Amazing Test of Fan Configurations

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ed Light
  • Start date Start date
Ed Light said:
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=230

They tested everything from no case fans to 5 case fans, and the winner
was the rear fan(s) only. Just amazing.
Click to expand...

I beat them. 2 minutes to idle from burn. Winchester at 2.4, 1.45v. I have
an Arctic Freezer 64 cooler with the fan removed and an aluminum tape duct
to the panaflo 80mm case fan running at 2200 rpm, blowing out. The other fan
is the 120mm in the Coolmax psu running on high. I'll soon be putting in a
quiet Yate Loon (from coolerguys) into the psu and attaching it to the
Zalman fan controller in a cd bay.

This setup can actually take care of the cpu with the psu on low and the
80mm at 1200 rpm. But not running 3d on a hot day. And it lets the hard
drives up into the high 30's.

But if you want to take your motherboard out and in you have to deal with
removing the tape and building it up again. I'll have to do it when I put my
Zalman passive heatsink on the nforce3 chip. I'll have an 80mm blowing over
it onto the video card, and on the controller at a low rpm. It won't be in
the front panel, but free-standing, actually strapped on a piece of foam to
the bottom of the hd bay. I have a weird slow speed silencer fan there now,
not on the controller, that's quiet except it ticks.

Only thing is I don't know what sort of circulation I'm getting over the
motherboard power regulator thingies. And my board doesn't give the sytem
temperature -- strange Gigabyte oversight. But it's not eating the cpu hot
air, only whatever heat radiates from the cpu's heatsink and beneath it, and
from the video card when it heats up in 3D.
--
Ed Light

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But they are only measuring board temp. I would also be concerned with hard
drive temp. For that reason I like to put a fan in front of the drive
blowing in.

DaveL
 
Finally someone tested this. I've always thought that more fans just
make for more noise and dust. It would be nice if they had a noise
rating for each configuration too.

-Dylan
 
Ed said:
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=230

They tested everything from no case fans to 5 case fans, and the winner was
the rear fan(s) only. Just amazing.
Click to expand...

Actually it was the top/front that performed the best to exhaust the hot
air. However top only and rear only took the number 2 and 3 places
respectively.

Peak CPU and board temps were kept down by top/rear and rear only in the
number 1 and 2 places.

Which has been similar to my experience. I use one exhaust fan in the
case to push out heat, one in the PSU since it gets warm on its own, and
a single fan in the front to draw in cool air and gently blow it around
the case for general hard drive and board cooling.

I found out years ago that running the front case fan at full speed was
detrimental to case cooling. I figured it was too turbulent and hot air
just cycled around the video card and chipset instead of cooling all of
the components and then blown out.

So when I bought my new system, the Antec Sonata II case had an internal
duct to draw in air at the back and dump it over the CPU area. But after
a bit of informal testing, I found it was sucking in warm air that was
just pushed out the back (computer is in a desk with a back wall about
18" from the rear of the case).

So I removed it and blocked off the opening so air was drawn in the
front only, and board temps dropped a couple of degrees.

My current temps are 30c board, 32c CPU at idle. At 100% on both cores I
get 30c board and 47c CPU.

I should mention that I'm overclocking the CPU by 25%, and I'm using a
Zalman 9500 cooler. The 9500 does a great job of blowing the heat right
into the exhaust fan, and out the back.
 
DaveL said:
But they are only measuring board temp. I would also be concerned with
hard drive temp. For that reason I like to put a fan in front of the
drive blowing in.
Click to expand...

I have mine in the 5 1/4" area and I've been drilling small holes in the bay
cover. I have foam on the inside of the bay cover to keep the sound in.

The Barracuda IV is at 30C but can go into the mid-30's.


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Dylan said:
Finally someone tested this. I've always thought that more fans just
make for more noise and dust. It would be nice if they had a noise
rating for each configuration too.
Click to expand...

I think it would be obvious that the 11-fan case would sound like a
tornado in your room. And the 1-fan setup would be the quiet case.

:-)
 
I don't like putting my hard drive up in the 5 1/4 slots. The reason is
those bays are up higher in the case where the hotter air can accumulate. I
like to keep the hard drive low. Try mounting your Barracuda low and see
the difference.

DaveL
 
DaveL said:
I don't like putting my hard drive up in the 5 1/4 slots. The reason is
those bays are up higher in the case where the hotter air can accumulate.
I like to keep the hard drive low. Try mounting your Barracuda low and see
the difference.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'd like to, but the lower bays are placed such that a hd fouls the
motherboard connections, and air circulation would just pass under it.
You've seen those cases where the air intake doesn't have drive bays in
front of it.

