any mid-tower atx with side panel 120mm fan?

dan · Post by **dan** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 8:54 am

hello,
a lot of cases these days have 80mm fan on the side panel. given that the side panel of a mid tower atx is rather large, i am surprised the fan is only 80mm. i've done some searching and i've not actually seen an atx mid tower case with a 120mm fan which would have greater airflow.

are there any mid-tower atx cases that
1- have a 120mm fan underneath the power supply and
2- have a 120mm fan at the front of the case (antec superlanboy come to mind)
and
3- have a 120mm fan on the side panel?

if you do have such a fan, either 80 mm or 120mm on the side panel would having the air flow in or out be better for cooling?

slipknottin · Post by **slipknottin** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:15 am

IMO, side intake or exhaust fans disrupt case airflow.

My case had higher MB and CPU temperatures with a fan on the side panel. Once the hole was covered up, temperatures dropped by nearly 5C.

nici · Post by **nici** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:19 am

The only thing a side fan is good for is cooling your graphics card at the expense of other parts temperature.. I mean in a normal air-cooled system, there might be systems where it works well.

dan · Post by **dan** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:23 am

i think that's interesting and would explain a lot.

would having a PSU with a 120mm fan AND a case like the antec super lanboy which has a 120mn on the back plane disrupt airflow?

i would imagine if the 120mm side panel air was sucking air out it would lower temps.

slipknottin · Post by **slipknottin** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:51 am

dan wrote: i would imagine if the 120mm side panel air was sucking air out it would lower temps.

doubtful. If anything it would be sucking the intake air out before it got a chance to flow over the CPU/memory/etc.

Maybe youd have a cooler HD, but thats about it.

Ive experimented with my PSU slightly, by removing and covering the bottom 92mm fan. My processor ran slightly hotter, and I had to turn up the rear fan to compensate. I believe the problem was due to the hot air being trapped above the processor. If I put a sheet of metal or plastic seperating the PSU and the MB compartment, I bet temps would drop for both the PSU and CPU.

Blooz · Post by **Blooz** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 11:02 am

One case that has the fan layout you specified is MNPCtech's SC-135.

It comes with 3 Globe 120's - front intake, side panel, and rear exhaust. The side panel fan is an intake, with an aluminum filter.

niels007 · Post by **niels007** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 1:47 pm

There are a few ways to look at side panel fans. I have two 120mm fans in the side panel for direct use (ducting) on the CPU and GFX heatsinks.

cons:
- 'out in the open': fan noise not damped / muffled by being in a case
- big holes out of which HD / coil noise can escape. (thank god I never had coil noise in my components!)

Pros:
- sucking in the coolest possible air straight from outside: less rpm required to get the same delta T
- covering all ventilation holes, the only way out for the air is through the PSU. Even without a PSU fan, there will be airflow out of the case resulting in extremely low PSU fan speeds required.

The cons weigh differently depending on your hardware:
- My single Samsung suspended / foamed HD doesn't emit audible noise outside of the case.
- Using Nexus 120mm fans really gets rid of vibrations, whirring and whining of the fans, compared to Papst which are good but slightly audible (not annoying though)

I have the least efficient and definitely worst PSU ever, yet a Nexus 80mm at 800..900 RPM keeps it acceptably cool without really putting any noise in the room. Ideally, a Nexus modded 120mm PSU would be optimal!

In that case (hoho) all 3 fans would be able to spin at about 400RPM with good heatsinks on CPU and GFX which is insanely quiet. You'll most likely be hearing your neighbours PC through the wall...

I'm all for side panel intakes, not giving the air any time to heat up before it reaches the components it's meant to cool..

Niels

PS:
here's my pc..:

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=18574

dan · Post by **dan** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 3:20 pm

thanks, i did not know of that case.

i would think as the previous poster suggested, if you have a 120 mm side panel fan blowing "in" and over the CPU and two 120 mm fans, one in the back panel and the other PSU such as a seasonic tornado 120mm fan blowing "out" you would get good cool airflow from the side of the case over the cpu/heatsink and sucked out the back by both the PSU and back 120mm fan.

slipknottin · Post by **slipknottin** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 3:33 pm

IMO, his cool temps are due to his ducting. Otherwise his airflow would be less than ideal.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 3:40 pm

Why do you think you need all those fans? If you start with a decent case (think SLK3000B, EC-4252) you can almost surely get away with one 120mm rear exhaust fan, and possibly one very low flow, very quiet 80/92mm front fan, even with pretty hot hardware. IMHO, there's no sense starting off with a buncha fans, just because you think it may be needed. Proper planning can pay off well.

