsink both blowing through the rear and out the top. Glad to see you spent a little cash and got a good case. People under estimate the importance of a good case.
 
The 120 mm fans that I bought (the heatsink fan and the center fan behind the top front fan) come with 3-to-4 pin molex adapter plug things. The fans preinstalled in the case appear to be 4-pin, whereas the ones I bought appear to be 3-pin (the plugs are much tinier for the 3-pin than they are for the rather larger spiky 4-pins).
 
The 3-pin should be able to plug into the Motherboard,

and you could control the fan speed of that fan, along with the CPU heatsink fan with the program SpeedFan.
 
If I wanted to control all the fans through the software, would I need to convert all of them to 3-pin?
 
Yes. or find a 5.25 bay fan controller that comes with 4-pin molex to 3-pin adapters (most will not). but most 5.25 bay fan controllers don't support 7 fans, i think at the most is 6.

So go pick up (6) 4-pin to 3 pin adapters and a zalman 6 channel fan controller.

but mostly all fan controllers only take 3-pin and only have 6 channels.

so either find some 4-pin molex to 3-pins and get a 6 channel zalman 5.25 bay controller.


I tried to make my post simpler by editing in some stuff 🙂

i also remembered that most fan controllers have so many Watts per channel. not allowing your fans to reach full speed.


if i where you i would stick with the stock controllers.



OR i just thought of this, you could get some 3-pin Y splitters and just connect the splitter to the Motherboards 3 pin fingers giving you two 3-pin inputs for every 3-pin input on your motherboard
 
I mean there are manual controllers on the front for the first three fans, I figure I can just use those to set em to high. There's a control on the back for the rear fans and top fan as well. I think I just need to use the converters for the 3-pin fans I have to make them 4-pin as well so I can control those with software and the other fans with the on-case controls?
 
The fans that have 3 pin on them already keep them 3 pin, then connect them to the motherboards 3-pin plug-in's.

Then when you download SpeedFan you can control those 3 pin's you connected to the motherboard.
 
Dumb noobie question: Where do I connect the 4-pin fans?

How many spots on the mobo can I connect 3-pin fans to?
 
you have 3 of these connectors (3-pins). there are 2 over by the power supply 24-pin insert & and onboard power restart button. and 1 at the top by the 8-pin power supply connector.

you also have 2 4-pin connectors, these 4 pins are not like the Molex 4-pins, they look like the onboard 3-pin connectors put with a 4th pin on it, these type of 4-pins are used CPU fans that have a 4-pin connector, these connector are located by one of the ram slots, and the other is by the Floppy drive input (floppy drive input looks just like a IDE input.
 
So I would attach my heatsink fan, the center fan, and the sidefan to the 3-pin spots.

But there are 6 other fans that came with this case, all four-pin, and I only have 2 4-pins? I'd have to go check but I am assuming the fans are somehow bundled together (like rear fans coupled with the top fan and the front three fans coupled into one four-pin)?

Just checked -- each fan has its own 4-pin. So that's 6 4-pins and, once the other fans are in, 3 3-pins.
 
the fans that are on the molex 4-pin style only need 2 Pins in the molex connector (i believe one wire is the 12volt power and the 2nd wire is ground). but it more ideal to use those molex style plugins instead of a bunch of 3 pins.

the power supply should come with a couple molex (4-pin) connectors so you don't have to bunch them together? like you said.

so just connect all the molex connectors to the power supply's molex connectors. and connect the 3 pin fans you have to the motherboard.

PLUS if you tried to put all the molex plugins into one molex connector you fans would be going very slow because of the molex's different wire volt readings.
 
Ok so the 4-pins go to the PSU wires, the 3-pins to the mobo, and I assume the harddrives connect to the PSU *and* mobo, likewise for the optical drive? And I also assume the graphics card needs to be plugged into the PSU as well, in addition to the SATA thing and the wireless card?
 
Also, my mobo came with this weird l-bracket thing. I have NO idea what it's used for. It's not in the manual at all. It looks like something that would attach to the back slots (idk what you call it. The area where you can plug things into your SATA, 295 video card, etc), with a pad thing that goes behind the mobo
 
an I/O shield?

can you get me a picture?

oh i think you mean sata cable connections for your back bays.

has two yellowish sata cable coming out of it?

that part is not needed. its optional.
 
In that 3rd to last picture, that's a pass-through. once you once you connect the fan into the PSU molex connector you can use that pass-through to connect another molex (4-pin) device too.

In the seconds to last picture that's the 3-pin style you connect into the Mobo.


I would not worry about that little shield thing. looks like a vent for letting air out, but you already have those stock.
 
Wait, once I connect the fan and then the molex? I thought they were one in the same, here. I can connect the four-pins from the fan directly into the PSU. I am assuming that's all it takes? Just connecting each fan to a separate molex connector? Or is there a way to combine things (since you're saying "it's a passthrough for another molex too").

My heatsink and fans just arrived!
 
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