SOLVED Safe to keep my fans on low?

[yaiie]

Hello,

My case currently has seven case fans... My case comes with a manual fan controller. Six of the seven fans are hooked into the controller.

Last night I decided to turn my pc fan settings to low... And it was SO quiet... I didn't realize how much sound the fans have been putting out!

So here's my question... Would it be safe for me to keep my case fans on low? Would I have to worry about cooking anything? I mostly game with this PC.

The CPU cooler's manually set to 100%, the GPU revs up or down to keep itself comfortable... My only real concern would be the hard drives and the overall airflow of the case.

Two of my four intake fans are right up (in the front of the case) on my drives... I'd think (hope) even keeping them on low would be more then enough air flow?

Also... The CPU cooler has a manual adjustment for fan speed... In the BIOS I have the fan speed set to full on... If say the manual fan speed was set to low on the CPU by setting FULL on the bios would it be able to override the manual control? I was just curious how that'd work.

Thanks!

 

[wagex]

i run the 4 fans in my case at ~1000rpm if that helps. which is pretty slow. you coul d actually put the cpu fan on the qfan or what ever settting asrock has so it revs up and down.

 

[Pepi93]

I've noticed with some testing that my temps didn't increase with lowering the fan speed. I started with 100% fan speeds, and started lowering...I have 3x140mm intakes with filters...this doesn't included PSU dedicated fan intake from bottom. I also have 2x120mm exhaust and my cpu cooler has 2 fans, a 140 and 120...I have the intakes set at lower and exhausts set at higher but I would say about 25% for intakes and 75% for exhausts and my cpu fans are set to lower as well with no change in temperature.

This is something you need to play with and monitor temps with a program to compare.

I think if your case is clean and the fan setup is good it's the air temperature that increases temps inside. If the air is cool coming in, it will be cool inside etc...It won't really matter how much air you pull in and push out as much as ambient temps affect case temps.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Use HWMonitor to check your temps at high speed, and see if they go up when you turn the fans down.

I would run a game for an hour or two, check your max temps, turn down the fans, then check after another hour.

 

[yaiie]

I ended up replacing all but one of the original fans... They're higher performance and much quieter now! I'm able to keep my fans on high and still enjoy... Near silence!

Though one new question... The front of my case stores my two hard drives... One SSD one HDD. Before I had 2x 120mm fans directly blowing on them after todays adventure I opted to get rid of the 2x 120's and I installed a 140mm in it's place.

The 140 mounts in the middle of where the previous 120's were housed... The new fan continues to blow directly onto my ssd but the hdd is about two inches (or less) below the fan and is no longer receiving direct airflow...

I'd assume since it's in the general area of the hdd (even though it's not blowing directly onto it) the hdd should stay cool?

How hot does a hard drive get? Are they prone to over heating? The cpu, gpu, psu all have built in methods of cooling... How does a hard drive keep itself chill?

 

[ATMINSIDE]

If the HDD is at 30-40C is is in very normal conditions.

 

[RnRollie]

I ended up replacing all but one of the original fans... They're higher performance and much quieter now! I'm able to keep my fans on high and still enjoy... Near silence!

Though one new question... The front of my case stores my two hard drives... One SSD one HDD. Before I had 2x 120mm fans directly blowing on them after todays adventure I opted to get rid of the 2x 120's and I installed a 140mm in it's place.

The 140 mounts in the middle of where the previous 120's were housed... The new fan continues to blow directly onto my ssd but the hdd is about two inches (or less) below the fan and is no longer receiving direct airflow...

I'd assume since it's in the general area of the hdd (even though it's not blowing directly onto it) the hdd should stay cool?

How hot does a hard drive get? Are they prone to over heating? The cpu, gpu, psu all have built in methods of cooling... How does a hard drive keep itself chill?

If you want to be "safe", swap the SDD & HD around; the SSD does not really need (a lot of) cooling as it does not really gets hot. You could velcro the SSD somewhere completely out of the way if you wanted to. Moving the HD a position up into the airflow will probably knock off a few degrees, but as long as the HD does not go (a lot) above 30°C, you are fine.
As ATMINSIDE said 30-40 °C is ok

 

[yaiie]

If you want to be "safe", swap the SDD & HD around; the SSD does not really need (a lot of) cooling as it does not really gets hot. You could velcro the SSD somewhere completely out of the way if you wanted to. Moving the HD a position up into the airflow will probably knock off a few degrees, but as long as the HD does not go (a lot) above 30°C, you are fine.
As ATMINSIDE said 30-40 °C is ok

I took your advice... I put the SSD in the bottom slot and the HDD in the top... I also took the 140mm from the front and swapped it out with one of the 120's on the top... Now I have a single 120mm in the front blowing air directly on both drives. The fan blade entirely covers the HDD and most of the SSD...

As of right now the SSD is 29C and the HDD is 30c!

I've got the monitoring program running in the back... Going to play some BF3 and see how much it spikes... I'm expecting everything to stay cool!

I replaced all but one of my original fans with quieter, more efficient fans... Re did the wiring mess I made... Everything seems good! And best of all... QUIET! Even on full blast.