Need help with case airflow and fans in general

[Jrdnj15]

Hello,

I Just recently Modded my CM690 by giving it a nice new paint job and also adding a side window however by adding the side window i have lost the option to add side fans (if a picture is needed of the new side with window i can add one) . The problem i am running into now is airflow and cooling. Nothing is overheating, my CPU after five runs with IBT (Intelburntest) does not reach a higher temperature than 65C. The GPU under stress in games like BF3 and GW2 never seems to get any higher than 65C either. However i feel even though these temperatures are not extremely high i can do a lot better especially seeing as nothing in my pc is OC'ed. I also feel that a big contributor to the temps i am receiving is my fan layout.

I Currently have 5x 120MM fans in my case. However, as far as i know they all different which i know is not good. I have been doing a lot of reading about different types of airflow things like negative and positive pressures and which is best for cooling purposes. From what i have gathered it seems you want to try to balance it out but lean a little in negatives favor by making your exhaust slightly stronger than your intake. I am still having trouble understanding the things like CFM's and RPM's i understand the basic concept of the two but what i don't know is for example do you want all your exhaust fans to have a high CFM and your intake to be slightly lower?

Below is a picture of my case i have marked each fan with a number and i will explain my idea behind each one and why i put it in that position.



Fan #1: This is an old power supply fan it is very loud however it seems to move the most air out of all the fans i have.

Fan #2: This came with the case it has not been moved and is still in it's original spot. It feel like it moves little to no air and i put it there just to help a little with intake but it seems pointless considering it is blocked by the hard drive bays.

Fan #3: This fan moves a lot of air my idea for putting this there was to intake cool air through the front of the case and create a constant stream of air between Fans #: 3, 4 and 5

Fan# 4: stock Intake fan on heatsink.

Fan# 5: If i'm not mistaken this is the 2nd fan that came with the hyper 212+ for the push pull setup but i'm using it as an exhaust.

So there is my plane crash =] It would be greatly appreciated if you guys can help me out maybe give some input and recommendations because as you can see i have no idea what the hell i'm doing lol. On a side note i am ok with purchasing more fans but i do not want to go insane and spend 150-200 dollars on fans if that is the case i would rather hold out for a bit save up and maybe get a nice water cooling kit around the holidays.

Thanks in advance.

Wow apparently not only do I fail at cooling but counting as well. I forgot #4 in pic above and there is no #6

 

[Conumdrum]

Negative/Positive don't matter. Just get good case fans.

If temps are bad, get better fans. We have lots of STICKIES in the Air and WC section, and Martinsliquidlab.Org

Any top fans in the case? Are there openings?

Please just look around, research a bit. Even Yate Loon mediums on the full case and heatsink could help. At $5 each. Sidewinders. Or many other choices. $15 a fan is better stuff. Up to you.

Just look around, read and learn.

And 65C is perfectly fine.

 

[RnRollie]

i dont think the original CM690 came with top fan space.. CM690-II however should come with 140mm space at top.

As for fans: yes read stickies and dont get tempted by fans which promise 500 CFM at 10 dba, world peace and bling-bling leds .. all for only $ 2,-

Ideally, you would know ALL the specs of all the fans, which makes matching/planning easier; but its just as easy to just get all the same casefans

For heatsink you need some ooomph: decent RPM, CFM & pressure , PWM (4pin) controlled... i.o.w. the fans that came with the heatsink

The rest of the case can be a bit more gentle YL, GT, Phobya, NoiseBlocker, .... read up on them.
Tip: See if you can find a 3 or 4-pack offer (example http://www.aquatuning.us/product_in...n-D12SL-12-3-Fach-Bundle--3xL-fterpaket-.html )

But first read up, and decide if you want silence, performance or cheap
you can have only 2 out of those 3 combined... you can have performance + cheap, but it wont be silent, or you can have silence + cheap, but it wont be performant or you can have silent + performance, but they wont be cheap

 

[Jrdnj15]

Hey guys thanks for the advice thus far and I have been doing alot of reading i am grasping the basic concepts but am getting confused when they start throwing in things like blade curves and things like that into the mix. Also the CM690 does come with 2x140MM slots on top i just dont have any more fans lying around. I am gonna take Rollies advice and just stick to getting all the same case fans. But a question i do have is if a slot can take a 140MM fan should i go with 140MM or just stick to all the same fans at 120MM. Also even if i do not go crazy on price with case fans i still feel if i were to use an aftermarket fan on the heatsink i should not skimp out and go with somthing of better qulity. While on the topic of heatsinks i should ask do you think it would be better to remove fan#5 and add another fan to the other side of the heatsink for push pull configuration?

