Cooler Master HAF X Airflow

[HolyDuFF]

Hey! I'm thinking about putting some more fans in my case but I don't know exactly how I should place them. I've drawn a picture of how I thought of placing them and the thinking behind it and I wonder what you guys think about it. Also can I place the 120 mm fan on the outside/inside of the 5.25" bays with cable ties? If so then how would it be with the vibrations? My motherboard is a ASUS Sabertooth Z77. Is it okay to connect the rear 140 mm fan and the 120 mm fan in the 5.25" bays to the ASST_FAN1/ASST_FAN2 fan headers and control them with the motherboard or would it damage anything? I've removed the two tiny assist fans because they made a very annoying whiny sound even at the lowest speed.

 

[dma0991]

What is your motive for adding more fans? Is it overheating? If it isn't and is working within safe operating temps, its perfectly acceptable to have slightly higher temps (+ ~5c) to compensate for a less complex fan setup, less noise and less vibration.

 

[HolyDuFF]

Not for me. I want it to be cooler.

 

[dma0991]

Adding more case fans won't help much if you want a noticeable temperature drop. More case fans has a less direct improvement than upgrading to a bigger heatsink. If you already have a large air cooler and your GPUs have the manufacturer's heatsink (as opposed to blower style), the next best step is watercooling.

If you wish to proceed with adding more case fans, I reckon the improvement would only be 3-5C, but 5C is too optimistic of a figure to achieve.

 

[Charlie98]

My HAF922 case was like swiss cheese... too many gaps and holes in the case to achieve positive case pressure. I wound up using tape to try to cover most of them, adding an additional 120mm fan on the bottom, using a push/pull setup on my 212+ CPU cooler... and I still had high temps.

I don't really know if having one of the 200mm fans on top turned over is going to help much, either, I would probably flip both top fans over and try that.

The HAF case isn't a very good design... IMHO. Why on earth does it have all those 5.25" slots when it could just do with 2 or 3 and have room for another 200mm fan up front?

 

[HolyDuFF]

Adding more case fans won't help much if you want a noticeable temperature drop. More case fans has a less direct improvement than upgrading to a bigger heatsink. If you already have a large air cooler and your GPUs have the manufacturer's heatsink (as opposed to blower style), the next best step is watercooling.

If you wish to proceed with adding more case fans, I reckon the improvement would only be 3-5C, but 5C is too optimistic of a figure to achieve.

It's fine for me dma0991. The extra fans I'm going to add is fans from other unused PCs. So it won't cost anything.

My HAF922 case was like swiss cheese... too many gaps and holes in the case to achieve positive case pressure. I wound up using tape to try to cover most of them, adding an additional 120mm fan on the bottom, using a push/pull setup on my 212+ CPU cooler... and I still had high temps.

I don't really know if having one of the 200mm fans on top turned over is going to help much, either, I would probably flip both top fans over and try that.

The HAF case isn't a very good design... IMHO. Why on earth does it have all those 5.25" slots when it could just do with 2 or 3 and have room for another 200mm fan up front?

You mean use both the top ones as intake? Btw there is only one installed in the back atm as exhaust. Yeah it's a really stupid case. Wouldn't recommend it fo shit lol.

 

[Charlie98]

You mean use both the top ones as intake? Btw there is only one installed in the back atm as exhaust. Yeah it's a really stupid case. Wouldn't recommend it fo shit lol.

I dumped my HAF922 and rebuilt in a Fractal Define Mini... temps immediately dropped with less fans and less noise.

Yes, I'd flip both top fans and run them as intake... pump that case full of cool air; there are plenty of gaps for the air to escape.

 

[jedimaster1968]

Hello-

I am running an overclocked AMD8350 black processor in a great Gigabyte board and it is all housed in my HAF X box. On the processor I have the fan it came with which I think is around 80mm, the power supply has a 140mm exhausting out the bottom then I have a total of 3 200mm fans in it. 1 of the 200's is in the side panel blowing air in and the other 2 200mm's are in the top exhausting out. I have another 140mm in the back panel exhausting out the back and for the big whopper I have an 230mm intake in the front. AMD processors make more heat by default because it draws more power and I have it clocked up to about 4.4GHZ without water cooling yet and it runs stable. So, I think this case is great and can accommodate quite a few fans for greater cooling.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Chiming in . . .

I come not to praise the HAFs, nor to bury them -- and/but with all respect to Charlie98 . . .

I think the case-makers tend to be a bit "retro:" So the 5.25" bays and "roomy" designs kept in mind (someone's) desires for multiple HDDs, and the earlier prices of SSDs. The fact is: You don't even need "drive-bays" to install a handful of SSDs -- just some Velcro. You could stick the suckers out of sight on the right, unvented case panel. Or you could build your own little "SSD cage" for four or five such drives . . out of [Guess! knowing I'm "Bonzai 'DucT"] foam art-board. you could then put your little art-board "construction-paper" product in the case anywhere it could fit -- with . . . . . VELLL-crow!

