Building New PC – What/How Many Case Fans should I use?

[rtvsa00]

Case: Realan E-W80


http://www.minicase.net/product_E-W80.html

[CA_Steve]

Welcome to SPCR.

Some questions in return:
- It looks like you aren't using the top HDD tray and are using the stock box cooler that comes with the CPU?
- What's the CPU?
- What CPU and mobo temps are you seeing at long idle and load?

You might get away with using just the top down cpu cooler.

[lodestar]

The fan bracket will take either two 50mm x 10mm fans or two 60mm x 10mm fans. You are probably better off going for 60mm fans, and opting for ones with as low a top speed as you can find. An average top speed would be 4000 to 5000 rpm. There is a chassis fan header which will take 3 pin or 4 pin PWM fans. It should allow a degree of thermal control over the fan speed in either case. With two fans a Y adapter will be needed, a PWM version such as this one will work with either type of fan. There are some 60 x 10 PWM fans available for example the Evercool EC6010TH12BP which has a PWM speed range of 1500 to 5200 rpm. Hopefully your motherboard has fan profiles such as Silent which will mean in practice that the fan will run at minimal speeds but will speed up to keep the system cool if temperatures start to elevate.