Placement of fans on a Antec SX1030. Direction of fan blow?

[oreoafk]

Should i have the front fans blowing in and the back fans blowing out?

If not then how should i do it...

 

[dcdomain]

Yeah pretty much, just make sure you have the air flow moving in one direction... but no one really does it from back to front because the fans in front are lower than the fans in back. Not to mention, the power supply fan is also blowing out to the back. Hot air rises, so you suck cool air from the front and out through the fans higher in the back.

Got a questions for all you Antex SX1030 owners. Right now, I have four case fans running in my computer. The two 80mm Antec ones that came with the case, and I bought two more identical ones... (I think, they were 80mm Antec's too).

The damn thing is loud as hell now, has anyone messed around with the fans to figure out the best cooling with the least amount of fans? I'm thinking about disabling the fan in the harddrive rack, and one of the fans in the back. Since the IDE cable connecting my two harddrives in that harddrive rack block most of the air coming in from that fan. One of the harddrives is a Maxtor 7200rpm and the other is a 5400rpm. Don't really think they need a fan there do they?

My other idea was to disconnect both fans in front. The bottom fan is pretty much far away from most of the heat source (CPU)... so I doubt most of that cool air reaches there anyway... what do you guys think? I'm thinking Antec already messed around with the fan configurations, and figured two exhaust fans were the best way to do it, since the way it was shipping, was with the two exhaust fans...

Hit me up with what you guys think about this topic...

 

[ericd]

If you are looking for quiet the best thing to do is to buy Adda's or Panaflos. However if you are looking to do it without any extra expense you could certainly disable two of the fans, I would say the two front fans (negative air pressure will take care of inflow for you)....or you could convert them all over to 7 volt. I have been very happy with my SX1030 with 4 Panaflos in it. Keeps everything reasonably cool and I can sleep in the same room with my computer for the first time in a long time. Airflow is about the only thing I hear anymore so I am considering cutting off the factry fan grill/fingerguards from all of the fan positions to minimize this.

Eric

 

[Toad]

Unless you've got things way overclocked, I doubt all those fans are necessary. As long as you've got a good airflow through the case and you're not overheating or anything you're fine.

I've got 2 Antec 80mm fans. One in the front bottom and one underneath the PSU in the back. Plus the PSU fan of course. Then there's a small fan cooling my chipset. And today I put on a FOP32. Right now it's giving off a pretty good hum

I can't imagine what a couple extra 80mm would do!

 

[dcdomain]

What kind of temps are your comps running at? This was my first Athlon rig... and after hearing about all the heating issues, and experiencing some heating problems on my bro's Compaq K6 rig... I was paranoid.

I installed that hardware monitor software that came with my MSi mobo... I know it's a little off, but it's better than nothing. My temps usually hover around 45c for the CPU and 25c for the chassis. I was thinking with four case fans and that taisol heatsink and cpu fan, I'd be doing better than this... I'm not even doing anything cpu intensive right now.

What would be a good target temp to reach for cpu and chassis? And what temps should I never go over for them?

Does anyone know what decibels the Antec 80mm case fans are? I'm taking a look at those Adda's and Panaflo's...

 

[oreoafk]

So any suggestions of the air flow?

 

[ericd]

oreoafk-yes you should have the fronts be intakes and the back fans be exhaust.

dcdomain-The antec 80mm fans run at 30 dBA. Which I think is a fairly accurate rating from my experience. Also if you're case temp is 20 degrees Celcius below your processor temp then you really don't need more case cooling, you could probably even step it back a little. Sure throwing 4 120mm Sunons in there might decrease your processor temp by a couple degrees but you are going to see much better results by buying a good heat sink and fan.

Eric

 

[dcdomain]

Ericd, which heatsink and fan would you recommend for a 1.1 ghz on a MSi Pro2a board? Is 45c a bad temperature for the cpu to be at? What's a good target temperature for my cpu?

 

[oreoafk]

my cpu temperature is 85 degree F.... i have a 1ghz tb

 

[ericd]

I would recommend either the Alpha PAL6035 with your choice of fans (depending on the amount of noise you are willing to tolerate) the Agilant Articooler (if you can actually find one) or the Taisol CGK742092 (I havn't actually used either of the last two but I hear both are excellent). I would say that 35 celcius would be a good goal to shoot for although I don't think that 45 is bad at all. You could probably run that processor for years at that temp. By the way if you do find a Articooler tell me first so I can get one too.

Eric

 

[Leezell1]

Glad to see this post, as I'm starting building my first system on Monday.

After consideration, I'm looking at simply running an 80mm Antec fan on the back of my case, along with the power supply fan and the CPU fan. I'm worried about animal hair and dust being actively pulled into the case by a lower fan (like I found in my old Compaq), so I'm hoping the negative pressure might be enough to keep everything cool (as Ericd suggested earlier).

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Lee

 

[ericd]

There's nothing wrong with a little trial and error. If you find that that singe Antec isn't keeping everything cool enough.....put in more fans. If you do end up needing to put front fans in you can probably use a fan filter that you could pick up at www.caseetc.com (sorry to lazy to do the link thing today). That would keep most pet hair etc out of your case and you would just have to clean it occationaly.

Eric

 

[Leezell1]

Ericd

Thanks for the link, good site.

On another quick subject, I'm still looking through the threads on this site, and haven't found any clear consensus yet on CPU coolers. As I'm not planning on overclocking this one in the short term, any reason why I shouldn't simply use the cooler that comes with the Athlon 1G, whatever it is?

Thanks
Lee

Update:
On review of other sites and then looking at my own cooler, I just found out that it is a Taisol 733092. So it shouldn't have the problems of the 742 with the MSI board. There we are. Thanks again.

 

[eyor]

you may want to seven-volt the fans like this

 

[AznBruin03]

I'm also currently running four panaflos in my SX1030. There is a difference between the Antec fans and the Panaflos, but I personally think the difference is relatively small. But if you want to quiet things down, I definetly recommend getting the panaflos and cutting out the grills with a dremel or something. My computer runs pretty quiet(and cool) with the panaflos, and I think the majority of the sound is coming from my four HDs anyway. Well hope this helps a little.

 

[dcdomain]

Well, my fans are so loud right now, I can barely hear the harddrives. I just checked my temp now, I opened the window to my room, and it's the middle of the night. So it's cold as hell in here. The cpu is 89f = 32c. Chassis is 68f = 28c. Not bad... I might just have to leave the windows to my dorm open, I like that anyway... thanks EricD, I'll look into the ones you mentioned. I just remember putting the heatsink on this thing was a bitch. My friend cut his finger trying to get that sucker on. When you said 35c, is that idle? I'm guessing it'd be hard to hit that if I was doing some hardcore 3d modeling...

 

[ericd]

dcdomain-Yes I did mean idle. I don't think you would get a 1.1 gig T-Bird down to 35 celsius under strain without pelts, watercooling, or a gift from the cooling gods.

AznBruin-What did you use to cut the fan grills off your SX1030 (that's my next project). Also did you replace them with anything or are they just open to the outside?

Eric

 

[MulLa]

You guys are in the middle of Winter arn't you? What't the room temperature when you took those readings?

 

[oreoafk]

?

 

[oreoafk]

Anyone?