When I get my psu loaded with the Yate Loon quiet fan and on the fan
controller I'll find a compromise speed where the drive is happy but the
sound is quiet, I'm sure.

Actually, I'm removing the Barracuda, with it's totally wrapped up design,
and leaving the cooler-running Samsung, which will be quite happy with the
psu at medium speed, or even low speed if not a hot day. The Barracuda will
go in a usb external box.

But next time I'm using an Antec P180. *That* will chill the drive(s)!

--
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http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=230

They tested everything from no case fans to 5 case fans, and the winner was
the rear fan(s) only. Just amazing.
Click to expand...

sigh... you know there are people in labs who can actually do this
kind of testing right. They've been doing it for years. They're
called fan manufacturers.

Companies like AT&T, IBM, HP, etc bring in their R&D boxes and get all
the cooling info/testing done right.

Free too, if you're buying lots of fans.

They use lots of thermocouples, chart recorders, a big monster air
pressure chamber, and little helium bubbles. Real noise testing to
real standards available also.
 
Aha! This makes SOOO much sense!
If you have only a back fan (and of course your power supply fan(s)), that
back fan pulls a certain amount of air *from somewhere*, which is,
hopefully, the front/lower grill. And it exhales a certain amount of air out
the back. Well... if you add a fan to the front, it seems almost redundant
and might even cause air to circulate inside the case in ways you don't
want. That back fan is already doing it's job of pulling air in the front
and over the hard drives. We'll see... I've recorded all my temps. I'm going
to shut off my front fan and see how it affects temps.
--
Scotter
Tyan Thunder K8WE
Dual Opteron 252s (2.6ghz)
6 gig DDR400 RAM
XFX 7800 GTX 256 w/VGAsilencerV3
500 gig SATA2 Hitachi
Dual 24" Dell LCDs
550W power supply
-
 
with front fan:
CPU1 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
CPU2 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
ambient 28-29C
HD0 30-32C (hard use 34)
HD1 29-31C

w/o front fan:
CPU1 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
CPU2 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
ambient 31C
HD0 34C
HD1 35C

note: both hard drives are bottom/front
--
Scotter
Tyan Thunder K8WE
Dual Opteron 252s (2.6ghz)
6 gig DDR400 RAM
XFX 7800 GTX 256 w/VGAsilencerV3
500 gig SATA2 Hitachi
Dual 24" Dell LCDs
550W power supply
-
 
Scotter said:
and over the hard drives. We'll see... I've recorded all my temps. I'm
going to shut off my front fan and see how it affects temps.
Click to expand...

Being in the ventilation hole, it will block some circulation.

You know, they didn't say if they covered the unused holes, unless I missed
it.


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Scotter said:
with front fan:
CPU1 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
CPU2 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
ambient 28-29C
HD0 30-32C (hard use 34)
HD1 29-31C

w/o front fan:
CPU1 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
CPU2 49-51C (hovers mostly @ 50)
ambient 31C
HD0 34C
HD1 35C

note: both hard drives are bottom/front
Click to expand...

I wonder what it would be with the fan removed, to allow more air through.

Maybe that would require you to do too much disassembly.

BTW What hd's do you have? Looks like they might be early Samsungs.
--
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I removed the fan and the grill it was screwed to when I tried it without
that front 80mm quiet fan.
The rear fan is a 120mm 3-speed case fan I keep on middle speed.
The CPUs each have a Zalman c9500 on them both running highest speed.

Drives:
drive 0: 500 gb Hitachi SATA300 7500RPM
drive 1: 160 gb Seagate SATA150 7500RPM
--
Scotter
Tyan Thunder K8WE
Dual Opteron 252s (2.6ghz)
6 gig DDR400 RAM
XFX 7800 GTX 256 w/VGAsilencerV3
500 gig SATA2 Hitachi
Dual 24" Dell LCDs
550W power supply
-
 
I removed the fan and the grill it was screwed to when I tried it without
that front 80mm quiet fan.
The rear fan is a 120mm 3-speed case fan I keep on middle speed.
The CPUs each have a Zalman c9500 on them both running highest speed.

Drives:
drive 0: 500 gb Hitachi SATA300 7500RPM
drive 1: 160 gb Seagate SATA150 7500RPM
Click to expand...

1 x 120mm (front) 1 x 120mm (back) at 5v, and the only difference I
saw from removing the front fan was a 5 degree increase (33c to 38c)
in HDD temp. Other temperatures pretty much stayed the same at full
throttle.

Regards,

Wad
 
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