Ordering a new cooling setup, help me build it!

[CottonTheMoth]

It will control fan speed by dropping the voltage/raising the voltage. As far as being about to control the fans from the MB you would have to look at how many fan pin outs are offered on your board. On my wifes board I can hook 2 additional fans and control them from the MB, yet on my board I think I can only hook one additional fan and control it from the MB so its up to the MB. You would have to look for a fan controller to set the fans to what you need in order to control the rest. The wifes Antec 1200 fans do not impress me at all and I ordered a couple of Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120 1850rpm fans yesterday, I intend to replace all 5 of the 120's in her case before its over.

How would you connect fans to the motherboard though? The case fans only have the power cord to the PSU and a switch that allows you to change the speed between low medium and high (I keep mine on high).

Here's my motherboard:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3038#sp
It says it's got:
1 x CPU fan header (I know where that is located.)
2 x system fan header
1 x power fan header
1 x front panel header
And lots of other stuff, that's the only fan-related stuff I found.

 

[QuietIce]

To bring this thread back on track:

Edit
Started this post before your 9:15 post but got side-tracked and didn't refresh. The NH-D14 os a good choice!
/Edit

I'm not looking to spend all $500. Antec 300's take one 140mm top fan, two 120mm front fans, one 120mm side fan, and one 120mm rear fan. Five fans. I'd prefer to not run a fan controller and have everything automated in something like SpeedFan or Rivatuner based on temps. No watercooling. Pretty sure I've found a good heatsink, and I'm not sure that I necessarily need a side fan if it's going to interrupt the air flow. Two front fans would be running intake and everything else outtake.

Here's the heatsink I like:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835887011

Dimensions look good and I've read a review mentioning a great fit in the Antec 300 (measure myself, clearance is about 6"-6.5" (WITHOUT a side fan).
Would it be possible to replace the fan with something like a 120mm 4000 RPM Delta fan?

Main top fan:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608017

4x 120mm fans?:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200021
(Again, open to suggestions, I've got the money but don't want it to be too loud.)

And thermal paste:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186020
(Anything better?)

Have to go to bed since I've got work in the morning, I'll add to this thread tomorrow. Please post your thoughts and I'll be sure and give any more information you want to know. Thanks everyone.

There are better coolers out there than the one you linked, and depending on how much you want to spend. The Sunbeam CCT 120 is a very good cooler and has a great price tag. If you're willing to spend more the TRUE Rev.C with excellent fans is a very good heatsink as is the NH-D14.

For case fans I'm personally not very found of Noctua. They may be able to back up their CFM ratings in open air but add a little restriction to some of them and you may as well not even have a fan. I like Scythe S-Flex and (I've heard) their Gentle Typhoons are also very good and quiet. You might browse other fans on Sidewinder's, they have an excellent selection ...

 

[CottonTheMoth]

Changed the Noctua 120mm's to S-Flex 120mm. Would it be okay to run two of the fans from the motherboard and the rest off of the PSU? Still getting a Noctua 140mm since S-Flex doesn't make a 140mm and I'm not keen on LED's like everybody else.

If I do run the fans from the mobo/psu, which fans would be best to run on the mobo?

 

[CgS Drone]

I don't use the MB to control my case fans, I use what the case has in order to do that or add a fan control in line and just stay hooked to the molex/3 pin connector. In your bios you may or may not be able to control the fan speed on the sys. fan headers or the pwr_fan header. If you end up getting fans that don't use the molex connector you can get adapters to convert from using the molex to 3 pin and just put those inline to the fan and use the controls the case has to adjust fan speed.

Also I cannot get a good look at the rear fan on your case, do the fans in the case have led lights? it almost looks like the back one does in what little I can see in the pics.

 

[QuietIce]

I don't run any fans off the board at all - all mine connect straight to the PSU ...

 

[CgS Drone]

I don't run any fans off the board at all - all mine connect straight to the PSU ...

I will run my cpu fan from the MB. I may run an add-on fan if its a 3 pin but only if I don't have a converter at the time.

 

[CottonTheMoth]

The thing I'm really confused about is what all of these cords are. What is Molex? Where does it connect to? I guess I'll run all of my fans (except my heatsink fan) through just the PSU. I guess I don't need to worry about 3-pin 4-pin stuff?

Also I cannot get a good look at the rear fan on your case, do the fans in the case have led lights? it almost looks like the back one does in what little I can see in the pics.

I never posted any pictures of my setup lol? No LED fans here though, just one 140mm black fan on top and one 120mm black fan in the rear.