That being said. There are some "praises." You can pressurize a HAF-922 midtower pretty well with maybe two 200mm fans.

But -- BURY those G**D*** Coolermaster 200mm fans! I replaced them (variously) with either the NZXT (166 CFM) "white" 200mm fan, or the 144 CFM BitFenix Spectre-Pro LED fans. [Of those, the BitFenix units are better, quieter, and longer-lasting.]

What you could do with a HAF 922, you could do with the 932 or the "X."

Let's offer some dis-respects to the HAFs. They're ugly -- flat black. They use "plastic." And as we see here, people think they're "too well-vented."

If you don't give-a-s*** about flat black and plastic, "too-well-vented" has an easy and neat solution. You guessed it! Foam Art-board -- in FLAT BLACK. For the front-panel vents you don't want to use, cut art-board to fit the inside of each drive-bay cover. To block a 200mm or 140mm vent, do the same. You can punch holes in the art-board for nylon screws (with nuts) available at an electronics supply store. Or you can use a pair of properly-colored nylon/plastic wire-ties for each of the four mounting holes. Any number of ways to do it, and Velcro is ALSO good . . .

I have three HAF 922s: one for my server, the other two for my Sandy Bridge workstations. I'm not inclined to just "junk" them, because all of the vents, the possibilities for fans up to /including 200mm -- are good options. But most of all. . . . Most of all! . . . . They're relatively cheap cases for what you get with them, and you can probably do any number of things with a Dremel and drill to make case mods for any number of AiO coolers or custom-water radiators.

Sure -- there are better cases, and better for water-cooling for that matter. Take for instance the Corsair Carbide Air 540. There's a wonder for you! But they take up more floor-space. At $130 a pop, I'd rather just mod the HAFs.

If Charlie had cooling problems with his CM Hyper 212+ or EVO, he would've done better to duct it to the rear exhaust. The 212 EVO is between 2 and 5C worse than a Noctua D14 in performance comparisons. You'd eliminate that gap entirely with a $5 ThermalRight blue-rubber accordion duct.

Anyway, sorry for my rant. There was time around here when there was a lot more "case-mod" enthusiasm. These days, everybody just wants to pick something off the shelf that readily fits every other part they purchased. No fuss, no bother . . . . no-o-o-o stink, no sweat! But we're not talking about Duluth Trading boxer shorts here.

That being said, if I didn't have HAFs to mod for future builds, I'd look into something like a Corsair C70 . . . Maybe I'd even "consider" the Fractals.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Hey! I'm thinking about putting some more fans in my case but I don't know exactly how I should place them. I've drawn a picture of how I thought of placing them and the thinking behind it and I wonder what you guys think about it. Also can I place the 120 mm fan on the outside/inside of the 5.25" bays with cable ties? If so then how would it be with the vibrations? My motherboard is a ASUS Sabertooth Z77. Is it okay to connect the rear 140 mm fan and the 120 mm fan in the 5.25" bays to the ASST_FAN1/ASST_FAN2 fan headers and control them with the motherboard or would it damage anything? I've removed the two tiny assist fans because they made a very annoying whiny sound even at the lowest speed.

. . . .[pics]

. . . sorry again for the sequential post.

First -- the sabertooth board. If you don't like the 40mm fans that came with it, I advise against junking them. I could say that there's an equally likely possibility that you could use those ports for fans as you would use any other mobo fan ports. Your standard mobo fan port will accommodate a fan with amperage up to 1A. But -- who knows? Were those ASST_FAN ports limited in the motherboard design? I can't say -- don't know.

If you want to add more, bigger fans -- say, like a Spectre-Pro -- you could wire them in parallel to similar fans, connecting the resulting lead wire-plug to a single mobo port. The Spectre Pros use 0.33A. Add up the amperage; be sure it is decently lower than 1.0A.

But the Sabertooth should have enough 3-pin ports for an extra fan or two. Put all your PWM fans on one or more $10 Swiftech 8W-PWM-SPL-ST splitters. This frees up any dual purpose (PWM/3-pin) ports for these extra fans, and eliminates the power draw for the PWMs, allowing them to be controlled by a single PWM signal from your CPU_FAN port.

For the noisy 40mm fans, I'd replace them with 40mm fans that are more quiet. Noctua likely makes some. But the Sabertooth motherboard "armor" plate isn't designed for "armor:" It's a duct. And those two little fans keep the motherboard cooler than otherwise.

