Not Really New - But

[jimmyj68]

Reference my post about not needing the front fan on my P-160 case, wisdom seems to suggest that a front fan is a good idea for the sake of your hard drives (especially in the case of the P-160 and its like).

I'm going to reinstall the front fan but I believe I read or heard somewhere that the front and rear fans should not run at the same speed. If this is a functional move, which fan should be running the fastest - front or back. I vaguely recall a long article about respective fan speeds but I have no idea where to find it. Is such a theory needed if the two fans are not the same size? Like a 120 in the rear and a 92 or 80 in fornt?

 

[rforum]

I really don't think you need a 'theory' for operating multiple fans in your P160 - a jet engine maybe, but not your computer. I have a P160 with front and rear 120mm fans connected to a fan controller to control fan speed/noise. I usually have the rear fan running as fast as noise permits (I like a quiet computer). The front fan runs slowly or not at all. The P160 manual suggests not using the front fan if noise is an issue. Hard drives are close to the front cut-outs and I believe the pull of air thru those cut-outs is enough to cool the drives. I have measured case temperature with and without the front fan and found the difference negligible.

 

[jimmyj68]

Yea! I just did that yesterday and got the same results. However, some folks really believe that you need the front fan to draw more air over the hard drives. I have two Hitachis and a WD in my system all 80 gig so I think I'll kind of follow your lead and let noise be the deciding factor on how fast the front fan runs. Thanks

 

[CrispyFried]

Monitor the drives temps via mbm5 or something, then do a defrag with the fans on and off, see what the temp diff is and if its worth it. If you have a front filter like my case you should probably run the front fan at a decent speed to make sure the air enters via the filter and not gaps between drives or other odd spots.