Does anyone else find these 10 case fans in a system overkill?

[Spanky]

Come on these monster cases with a gazillion fans is getting crazy.

Is there anyone else besides me that belives a well thought out design with good airflow and a couple (as in 4 or less) case fans will do the job just fine?

I mean even with four fans the air in your case should be changing pretty **** fast, I would think less then 30 seconds, how much faster do you need the air to change?

Its not like all those fans are going to lower the inside temp any lower then the air outside the computer.

I personally couldn't stand the sound of all those fans, I just have a normal system with the power supply fan and the CPU fan and 2 hard drives spinning and it drives me batty.

I just want maybe 2 max pulling in and 2 max pushing out, hopefully I can set the speed on them and set it to slow when its not hot.

Oh yeah the whole idea of putting the chip on the bottom of a vid card (when installed) and a heat sink on that is messed, the heat can't dissapate very well AFAIK.



[This message has been edited by Spanky (edited 07-04-2001).]

[lazerbeam]

Spanky,

You are right that 10 fans + are a little excessive and the noise would probably damage a persons hearing over time. Although I’m not a thermal expert, I’ve been around enough systems to know that good airflow and heat transfer (the relative ability for heat to move from one medium to another) are the most factors in keeping a machine cool. There are many sources of heat inside of modern computer, the CPU, power supply, controller chips, graphics processors, memory, etc. The 700 MHz plus CPUs, by far are the greatest generators of heat in today’s computers. The ability to cool them is rest squarely on the heat sink and its fan (assuming adequate heat transfer from the surface of the CPU to the heat sink via thermal grease/tape). The ideal heat sink would have a very large surface area. That means large, very thin cooling fins that equal a significant total surface area for air to pass over. Top that off with a relative high volume fan to move air over the cooling fins. All things being equal, the type of metal the heat sink made out of is also important. Titanium has an outstanding lack of thermal resistance, that it allows heat to pass thru very easily. Since titanium is somewhat expensive to fabricate and the raw material is expensive in its own right, cheaper materials such as aluminum and copper, or combinations thereof are the most common ones used. Forged aluminum fins are the best because they can be made thinner and therefore more of them can be place within a given space thus more surface area for cooling. However, most cooling fins are cast aluminum. It’s a lot cheaper process, but they are thicker and therefore you cannot place as many within a given area so you less surface area for cooling air to pass over. This has turned into a book and I apologize. So the bottom line, a very good quality heat sink, a good high capacity fan attached, properly installed thermal tape or grease between the CPU and the heat sink, a two good high quality case fans to one to bring air into the case and one to expel it. Go to AMD’s web site www.amd.com (http://www.amd.com) and take a look at their computer case and cooling recommendations. One last point, AMD recommends for ATX configurations, a power supply that has a fan which expels air with ventilation slots on the bottom of the power supply (which in ATX configurations basically sits right over the CPU/heat sink). Sorry about the size of this thing http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif


[This message has been edited by lazerbeam (edited 07-04-2001).]

[linux_guru]

I have 2 x 80mm case fans & a FOP32-1 on my 1G T-Bird. Idles at 37C. Enough said.

[samwichse]

Wasn't there some guy recently who claimed to have something like 30+ fans and a negative number idle?

[NDC]

Negative numbers on CPU temperature at idle with 30+ fans?

There is no possible way the CPU temperature could be at 0 degrees even with 300+ fans because of the ambient temperature. You couldnt't even get the case temperature down to 0 degrees with as many fans as you could imagine! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif


If you wanna see how much cooler you can get the system than the current fan setup you have now, just open up the case and get a house fan and blow into the case. If the temperature is much lower than with the case cover closed, it's possibe to get the system running cooler by adding some additional fans...


[This message has been edited by NDC (edited 07-04-2001).]

[Overkill[TBP]]

Considering my name is Overkill :-P 10 fans isn't enough. But I'd say get water cooling or a colder type of cooling. Alot less noise to deal with.

And NDC is right, more fans don't make it any colder, I used to put my computer infront of the air conditioning vent during summer, it lowered the CPU temp to 50 degrees F

But now my computer is on the other side of the vent so, cables don't run that long :-(

[This message has been edited by Overkill[TBP] (edited 07-04-2001).]

[CMonster]

I do not find 10 fans to be excessive but the chains to keep the case from hovering are a bit much.

[JacobM5727]

i think it depends on how big the case is and how much is in it, but i think 10 fans is a little much.

[NDC]

I think with 10+ case fans, that system would serve as an "Air dust cleaner". What do you think?

[Spanky]

Yep those water coolers are some cool stuff.

[YMK]

I have one 120mm steel fan running at about 750RPM in my case. Its blowing right on the AGP/PCI slots. I knocked out the 3.5" bay cover on my case and sealed all the other holes with electrical tape. The air in the case is exactly the same temperature as the ambient air and the Athlon 750 runs about 10 degrees hotter (farenheit) at full load. You can have as many fans as you want, your case will never fall below room temp. Noise is bad so use large fans and run them slow http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[radbasa]

I'm sure there comes a point when adding more fans won't cool your case any more than it already is. I'm pretty sure it's a lot less than 10 fans. Now, if you need 10 fans to reach that threshold, you must be doing something wrong with regards to airflow in your case.