Case Fans - Fractal R4

[Fester1]

I'm building my first PC ever and I'm confused with some issues regarding case fans.

I want to replace the 2 stock fans that come with the Fractal R4 case with Noctua NF-A14 fans. However, I have some questions:

1) My plan is to put 2 in the front as intake and one in the back as exhaust. Is this an efficient use of the fans? I will have a SSD and one or two hard drives. Thus, I'm wondering if the bottom intake fan will just be blowing into the bottom hard drive tray?

2) I don't know if I should plug them into the motherboard or the R4 fan controller. Is one way recommended over the other? I read that if I plugged them into the motherboard, I should get a splitter of some kind?

3) What voltage should I set them at, 7v?

4) What Noctua fans do I get and why: the NF-A14PWM or the NF-A14FLX?

Here's some of the key components I have already:
I5 3570k (not overclocked)
Fractal R4 case
Seasonic SS-660XP2 PSU
Asus Z77 Sabertooth motherboard
EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW (not overclocked)
Hyper 212 EVO
SSD
one or two hard drives

 

[lehtv]

1) Yes. For a moderately overclocked single GPU setup, one 140mm exhaust is sufficient, even more so if the graphics card has a blower style cooler (I think yours does). The two intakes will ensure positive pressure and keep dust out (so long as you remember to clean the front filter every now and then). With your number of hard drives, remove the upper drive cage, this lets the upper fan cool the main components directly while the lower fan cools the hard drives.

2) I would prefer to have manual control, but Asus boards typically have very good fan control as well. You can play around with both options if you want. The Sabertooth should have four case fan headers, so you shouldn't need to use splitters.

3) Yes, 7V is probably the best balance between noise and cooling with the Noctua fans, because the same is true with the default fans. At 5V, noise levels aren't much lower while temperatures suffer noticeably, and noise levels may actually be higher at load since the PWM controlled CPU and GPU fans need to run faster when there is little case cooling.

4) If you want the fans to be voltage controlled or compatible with the case's integrated controller, you don't want to buy the A14PWM. PWM fans use four-pin wires which are incompatible with the case's fan controller. The A14FLX is a great choice.

Before making the decision of using voltage control, however, I would also take a look at the possibility of PWM control. I'm using the same case as you and was in the same situation, I wanted to replace the stock fans with something better. I bought four BeQuiet! ShadowWings 140mm PWM fans which run at about 300-1000RPM. The trick with PWM case fans is that you need a splitter cable that connects all fans to the same CPU_OPT header on the motherboard for PWM control, but powers the fans not from the motherboard, but directly from the PSU. You can read my results in this thread. All I can say is it works very nicely. In my opinion it works better than using manual voltage control because you never really need to use the fan's top speed in a quiet build, you only need it to adjust a little bit in order to balance cooling and noise between idle and load. To do this with Noctua fans you need the NF-A14PWM fans and an Akasa 5-way splitter cable.

 

[coffeejunkee]

All casefanheaders on the Z77 sabretooth support pwm control so I'd get the pwm version.

That said, I think it's a bit of a waste of money, the stock casefans are quiet enough when undervolted and your system doesn't really need so much cooling. I'd rather spent the money on a better cpu cooler.

 

[lehtv]

All casefanheaders on the Z77 sabretooth support pwm control so I'd get the pwm version.

You're right, I had to check the manual to be convinced :awe:. That's a pretty awesome feature. Boards that I've seen in the past use 4-pin case fan headers didn't actually support PWM

 

[coffeejunkee]

Yeah, it's a nice feature, but what the manual doesn't tell you is if the casefanheaders support voltage control as well. Most casefans still being 3-pin one would expect them to but I'm not guaranteeing anything.

And it's been the case for a while now that all ROG and Sabretooth models offered pwm casefanheaders, but most of the normal range models still have ´fake´ pwm headers. P8Z77 Deluxe had pwm headers but for Z87 Deluxe it's back to voltage control.

Me, I don´t really care about voltage or pwm, just wish they mentioned it on the specs page instead of buried in a manual.

 

[Fester1]

Anyone?

Seems like I have three otpions:

options:

1) Control through R4 with 3 fan controller (FLX fans needed)
2) Control through motherboard & ASUS Software (PWM fans needed)
3) Control through splitter & BIOS (PWM fans needed)

What I really want to do is set the fans so that they adjust themselves based on the heat inside the case. Is that an option?

 

[lehtv]

Connecting to the mohterboard doesn't need PWM fans, the board is capable of voltage control as well.

The splitter idea is obsolete given that the board supports PWM on all case fan headers.

If given the choice between similarly priced PWM and non PWM options, I would pick PWM (as I did).

 

[Fester1]

Connecting to the mohterboard doesn't need PWM fans, the board is capable of voltage control as well.

The splitter idea is obsolete given that the board supports PWM on all case fan headers.

If given the choice between similarly priced PWM and non PWM options, I would pick PWM (as I did).

I thought that only one slot on the sabertooth was truly a PWM header?

What's the benefit of PWM vs just changing voltage?

 

[lehtv]

PWM allows for a wider range of operation, with the possibility of automatic control spinning the fan between 300 RPM to 1000 RPM depending on CPU load, for example. Your motherboard's BIOS should support customizable PWM profiles so you can determine how you want the fan's speed to react to load.

 

[Fester1]

I need to connect a NF-F12PWM to the Hyper 212 EVO. However, it is my understanding that the CPU_OPT will be controlled in the same way as the CPU_FAN header. That doesn't seem like that will work at all. Wouldn't the 120MM fan on the Hyper 212 EVO need to ramp up more than the two front and one back case fans?

If not, then I could just use a splitter and put the cpu fan on CPU_FAN and the case fans on CPU_OPT (via a splitter and molex connection).

My motherboard has the following headers:

CHA_FAN1
CHA_FAN2
CHA_FAN3
CHA_FAN4
CPU_FAN
CPU_OPT