CASE FANS - How much do they help your temperature?

[l31itz]

I'm thinking about getting some case fans but I honestly don't believe they help. I have the side panel taken off and it's facing the wall so nobody can see it anyways. However, temperature is a concern of mine and I'm wondering if a couple of case fans will improve the temperature in my room. If so, which fans do I get???

 

[Zap]

Are you trying to "help" your temperature, your room temperature, your case temperature or your CPU temperature?

temperature is a concern of mine and I'm wondering if a couple of case fans will improve the temperature in my room

You want to cool down your room or heat up your room? What's the temperature outside the house?

 

[Avalon]

Adding case fans will cool down the inside of the case and all the components in it. However, your room is still going to be warmed just as much by your computer, with or without fans. My room is usually 3 degrees warmer than the rest of the house

 

[Jeff7181]

Use case fans. PC cases are designed to have air flow from the bottom front to the top rear. Taking off the side panel and having no airflow will create hot spots. You have no air flowing past your hard drive(s)... the only thing keeping them cool is the hot air rising off them and being replaced by cooler air. Contrary to what someone stated in another thread, if you have a pretty serious PC, you should have a good amount of air flowing through your case. If I put my hand behind my computer I can feel a steady stream of warm air behind each exhaust fan... and a steady stream of cool air coming in the front.

So yeah... unless you have it set up so air can rise out of the case efficiently and be replaced by cool air, you need fans.

*EDIT* I don't know why you're thinking fans in the case will effect the temperature of your room... all fans do is displace heat, they don't change the amount of heat generated.

 

[imported_pip]

try a nice case and something like 4 fans 80x80x20

i have a chemming 601 case aluminum and 5 case fans and 2 psu fans plus the cpu fan and my temp is like 34ºc on the cpu and like 22 on the case, put 3 fans to take air and 3 fans to introduce air to the case lower fans should make the inflow higher ones should tatke hot air

 

[Soulkeeper]

really all case fans do is circulate air and help the inside of the case (and thus other components) get as close to ambient temp as possible (never lower). The hotter it is in the room the less effect adding another case fan, or a faster one, will have on any of your temperatures. You'll reach that certain point of no returns from increased airflow in/out of the case.

good luck

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

Whether they help or not will depend on your case, your fan layout, and what components you are worried about.

As metioned above, most cases are designed to flow air from the bottom front to the top rear and a relatively straight fasion. If you have good ventilation, the air will not have too much time to heat up in the case and all your temps will be fairly cool.

If you remove the side panel, the overall temp will probably go down. This will help components with active cooling since their fans will now be blowing cooler air onto their heatsinks. However, components with passive cooling that used to be in the air stream generated by the case fans will now be in stagnant air, and could potentially have worse cooling than they did before.

Usually, I would bet that removing the cover will help pretty much everything except the HDD's. If your case allows it, you could always put a front fan by the drives to keep the air circulated even when the covers are off.

-D'oh!

 

[l31itz]

ok, so which case fans should I get??

 

[imported_pip]

i like sunnon, but hermaltake coolermaster vantec thare are lots of em check the noise levels and the air they move

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've done some experimenting with this, and think I've made some progress.

First, there's the skinny from the guru web-sites. For effective air-cooling, you can get high-power fans (like the Vantec Tornado), and therefore use fewer fans. But that also means higher decibel levels (fan-noise).

If you increase the number of fans in strategically chosen parts of the computer case, you can decrease the average rpm's for all fans, maintain the same air-flow, and decrease the noise.

If you use larger fans, they move more air at significantly lower rpm's, reducing noise further.

The heat-capacity and heat-absorbing potential of air increases with greater pressure, and deteriorates in a vacuum. Therefore, it is possible to create a slightly pressurized case with larger intake fans moving more air CFM's or cubic feet per minute into the case, and smaller fans exhausting slightly less CFMs.

Putting a blow-hole directly over the CPU heatsink-fan (preferably with a screen-filter) will suck more air into the case (assuming that the CPU fan blows air onto the heat-sink rather than sucking it off (the heatsink).

I like the ThermalTake "Smart" fans, because they can be run independently with thermal sensors, or from a front-panel rheostat knob. You can get them in 80mm, 92mm, and 120mm sizes. I used to be prejudiced against "LED" fans -- and TT now makes a lot of them -- but what the heck -- you won't trip over your computer in the dark, and the fan quality is very high.

I have an old Gateway 2000 solid-steel full-tower case (vintage 1995) that I modded into an ATX P-4. It is so big that I was able to fit two 120mm aluminum "Heatsink" fans on the lower case-front, between the metal case frame and the plastic facie -- with screen filters between the fans and the facie. Then I fitted two 92mm fans under the power supply side-by-side for exhaust, cut a blow-hole in the side right over the CPU fan, and fitted a duct to the case-frame between the blow hole and the HSF -- so that the (old-style U-shaped) case shroud comes off for maintenance unobstructed by having a duct riveted to it.

I've never before had a case and fan setup that keeps things so cool, and because twin fans share the load, the entire rig is whisper-quiet. The CPU fan is a 92mm "UFO" model that has max-rpm's of 3,600, and it is attached to a TT PIPE101 heatsink-with-heatpipes assembly. Much better than a 70mm fan spinning at 6,500 rpm.