Do I need this fan? OPINION QUESTION! (I could wait till the box is built, but what fun is that?)

[MichaelD]

My rig under construction will be housed in an Antec KS-282 Mid-tower case. The case has the power supply fan (no duh), as well as an 80mm ball bearing fan right under the power supply blowing out, and a standard 80mm fan on the front panel at the bottom sucking air in. I have an Antech "card cooler" fan that mounts in an expansion bay. The fan is flat, and has a scroll-type fan inside that blows out the rear (i.e. where you'd hook up your monitor cable on the expansion card.)

Right now, I'm planning on building the case WITHOUT the card cooler fan, for these reasons:
1. The Creative Labs vid card has a little fan on the chipset
2. I've looked at lots of those "air flow in the case" diagrams. I.E. air gets sucked in from the intake fan at the bottom front of the case, passes over the cpu and cards and gets sucked out by the exhaust fan mounted under the power supply.

If I put this card cooler fan in, it would screw with the airflow, no?

More annoying newbie questions. Yes, I could just wait and see if the case runs hot, but I'm trying to be proactive. Thanks in advance for all your highly valued, educated and awesome opinions and answers.

 

[MulLa]

Well I am not too sure about the airflow effect that a card cooler would have. But I am sure that if you arn't planning to do any overclocking on that video card, a card cooler would not be necessary. Am sure that many are running without it fine.

 

[Syborg1211]

Heck, I am overclocking and all I had in my old case is a power supply fan, a cpu fan, and a tiny graphics card fan. None of that intake exhaust bull. But now with my new sx1030b I have 2 exhaust, 2 intake, one in power supply, one on cpu, one on graphics card and one on my motherboard heatsink. I have not notice much of an overclock boost but temps have gone down a tiny bit but both ways worked fine.

 

[office boy]

MichaelD, Those "card cooler" things really don't do much anyway. And they are notorious for early failure.

 

[rhinox99]

Seems like all my card cooler ever did was make lots of unnecessary noise. I didn't notice a different in temp when it was on so seems kinda useless if you have the rear fan already

 

[nateholtrop]

i had one of those card coolers and all it did was actually raise my temp.

Nate

 

[Taz4158]

Had the same experience here, I think your covered in terms of fans.

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks for the replies. PopOp (popular opinion) wins this one. I'll try it without the fan. My new rig is also the first one I've ever had with hardware monitoring. Aren't newbies pitiful? I've read what the average case and CPR temps are for a non-OC'd 1GHZ Tbird...I'll see how my numbers match up and go from there. Thanks./