 

[MongGrel]

I still like messing around with the Full Tower HAF cases, bought one for my sister-in-law when I rebuilt theirs, for them it's overkill really ad almost traded them one of my smaller HAFs whe I did some work not long ago.

I could see a lot of possibilities for it for a future build, but didn't tear both apart at the time.

The wife still uses one of my ole Antec 900's, hell I still use an old Antec 1200, but about every fan in that one has been modded.

The tower HAFs do have a lot of room for a large AIO water unit even, which was almost why I broached the subject of trading with them at the time.

In the end, neither were goig to be doing that so I didn't bother.

Still tempted to get a small AIO in the small HAF in the bedroom for the HTPC, just to move a few other fans around that are Noctua to make it silent more or less.

I guess I do ot mind the flat black and plastic look myself, all of my computers I've built have been that way more or less, A few Red LED's still on the HAFs just because I weren't ripping those out as were pretty quiet to begin with, most the others have no LED or just some Blue from Asus mobos.

Even have a lot of that Noctua tan around in a couple, though they do make black these days.

 

[MongGrel]

http://www.amazon.com/40x10mm-Beari...UTF8&qid=1435099754&sr=8-1&keywords=Noctua+40

Or maybe a little Scythe.

http://www.amazon.com/Scythe-Mini-U...F8&qid=1435099925&sr=8-3&keywords=Noctua+40MM

 

[BonzaiDuck]

http://www.amazon.com/40x10mm-Beari...UTF8&qid=1435099754&sr=8-1&keywords=Noctua+40

Or maybe a little Scythe.

http://www.amazon.com/Scythe-Mini-U...F8&qid=1435099925&sr=8-3&keywords=Noctua+40MM

+1 and :thumbsup: EX-ACK-TLY!!

 

[MongGrel]

4 of 5 people found the following review helpfulInaudible Perfection!
By Rab Philos Name Uncertain on April 25, 2013
Verified Purchase I purchased this 40mm Noctua fan as an upgrade to replace a 35mm fan included with my Asus Z77 Sabertooth motherboard. The board comes with an alternate plastic attachment which allows users to install a 40mm behind the rear I/0.

The fan produces next to no sound. At full speed (Approx 4300 RPMs), I must put my ear directly over the fan to detect any sort of noise. The noise I do detect is a faint but high pitched sound comparable to that of a mosquito's wings: innocuous at a distance of more than six inches.

In comparison to generic 35mm fans I have two observations.

First, unlike my 35mm fans from Asus, the 40mm Noctua does not seem to produce any motor or coil whine as I perceived it. The Z77 Sabertooth's stock fans produce a high pitched hum similar to an inexpensive RC Car. This humming is clearly heard at any RPM over my PC's other components.

Second, the 40mm Noctua's cooling performance is unmistakably superior. In my opinion, the Noctua's high pressure is the primary factor contributing to its cooling success. Before installing the 40mm Noctua I ran tests recording temperatures at various locations on the Z77 Sabertooth. After comparing results, only VCCIO/VCCSA temperatures benefited from using the "Center Board". No cooling effect from the rear I/0 fan could be detected when using the included 35mm fan from Asus. I decided to remove and not replace the center board fan because it only supports a 35mm fan size of which I could find no silent alternatives. After installing the 40mm Noctua behind the rear I/0, the VCORE(Back) temperatures dropped 7 to 10 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the back panel of my computer case is now noticeably cooler to the touch when the CPU is pushed to full load.


__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Not my review, but ya get the idea.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

That's actually good to know, because I'm contemplating a "little ducting project" right now for my 2x SLI cards, and I think I can integrate mobo cooling into the mix with sort of a "half-a-Sabertooth" duct-plate. Let me elaborate just a tad . .

I've got a surplus of extra fans -- many used, some new. Among these are two Zalman OP-1 fans -- which are apparently 80x15mm. I'd thought they were 92mm, but the description at the Egg has the correct spec:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118212

I also have two 40x25mm Sunon Mag-Lev fans. these are all wonderful fans, but (fa-chrissake!) the Sunons' top-end is about 15,000 RPM!!

So to use these smaller fans -- the Sunons -- in my project, I'd have to go through extra hoops to control them thermally, or turn them into 7-Volt fans.

And the truth and principle of any ducting strategy: you don't need massive CFMs to make it work. The narrower the passage or aperture, the less airflow you need to get the effect that you want.

So those Noctuas have it. And it's chump-change. I'll always have this extra gear, waiting to be used some-how, in some way . . .

Even so, here's an interesting item:

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php...de5767bd97c6&gclid=CK76pfiup8YCFUNhfgodlCcJsg

~60 dBA !!! 14,000 RPM!! ~28 CFM !! But !! It's a PWM fan!! Somewhere, somehow . . maybe . . . I just don't intend to squander a Jackson out of mere . . . curiosity!:biggrin: