Originally posted by: Curto
I have a SLK-900 with a 120mm fan on it
who said light grade fencing wire has no place in a pc.... used it to tie on a 80-120mm adapter, then the 120mm fan is screwed onto that
I honestly don't think that's a great idea. Over a 2 week period a while back I went totally insane and made several experimental cpu coolers, trying many configurations of fan size and heatsink/airflow design. What I found was...
Air is expelled from a fan in a hollow cone shape. In other words, air leaves the fan at about 30 degrees to the fan axis, leaving a cone shape dead zone in the middle. The bigger the fan, the bigger the dead zone. When putting a large fan on a smaller heatsink using an adapter, the air flow can hit the sides of the adapter at an angle approaching 90 degrees, losing force and leading to poor air flow. Air is only moved thru the heatsink due to a build up of pressure. The sides of the adapter need to be more vertical to get best results, but the adapter would get way too tall. I found the best results came from small fans with high airflow rates (although they tend to be noisy, e.g. 60mm 7200rpm Delta). I also found that the performance of the cooler as a whole was much more affected by the power of the fan than the design of the heatsink.
My own preference is for coolers *designed* to take 80mm fans. Smaller fans tend to be noisy, and larger fans on adapters don't justify their size. I haven't tried a 70mm model as yet, but I have one one order.
I'm thinking of either writing a white paper on this topic, or committing myself to the local nuthouse for treatment of a obsessive compulsive disorder... whichever one I manage to do first.
Oh, and one last thing. I found that the best place to buy fans of all shapes and sizes at very reasoable rates is not from computer vendors such as NewEgg, but rather from electronic suppliers such as
The Electronic Goldmine. $10 for a fan is just too much.
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