 

[RnRollie]

well, there is a much wider choice of 120mm compared to 140mm, if you can fit good 140mm allround, do it. If you can fit good 120mm allround do it
As soon as you start mixing fans, you end up with a balancing act... technically a 140mm moves more air as a 120mm providing they are the same blade design and run the same RPM. So, if you want 140mm up top and 120mm at the front you need to know the numbers, so you can balance it. Its an artform

As Conumdrum said, medium speed Yate loons allround will do the job just nice. They are not the most sexy fans out there, but yeah. If you want good performance & silent, you are in noiseblocker territory and if you also want sexy: the noiseblocker eLoop (or the phobya eloop clone); although they are a bit overkill for a case fan. Ideally you'ld go for PWM controlled fans and a PWM splitter... but it starts adding up $$$

As for fan 5 on the HS or not... it depends...
If you've decent airflow in the case, single push might be enough. The fans which came with the Hyper are not bad fans, not the greatest, but they do the job. Find the specs for those fans, then see if you can find fans with better specs not costing an arm and a leg.

There's another thing, noise vs performance.
Push pull is "better", but.. sometimes creates (a lot) more noise for the added performance. Which is not necessary a fan caused issue, but the design of the Heatsink/fins. The question is... is it worth it? (note that things can be tuned with ducting & spacers )

Best thing is to sort out the case fans first, so you've got a baseline; then worry about the HS
Then you can experiment with push-pull, the other fans "left over" to see which combination gets the best noise/performance ratio acceptable to you.

In the end, you'll find you'll start hearing the PSU fan, or the GPU fan will get on your nerves, and the cycle starts over.

Now, if you want brute force.... San Ace & Delta have fans that run on 24 , 48 , 72 and even on mains 110/220 volts... it will sound as if you have a Su-35 or a Mig-29 ramping up to break the sound barrier sitting next to you, but by Jove, it WILL move a lot of air

 

[doyll]

The only way to know what works best in your case (no pun) is test different combinations and see.

There is much more to cooling than good cases, good fans and good CPU / GPU coolers. Modern GPU's make more heat than CPU... and getting that heat out of the case can be a challenge.

Setting up the case to cool properly is the hardest and most time consuming part of a build... And the most neglected by most builders.

Cases, especially those with filters, usually benefit from fans with higher static pressure ratings than most stock fans... "cooler" fans instead of "case" fans.

Intakes are typically more restricted than exhaust; air filter, more restrictive grill, HDD cage, etc. I prefer a little more intake than exhaust.

And don't confuse number of fans with amount of airflow... or cofuse airflow with airblow

Airflow is flowing cool air from intake to component and flowing hot air from component out of case without the hot air mixing with the cool air.

Airblow is lots of fans blowing air with some of hot air from components mixing with cool air making it warmer resulting in warm air not cooling components as well as the cool air will.

Putting fans in case as intake and/or exhaust is only the first step. These fans only move air in and out of case.

This does not mean heated air is not mixing with cool air.

Nor does it mean cool air is going to where it is needed.

Getting the air to flow inside of case properly is even more important. We still need to manage where the air flows inside the case. We can do this several ways; deflectors, cooler intake fans, exhaust fans, removing vent grills, using fans with higher pressure/airflow, building ducts to or from CPU/GPU cooler, etc.

Using a remote temperature sensor to monitor what air temps are is the key to finding out where the cool air is flowing and knowing heated air is not mixing into it. By monitoring this we can than make changes to get airflow the way we want it.

Monitor the temps with cheap indoor/outdoor wired remote or terrarium digital thermometer. Twist a piece of stiff insulated wire into the last 8" of sensor lead so you can bend it to position sensor where you want it... like 40mm in front of your GPU cooler/radiator intake.. to see what the air temp going into CPU / GPU cooler is compared to room temp. The closer it is to room temp the better.. Shouldn't be more 5c maximum, 2-3c is what I usually end up with after 30 minutes full load on both CPU and GPU.

I use two of these:

 

[Jrdnj15]

Hello,

Sorry for the late response it has just been one of those weeks lol. i have come to the conclusion if and when i do pick up more case fans to just get i am just gonna get a bundle pack of the Phobya G-Silent 12 1500rpm however im not trying to go crazy because i eventually do want to get a nice water cooling kit yes i know maybe it is not needed seeing as my CPU is not overclocked but i do eventually plan on trying to overclock up to 4.2-4.5 Ghz plus i just like the way it looks.

Right now i am up in the air with what i want to do about cooling it seems my temps are fine when CPU is under load in gaming. BF3 on Ultra doesn't get above 61C which isn't bad considering that game is more stressful on a CPU than GPU. So when you really think about it why fix what isn't broken right?

