Antec Phantom 350: Is one case fan enough?

[imported_Matts]

I was thinking of switching to the Antec Phantom 350. Only thing is I don't know what to do about cooling. Would one quiet Nexus 120mm fan be enough? It's airflow is measured at 32 I believe. Or should I make it two fans? or three?

 

[wisdomtooth]

I wouldn't do that if I were you.

When you switched to the Seasonic S12, it needed to spin up to cool down your system. You take away the venting from the PSU by switching to a fanless unit, it will just make your case even hotter.

That means you'll have to run those 120mm case fans at full-bore loudness. 😛

Keep your S12, and put your case fans on fan controllers or do the 5V/7V mod to slow them down. That way you will have a few quiet fans instead of having one LOUD fan. 😀

 

[imported_Matts]

I was thinking of buying a Nexus 120mm fan. it's supposed to produce only 20 decibals of noise while producing an airflow of 30. Do you think that'll make the Seasonic run quietly like it should?

 

[wisdomtooth]

I think your present case fans can actually help that Seasonic run like it should. You just need to slow them down a bit.

You can invest in additional Nexus fans (by the way, Nexus fans are rebadged Yate Loons, which is exactly the fan you have in the Seasonic), but I think you want to try slowing down your existing fans to make sure it can actually get things quiet before you buy the Nexus.

Also, if you have a very hot-running video card (like an ATI 9800 or NVidia 6800 etc), you might want to get an Arctic Silencer for it-- It will duct heat directly out of the case rather than add to the thermal burden inside. That may also help your Seasonic run slow.

HTH.

 

[CheesePoofs]

What is your system? Some older ones could run with just 1 fan fine, other newer ones would have a tougher time with it.

 

[imported_Matts]

well, i was thinking of replacing my case fan with a 120mm nexus since it's supposed to be very quiet despite moving a decent amount of air. I'm hoping that'll cool things down enough for the Seasonic to make less noise. Problem is I can't slow down the case fan I have now. I bought the Antec Sonata back when I had an athlon 2500+ and it was very quiet. The psu that came with the case had a "fan only" connector which ran the fan very slowly. That psu died. I used that as an excuse to just buy a new pc from scratch keeping only the Sonata case.

My current system:

Athlon 64 3000+ Socket 939
Chaintech VNF4 Ultra nforce4
1 gig Patriot Ram
2 sata hd's
x300 pci video card
seasonic 430 watts psu
fans: rear case fan, cpu fan, and psu fan. all else is passive

I read that the Seasonic controls fan speeds so of course I assumed it controls the rear 120mm case fan and it doesn't.

 

[wisdomtooth]

Yeah, unfortunately your case fan uses a different plug than the standard 3-pin Molex fan plugs used these days (the 3-pin molex has a signal line for reporting fan speed, that's why).

Definitely give the modified Y-Splitter I linked to earlier a try though-- I'm sure that will slow down your existing fan like the Antec used to do.

HTH.

 

[imported_Matts]

i already ordered the Nexus. I'm afraid of trying that y-splitter trick. i'd kill myself if I broke my week old pc.

 

[imported_ceefka]

Matts, there's lots of reviews.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article188-page1.html
http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/reviews/cases/Antec_Phantom_350_1.html
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=716
http://www.xtremecomputing.co.uk/review.php?id=132
http://www.tweakzone.nl/extreviews/3587
http://www.teschke.de/heatpipes/News/co...e_PSU/Antec_Phantom/antec_phantom.html
http://www.ntcompatible.com/story42734.html

I'd compare my rig to the ones used in the reviews and consider the temperatures of other components in my system before switching to a fanless PSU. I am contemplating a fanless PSU myself. My case has 3 fans already 2x80mm 1x120 so adding a fanned PSU would add another 1 or 2.