Ok Now we all know that the fan thing has been done to death here on the forum but hey who can help it right.....we all have questions about how to best cool our rigs to get optimal performance but at the same time who wants to break the bank and who wants to settle with less than ideal temps when we can get so much more out of the units we spent so much time and effort customizing.
I just put in a vantec double fan below my GPU. Now it's a steady 42 degrees (HD4850) which is great. When I play anything for more than 2 hours I reach maybe 52-55 if I'm lucky but that's besides the point. I have a clear side window on my Rig (Pic Below). What I want to do is where I have the adjustable fan behind the black vent holes I want to remove the fan mount and use the actual vent holes to mount a fan instead of the bracket that came with the case. This will be a semi-risky procedure because it's do or die time when I cut that metal with the dremel there will be no turning back. I plan on leaving the four mount holes and then leaving the open space...perhaps not even putting a grill or mesh over it. I would like to actually use it as a vent fan to pull all the warm air out since I now have a total of seven fans with three exhaust and the remaining ones are intake except for the CPU and PSU units. The benefit I see to having this as a vent unit is to exhaust the hot air from the HD4850 which is right infront of it.
The one exhaust fan I have is a PCI slot fan which honestly with the other higher powered units has become quite useless and I am going to remove it. It's a little unit that doesn't really seem to pull out too much air and besides if I have the larger 120mm over the GPU then it really does a more than adequate job. I also want to cut a larger hole in the plexi right above the fan so I can add a larger one...perhaps 140mm...not too sure yet. I think that one may be an intake fan right over the CPU fan which blows down anyway so I can get a larger quantity of air over that unit. And then there's the top fan unit which is a stock unit that cam with the case. This fan I believe is inefficient as it tends to run to slow and can't be manually controlled.
I think a TT Smartfan fan might be the one to use here as I am looking for something I can really crank out the RPM's. Also I am going to need to try and make these units are as quiet as I can so I am wondering what the effectiveness of a dampening system might be...perhaps an adapter that I can get between the case and the fan to lessen the noise. I saw these
http://www.coolerguys.com/840556041795.html My TT fans right now make a nice wirly sound when I get them up to speed. I want to vent the air as best as I can and I couldn't care less how many fans are in my rig just as long as I have good airflow. Now I know that there's no shortage of options and the opinions I'm sure will vary greatly so any suggestions would be great. I will take some pics to chronicle the event.
Jones
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