 

[CgS Drone]

I never posted any pictures of my setup lol? No LED fans here though, just one 140mm black fan on top and one 120mm black fan in the rear.

I looked the case up online to see about the fans and the specs of the case. your power supply has the molex (4 pin) connector that your fans are hooked to now.

 

[hokiealumnus]

MOLEX is the 4-pins-in-a-row, larger connector you see on your power supply. To connect your fans to your MB headers, you will probably need some of these adapters. Some boards can control all headers, some can only control a few headers; you'll have to check your BIOS or MB software to see what you can control and what you can only monitor RPM from (giving full voltage).

 

[m0r7if3r]

The best way to control case fans imo is through a fan controller, for value/dollar, the sunbeam rheobus extreme is my recommendation, for the best controller out there, the lamptron fc5 unequivocally wins in my mind with a really solid display, included temp probes, and high watts per channel.

EDIT: You will still need some of those adapters hokie linked though

 

[Conumdrum]

Molex is a brand like Kleenex is a brand for nose tissues. Mainly we mean the big flat 4 pin connector when we say molex. Even though the small 3 or 4 pin connector is also a molex known as mini molex.

Might be good to give yourself a primer with these links I found easily with Google.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pc-interfaces-101,1177.html

http://www.pc-control.co.uk/power_connectors.htm

 

[hokiealumnus]

The best way to control case fans imo is through a fan controller, for value/dollar, the sunbeam rheobus extreme is my recommendation, for the best controller out there, the lamptron fc5 unequivocally wins in my mind with a really solid display, included temp probes, and high watts per channel.

EDIT: You will still need some of those adapters hokie linked though

Not necessarily; some controllers come with them. You'll just have to look at the accessories. FWIW.

 

[CgS Drone]

Allright guys, calm down, I'm getting the NH-D14.

Your gonna love it, I just got mine in today and installed. The best I could do with the H50 on an intel i7 920 running stock and turbo was 67C (100% load OCCT), The D-14 on same i7 920 running stock and turbo is 60C (100% load OCCT).

H50 15 min load+/- 2 min but stayed the same once I hit these temps.


D-14 15 min load+/- 2 min but stayed the same once I hit these temps.


I believe the H50 had more potential than it showed. When I got it that was the best it ran for most of the day then that night the temps starting changing and not for the best, by three days later it wasn't doing any better than the stock cooler, I had set the OCCT to kick out at 90C and it would reach that in under two minutes.

I tried remounting the H50 and putting in washers to help but nothing did.

 

[SecrtAgentMan]

Try lowering the vCore a bit, you might see lower temps on a full load, just don't go way down low.

 

[CgS Drone]

Try lowering the vCore a bit, you might see lower temps on a full load, just don't go way down low.

I pretty much have everything setup in the bios to auto, I haven't had a chance to get in there and play with it some. I built 4 systems pretty much at the same time and I am bouncing from one to the other trying to get the temps down where I am happy then I can start working on the OC on them. The 955BE that I have I would eventually like to take to 3.6 if I can and the i7 I would like to get to about 3ghz. I don't think that would be pushing them to hard compared to what most OC them to. I'm sure I will be asking for some help here in about a week to push them up some once I have everything setup and am happy hardware wise.

On edit, now I have to order a second D14 that was suppose to be for my 955BE but when the wife isn't happy my ears hurt.

 

[CgS Drone]

UPDATE::

I believe in being fair and honest. Corsair finally contacted me back after 4 days and said after reading everything I had tried that they WOULD give an RMA for the H50 and even sent me a FedEx online form to fill out so they would pay the return shipping on the H50. Now I don't own the H50 anymore because I took it back to the store but wanted to be fair and say that they ARE offering RMA's if they feel the unit is defective it is just taking them longer than the 24 hours it says on their site so if you do have to return one you may have to wait a few days to get a response.

 

[CottonTheMoth]

Allright guys, thanks for all the input, I got all of my stuff in and installed it, temps were around 35c idle, much better than my previous 52c. Overclocked it a lot, and last night I went too far and my desktop wouldn't boot the BIOS, it was stuck in a power on/off loop. So I read to reset the BIOS by taking out the battery, and while I was doing that I decided to organize the wiring a little bit better. Everything is back up and running properly, but I have a problem.

I can only control the CPU fans now. Before I screwed it up by raising the cpuNB frequency too high, I could run all of them at 40%, dead silent, but now when I tell RivaTuner to launch a 40% fan speed or anything else, it only changes the CPU fans. All of the fans are plugged into the same places (case fans to PSU, CPU fans to mobo).

Any ideas? Thanks.