 

[Conumdrum]

A game is fine for checking temps if that's the max stuff you do. CPUs aren't pushed hard under gaming loads.

Prime 95 15 minutes small ffts, use HWMonitor for temps

 

[Jrdnj15]

yah that is all i do on my PC really is game. I'm not into hardcore overclocking or anything like that. My main goal in building any pc is to run games on their maximum settings flawlessly with a constant 60FPS (which is more than enough for my taste) and minimal lagg. If you don't mind me asking and this is probably a dumb question but when does overclocking and gaming come together? I mean i can pump my cpu to 4.2 Ghz but will that have a huge impact on what i'm seeing at 3.8 Ghz (which is stock speed with turbo boost)? What speed is more than enough on your CPU for most current games and lets say some next gen games. What point does overclocking just become overkill?

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Also the CM690 does come with 2x140MM slots on top i just dont have any more fans lying around. I am gonna take Rollies advice and just stick to getting all the same case fans. But a question i do have is if a slot can take a 140MM fan should i go with 140MM or just stick to all the same fans at 120MM. Also even if i do not go crazy on price with case fans i still feel if i were to use an aftermarket fan on the heatsink i should not skimp out and go with something of better quality. While on the topic of heatsinks i should ask do you think it would be better to remove fan#5 and add another fan to the other side of the heatsink for push pull configuration?

Personally, with my builds if I have a choice between 120mm or 140mm (assuming fan opening fits either/or, I go with 140mm.

Most 140mm fans typically can have the same CFM of airflow as a 120mm fan, but do it more quietly and at lower rpm's.

In my own builds I've been using NZXT FN-140RB (DF1402512SEMN) 140mm fans where I can lately. I find they are quite silent and move a decent amount of airflow. In my main PC I like to have it be fairly quiet most of the time, but I don't want to sacrifice airflow to do that, and I found the NZXT FN-140RB fans to be a good balance for that.

I've probably got around seven or eight of them now because I found a great deal on them a while back and picked up like five of them for $15, so $3 per fan, plus shipping.

For 120mm fans I use Cougar Vortex CF-V12HB's. Also very quiet. They make decent case fans, but I wouldn't recommend them for heatsink fans (not enough airflow or static pressure).

In my CM 690II I have the stock front CM 140mm fan as front intake, 2x Cougar Vortex CF-V12HB's for my bottom intakes, an FN-140RB on the side as intake, 2x FN-140RB mounted as top exhaust, and a CF-V12HB at the rear for exhaust. Oh, and I mounted a Yate Loon D12SM-12 in the unused 5.25" bays for additional intake and airflow to cool the memory and CPU.

I took weeks to plan out what I was going to do as far as fan configurations on my PC. In the end I went with a positive configuration, mainly because it was just plain easier to set the fans up that way. I do after all have a case that is by design set up for five intake fans and three exhaust fans, so in order to have negative pressure in this case I would need either intake fans that performed absolutely awful or exhaust fans that were incredibly loud pushing huge amounts of CFM of air. Well, that and I was tired of having a really dusty case all the time due to having a negative pressure setup, and it is somewhat better now with a positive setup.

I now have 245CFM intake and 185CFM exhuast, not counting the Yate Loon medium D12SM-12 that I have in the 5.25" bays, if I count that it's more like 315CFM of intake.

 

[Conumdrum]

Personally, with my builds if I have a choice between 120mm or 140mm (assuming fan opening fits either/or, I go with 140mm.

Most 140mm fans typically can have the same CFM of airflow as a 120mm fan, but do it more quietly and at lower rpm's.

In my own builds I've been using NZXT FN-140RB (DF1402512SEMN) 140mm fans where I can lately. I find they are quite silent and move a decent amount of airflow. In my main PC I like to have it be fairly quiet most of the time, but I don't want to sacrifice airflow to do that, and I found the NZXT FN-140RB fans to be a good balance for that.

I've probably got around seven or eight of them now because I found a great deal on them a while back and picked up like five of them for $15, so $3 per fan, plus shipping.

For 120mm fans I use Cougar Vortex CF-V12HB's. Also very quiet. They make decent case fans, but I wouldn't recommend them for heatsink fans (not enough airflow or static pressure).

In my CM 690II I have the stock front CM 140mm fan as front intake, 2x Cougar Vortex CF-V12HB's for my bottom intakes, an FN-140RB on the side as intake, 2x FN-140RB mounted as top exhaust, and a CF-V12HB at the rear for exhaust. Oh, and I mounted a Yate Loon D12SM-12 in the unused 5.25" bays for additional intake and airflow to cool the memory and CPU.

