Question NVRMND

[tcsenter]

EDIT: Oh brother, false alarm. I was wrong. The fan direction is oriented the same way as the orig.

I am rebuilding someone's PC from AMD Athlon FX days. It uses the tank-like Antec Nine Hundred (V1) "Big Boy" full tower. The absurd 230mm (oval) exhaust fan on the top (roof) was broken and I found a replacement. But it is reverse direction. Instead of exhaust it will blow into the chassis. PSU is at bottom.

Is there any problem foreseeable to others? I suppose I could install so it exhausts but that would leave the exposed part of the fan (logo side) will have no protection. i.e. those four cross member pieces that extend from outer frame to inner will be facing the fan grill.

 

[In2Photos]

If you use it as intake it would blow any dust that settles into the case unless there's a really good filter. I'd reverse the fan and keep it as exhaust. Looks like it's out of the way enough.

 

[Ken g6]

How's the rest of the airflow arranged? If the CPU fan was blowing upward, you'll want to try to rearrange it. Or do you have a water loop?

I have a small (120mm) top fan on my case blowing straight down onto the back of the CPU heat sink, which then blows toward the back exhaust fan. I like this arrangement, but I also like that I have a small magnetic filter I slapped on the intake. You might want to look for some sort of filter material.

 

[tcsenter]

Front chassis fans (2) are intake, rear (1) is exhaust and CPU tower cooler is blowing from front to back toward the rear chassis fan. So the setup is pretty much all front intake to rear exhaust.

 

[mindless1]

Is it a high power gaming system build?

Does the case have a large perforated, non-filtered area on the side panel?

I'd be inclined to make the top fan a filtered intake fan, not wanting negative case pressurization to suck dust in through the side panel (and every other hole/gap/crevice, fouling the case USB ports too), and then add filter material to the front bezel large-hole mesh because it doesn't look filtered either?

If it's not a high powered gaming system, I'd rather delete the top fan than having it blowing out, as the other fans are plenty for just a typical office class build, unless it's going to have a boatload of HDDs in it.

I'd need the case in front of me to measure, to know more. For example rather than a top fan at all, for a gaming system, I'd rather put a blocker panel on the side panel mesh, with a hole sized for a side intake fan, and filtered intake there for the video card.

 

[tcsenter]

Yep that's the beast, same side window exactly as seen. None of the fans or side mesh have any dust filter. This PC had uncommonly little dust internally. So little I mentioned it and owner said he and wife have allergies so they have a couple allergen-rated air cleaners in their house, including his entertainment room. So I'm not concerned with dust.

It is a middling performance build (older tech). Core i7-9700K, GTX 1660 SUPER (the shorter single-fan design with slightly lower clocks than the boosted OC designs), 64GB DDR4, one SSD and one HDD.

 

[tcsenter]

Oh brother, false alarm. I was wrong. The fan direction is oriented the same way as the orig.

I did not pay too close attention when disassembling, and just "ass-umed" that Antec would not have left one side of this HUGE fan exposed without the protective effect of either 1) a grill or 2) the four little cross member pieces that join the outer and inner frame. But I have looked at a couple vids and reviews it appears the 'underside' of the fan (interior to the chassis) is indeed just fully exposed with no protection at all. i.e. The open face side down. DOH!

 

[mindless1]

There have been times when I didn't care what it looked like, and didn't have a fan grill on hand for various oddball sized fans, so I just used some 14ga solid core electrical wire (insulation stripped off, but you could just use it with the black insulation on if color matters) and ran it to diagonally opposite holes.

I suppose if you really wanted to, you could then add more pieces, and even solder them together if using bare wire. It helped that I had the spare wire lying around. If I didn't, probably would have just looked around on amazon/ebay/etc for a grill, or these days, aliexpress or temu if I didn't mind waiting a month to receive it.

Then again if the system cables are secured, and the owner has enough common sense to not stick their fingers up in the fan while the system's running, it might not need one. Having the cover on the case should keep pets away, and hopefully children aren't opening computers up and poking around inside while running.