Case Fans

[hansbbans]

Hi,

Im a newbie building his first system with some questions about case fans. I'm going to be overclockinga 1.6 to hopefully around 2.4 levels. I plan on using artic silver with the reatil heat sink and fan.

But for case fans:
1. how many do you need? is somewhere from 2-4 enough?
2. what differentiates between an intake and exhaust fan? Is there actual difference when you buy the fan? or when/how you mount it?
3. 3pin and 4 pin fans? Are the pins just about you connect to the power supply? if so, is one preferred?

Thanks for all of your help guys.

[Goldwing]

Check out my reply to your post in "Cases and Power Supplies".

....and for future reference just post in the most appropriate category it is generally considered bad form to double post the same problems in different categories.

That said Welcome to the forums hansbbans!

[JaY_III]

1st i would recommend upgrading from the retal HSF to something a little better. It is true some people seem to overclock ok with the retail heastink/fan... it was not desigend by intel to be used as an overclockers heatsink... and it shows.
it would be nothing but bad advise if i said it was ok (or even didnt say it was not ok) for overclocking with.

AS for how many you need, it all depends on your case, cables and the airflow. What you will generaly want is the intake in the lower front of the case,(1 or 2 fans, depending on what the case allows) And exhaust in the top rear, 1 or 2 in the PSU (depends on PSU design) and 1 or 2 in the case (once again depends on case design)

It is true you can always cut extra holes in the case... but i would recomend you do that after you have your setup going to determine if it is really needed..... well unless you wana go all out, then by all means go for it.

The difference between an intake and an exhaust fan is, the intake blows/sucks air into the case. While an exhaust fan blows/sucks air out of the case. Thier is no actual difference when you buy the fans, it is only how you mount the fan... mounting it either to blow suck air in or blow air out.
Fans gerally blow air towards the label. so if you were looking at a fan strait on, it would be blowing air at you.....
So to make a fan an exhaust fan, you (generaly) have the fans label touching the case. And an intake fan, the label would be facing the inside of the case.

Another thing to note about fans is, it is better to have more pressure blowing air out of the case than sucking air in. As when more air is being sucked in than blown out, dust tends to build up faster.

The difference bettween a 3 and 4 pin fan is.....
3 pin fan, attach to a fan header on the motherboard.
Some motherboard have 1 or 2, better boards have 3 or 4 (anyone seen one with 5+?)
3 pin fans (when they have all 3 wires) have RPM monitoring abilitys (yellow wire)
3 pin fans all run at 12 volts.

4 pin fans attach to a standard molex conector (PSU)
4 pin fans do not have RPM monitoring.
4 pin fans generaly run at 12V although a few can be found running from 5V.

Also not that some 3 pin fans should not be run from a fan header. This applies to high wattage fans such as DELTA's. They draw more watts than the fan header can supply. this results in the Fan header being blown. So check your manualy to see the max watts (or amps) a fan header can put out if you get heavy duty fans.
Fans like that can still be ran from a 4 pin molex connector with an adapter.. or you could make one yourself. If you make one yourself dont cut the the yellow wire off the 3 pin connector as you can still plug that into a fanheader to view how many RPM's the fan is running at.

Hope that clears a few questions up