I took weeks to plan out what I was going to do as far as fan configurations on my PC. In the end I went with a positive configuration, mainly because it was just plain easier to set the fans up that way. I do after all have a case that is by design set up for five intake fans and three exhaust fans, so in order to have negative pressure in this case I would need either intake fans that performed absolutely awful or exhaust fans that were incredibly loud pushing huge amounts of CFM of air. Well, that and I was tired of having a really dusty case all the time due to having a negative pressure setup, and it is somewhat better now with a positive setup.

I now have 245CFM intake and 185CFM exhuast, not counting the Yate Loon medium D12SM-12 that I have in the 5.25" bays, if I count that it's more like 315CFM of intake.

Umm are you going on the theoretical flow of those fans using Manufacturers data, completely discounting case restrictions etc. I find your 245 CFM and 185 CFM fully magic numbers and just rong. RONG.


And if you read the positive/negative case pressure 4000 long thread here you can see it has NO scientific data, it's a joke.
Some of your comments are good. But no one measures like that, you cannot measure that due to case, wires, etc etc.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Umm are you going on the theoretical flow of those fans using Manufacturers data, completely discounting case restrictions etc. I find your 245 CFM and 185 CFM fully magic numbers and just rong. RONG.


And if you read the positive/negative case pressure 4000 long thread here you can see it has NO scientific data, it's a joke.
Some of your comments are good. But no one measures like that, you cannot measure that due to case, wires, etc etc.

Well, since you're so inclined to call me out as being completely wrong so fast, I'll return the favor by being equally rude in my retort.

Duh, of course I'm going by the manufacturers specs. You didn't think I had an anemometer did you? Expensive, can't afford one. I used this thing called math to calculate the numbers up based upon manufacturer's specs.

Well, I measure like that, therefore your argument that no one measures like that is completely invalid. Also, it's spelled "wrong." You're welcome.

Also, there's this thing called constructive criticism, you apparently don't know what it is. All you did was shoot down my observations and give no suggestions whatsoever as to solutions.

Where you came off ragging at me for the positive vs. negative debate I have no idea. All I did was mention that my case was less dusty with positive pressure "FACT".

 

[Conumdrum]

I don't discount positive pressure to keep the cracks cleaner. I just think your numbers on the CFM on your case using fannage Manu numbers and not using the true real CFM for your setup, which we all know unless you have $1000000's to test in a real chamber etc is fully futile to measure. Which you have magically done. Your case restrictions totally toss any numbers you have out the window. And trusting the Manu specs? We all know that's a joke.

If you don't have one to measure your real data, at xxx CFM, then why mention it? I know it's bogus. Some forums might believe you. Not here.

Science isn't rude. You toss numbers, you need to back it up.

Yes, I'm bad at constructive criticism, always have been. Wrong or right, not coddling here.

Lastly less dusty, yep, in the cracks, I can agree on that.

 

[doyll]

Few manufactures give us no data of what goes on between 0.0CFM at static pressure specification and 0.0mm H2O at CFM specification

For example these CFM & mm H2O specs say Cougar Vortex will flow the most air:
Cougar Vortex PWM = 70.5CFM, 2.2mm H20
Gentle Typhoon AP-15 = 58CFM, 2.03mm H20

But when all the data is graphed out the AP-15 is flowing up to approx. 8.0CFM more than Cougar between 0.03-0.08in wg (0.76-2.03mm H2O), while above 2.03mm H2O the Cougar flows up to approx. 6.0CFM more than AP-15.
This means in the real world use the AP-15 has the best airflow. Of course that's assuming the manufacturers specs are accurate.

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2013/02...w-specs-are-poor-measures-of-fan-performance/

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Few manufactures go us data of what goes on between 0.0CFM at static pressure specification and 0.0mm H2O at CFM specification

For example these CFM & mm H2O specs say Cougar Vortex will flow the most air:
Cougar Vortex PWM = 70.5CFM, 2.2mm H20
Gentle Typhoon AP-15 = 58CFM, 2.03mm H20

But when all the data is graphed out the AP-15 is flowing up to approx. 8.0CFM more than Cougar between 0.03-0.08in wg (0.76-2.03mm H2O), while above 2.03mm H2O the Cougar flows up to approx. 6.0CFM more than AP-15.
This means in the real world use the AP-15 has the best airflow. Of course that's assuming the manufacturers specs are accurate.

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2013/02...w-specs-are-poor-measures-of-fan-performance/

That's a different model of fan from the one I was talking about.

 

[doyll]

That's a different model of fan from the one I was talking about.

You are correct.
What I posted is an example of how the specifications supplied by manufacturer do not give us any data that is applicable to the conditions fans function under is real life applications... and that the specifications they give us for static pressure and CFM are in fact telling us very little about how the fan will perform in real life applications.