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Getting better cooling from a fractal design R5.

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FishD

Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2002
Location
Dublin, lreland
Hi all,
Just replaced my 'Antec Nine Hundred' , with the R5, to improve on noise, and space, and disappointed with the cooling out of the box.

I moved the stock back fan, to the bottom front of the case (sucking from the ground), and put my watercooler push pull fan on the back in its place, pushing. so the total cofiguraion is 2x140 pulling air in, and a single 120mm pushing out. I have a couple of R3 140mm fans comming in the post.

Anyone here got a good configuration, or suggestion for the fractal box (apart from sending it back!),

Cheers
 
Cheers Earthdog.

put the 140mm on the roof exhaust.. Made a big difference. Will add another to intake to the front or bottom (since i have a window side) when new fans arrive.
 
Cheers Earthdog.

put the 140mm on the roof exhaust.. Made a big difference. Will add another to intake to the front or bottom (since i have a window side) when new fans arrive.

Be sure to record before/after temps so that you know how much it improves :)
 
Cheers, yes my benchmark is the old rig, and i have records for stock, CPU@100%, and CPU&GPU@100%

How can i balance air in and out, so i get only air in through the filters, and so no dust build up (as this was one of the objectives in upgrading). Is there any good write-ups on the topic?
 
EDIT FOR CLAIRITY:

You don't really want balance. You want the intake to be greater than the Exhaust.
 
If you have more intake than exhaust, this will prevent the dust from coming in the cracks (fairly negligible IMO in the first place).

That said, I always use more exhaust than intake and really don't have a problem with dust. But if you are particular about it, you will want to have more intake CFM than exhaust.
 
Ok, ive got enough info now. Thanks for the replies.
Aiming for positive airflow, unless I cant get enough cooling. Will try different configs when the extra fans arrive. Nice thing about the R5 is i can re-configure easily without any change to the hardware. Will report back when i settle on a configuration.
 
i recommend 2 front and 1 bottom fan pushing in with one rear and the side pulling out. especially if you have sli video cards with coolers that dump the heat in the case. having a 140mm right next to the video card section sucking out seems to make a good difference for me and ALL of the air going in is passing through filters. i didn't bother with top fans because the cooling is great as it is and i like silence as well as not having to look at an ugly grill.
 
..................especially if you have sli video cards with coolers that dump the heat in the case. having a 140mm right next to the video card section sucking out seems to make a good difference..... .


Thats sound advice, but unfortunately i got the 'windowed' version!, so i have to use the top. Still very quiet when not stressing it. Only issue is the temp difference between the 2 Gpu's underload is almost 10C. With the top one hitting 80c stressed. Its the truepower fan keeping the lower one cool. Short of putting a slot or hole for another fan in the side window (or ditching the windforces' or current case), i'm guessing there's little i can do. System appears stable under stress, and cores are all below 72c, so im probably good, and well away from that for most of my games.
 
Ok finished with my build. See my signature. Final configuration for the Case is with 6x140mm fans, 3 in 3 out (of which 2 are for Kraken61). Temp maxing on the new 2600k @ 73C with everyting (including SLI) @ 100%.

Office16_031.jpg

And here's the temps under load.

Office16_040.jpg
 
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