Uwackme · Post by **Uwackme** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 11:01 am

On the serious system end of things, where you are pushing high Vdimm into the rams, and voltmod'ing your video card.....

I highly recommend a side door 120mm fan, slow speed 5-7V as an intake blowing directly on the videocard/dimms. Works wonders, was good for 15Mhz FSB increase in SuperLanboy and SLK3700AMB installs. Airflow over the dimms was poor in the stock layout and the ram sticks would get pretty hot. Side fan with steady cool air aimed at them and the dimms were only slightly warm to the touch.... this is BH5 @ 3.5Vdimm.

Without the side fan, the dimm max FSB was heat limited, below what the ram was truly able to achieve.

Perhaps an internal equivalent will be as effective, mounted to direct air over the videocard/dimms, I havent had a chance to experiment with that yet. When I switch to the AMS CF1009 case Ill first test an internal before putting anyhting in the door.

I estimate even with watercooling on the CPU/GPU Im going to need to cool the videorams and DIMMs actively, just a matter of quietly-actively.

As it is, the LX-6A19 with 120 intake, 120 side intake, 120 exhaust and 120 PSU exhaust all runnning 7V is able to keep this serious rig 45C max load on the CPU, and 55C max load on the GPU, 3.45Vdimm on the rams, 240Mhz x11 with an Alpha 8045 (80mm M1A panaflow). The system is quiet enough to not know its on till you sit down right next to it and listen for it.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 12:58 pm

*Me does calculation*

15 MHz / 225 MHz (240-15) = less than 7% performance increase.

*Me looks at HORRENDOUS increase in VCore, Vdimm, extra 120mm fan, fans running at 7V instead of 3V, calculates increase in noise*

*GASP*

*Me concludes silence is bliss*

niels007 · Post by **niels007** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 2:13 pm

The real performance increase will be even less.. Crazy overclocking is never really worth it. You can get fairly close to maximum overclocking settings with a lot less voltage and a lot more peace and quiet. My cpu runs at 1.5volt up to 2ghz.. 2.25ghz already needs 1.75 volt and it gives me 1 extra fps in Doom3 and I went from 70 to 72fps (hard to say but lets take the most enthusiastic FRAPS reading) in Far Cry..

The last bit just requires too much extra voltage and cooling and in practise doesn't transform gameplay at all.

In fact, overclocking rarely is more of an effect bar a 'mental' one, knowing you got most out of it. Extreme cases aside, never will a game that runs too slow (say 20fps) run acceptable (35+fps) due to overclocking. Gains of 20% are pretty high and that would be 24fps, still very much unplayable.

There have been exceptions:
- Celeron 300 at 450 was a pretty decent step
- Duron 1400 and 1600 being athlon xp's and capable of 2+ghz mattered
- Geforce 6800 LE pipeline unlocking
- other 'firmware upgrades' to ATI cards..
- insert a few others here..

The way chips and ram work is that the last bit of speed is always the toughest, double the noise for the last 10% in performance just isn't worth it!

Uwackme · Post by **Uwackme** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 10:21 pm

The difference between 2Ghz and 2.64Ghz is enormous. And 240x10 beats 200x12 any time, at the same timings, so FSB on the ram is worth the extra effort. And to get prime/3D 24/7 stable out of BH5 5,2,2,2.0 at high FSB takes Vdimm and that means heat.

Try FarCry at 1600x1200 at highest settings, 4AA 8AF and tel me I can do that at 2Ghz.

The point here is, as quiet as possible while doing whatever your need is, not just have everyone build a totally silent 400Mhz webbrowser. We can all have one of those set aside as a second machine, totally silent and fanless.

niels007 · Post by **niels007** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:52 am

I was more referring to the core voltage in relation to CPU speed, in your case a hefty 2.6ghz at 1.85 volt might well be 2.3ghz at 1.55 volt with barely an effect in games yet a lot of effect in the required cooling. FSB is king, I agree. (RAM heat as far as I know isn't really a 'problem' compared to cpu / gfx and psu heat output)

Of course everybody should decide where their overclocking / silence / money to spend balance is.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:36 am

For the record, my post wasn't meant to start a OC vs quiet debate but just to put another perspective in.

As someone put it eloquently once, each to his own. I prefer sacrificing a little speed (and I do overclock, just not so aggressively) for a quieter machine.

any mid-tower atx with side panel 120mm fan?

any mid-tower atx with side panel 120mm fan?

hmmm

hmmm