Fan Configurations - (because I was very bored today....)

[NoddyPirate]

As a newbie to custon builds, I found figuring out what fan config I might need more than a bit confusing. In particular I was convinced that I should add exhuast fans while I had the chance. Guidance here in the forum was great as always - but in the end I basically over-specced my build with fans given the cost was so cheap. I think I was influenced too by my previous Lenovo mini tower cooking itself slowly under anything more than idle load.

I have a Corsair 220T with it's three SP120's on the front, then I have two basic PCS fans as exhausts in the roof and an Artic PWM 120mm fan as rear exhaust. Plus the PCS Frostflow 100 RGB on the CPU.

My CPU is the Ryzen 5 5600X - about which I had read more than a few reports of high temperatures with the stock Wraith Stealth cooler.

I was really bored today so thought I would play around with the fans and see what difference they all actually make to the CPU temperatures with my particular setup. Everything is stock and no overclocking on anything. If the following is useful to anyone else - great - if not, the whole experience helped me pass the time this afternoon - so no loss!

I ran Cinebench R23 on a multi-core loop to have all cores at 100% use for about 15 minutes to warm everything up. To test a setup I run a config for about 5 minutes before taking a 1 minute average. The GPU was not under load at all - bear in mind that a big power hungry GPU pumping hot air into the case will obviously make everything warm up quite considerably.

The CPU Cooler was first up for some abuse.

CPU Package Temp - PCS FROSTFLOW 100 only - all other fans off.

83 Deg C - 350 RPM (Minimum Speed)
77 Deg C - 750 RPM (Upper limit of what I would call silent)
72 Deg C - 1,000 RPM
68 Deg C - 1,500 RPM
61 Deg C - 1,900 RPM (Full Speed)

I personally think these are super results given no case fans were running at all. Above 750 RPM or so the rear exhaust fan was turning slowly from the breeze the CPU fan was creating - and it reached 200 RPM when the CPU fan was a full speed - showing that plenty of air was moving through the heatsink. CPU clock speeds maintained steady at 4.3 GHz, but at temperatures above 70 degrees it reduced slowly to 4.0 GHz at 83 degrees.

I then played with adding the other fans to see which gave the most benefit. For a more useful results all speeds for the following were set to around 950-1,000 RPM - giving an audible but still very quiet system.

72 Deg - CPU Fan only
68 Deg - CPU plus Rear Extract
68 Deg - CPU plus Roof Extract (2 fans)
65 Deg - CPU plus Rear & Roof Extract (2 fans)

66 Deg - CPU plus Front Top Intake only
63 Deg - CPU Plus All Front Intakes only
62 Deg - All fans running.

Interesting that a single intake fan at the front is bascially as useful as my three exhausts. Fresh air is king! Also with just exhausts, air was being sucked in from every available place, filtered or not - not great for dust!

With just the three front intakes and the CPU fan on it's own - basically the stock 220T case and a tower CPU cooler - temps were great. The exhaust fans added very little extra to the mix.

In summary - all the above is totally subjective and specific only to me and my system - but it does show that a decent number of fans allows you to run the same temperatures with a much quieter system - which was my initial goal really. More really is more. All my fans running quietly at or below 1,000 RPM is just as good as having only the CPU Fan running at full speed. That also shows that the case is allowing plenty of air in and out too.

But - if I had left the exhaust fans out of the mix, I would only see a degree or two difference overall. If I had a big GPU dumping heat inside the case then I would imagine exhaust fans would be much more useful - but forcing fresh air in will always give more benefit overall I would think. For the €11 the two PCS fans cost me, and the €7 I paid for the Arctic one on Amazon, I'm happy I got them all the same.

FWIW - with all fans at full speed the CPU got down to 57 degrees under full load. Not that great a difference from the 1,000 RPM results given it sounded like Noddys car after the Goblins has taken it for a run through the dark forest......

So for me - I say the 220T is a great case and seems to be plenty capable of moving air in and out. The PCS Frostflow 100 cooler also seems to be plenty good enough for me and could easily handle my personal workload all on it's own if it had to - albeit it rather noisily!

G'night all!

 

[JUNI0R]

As a newbie to custon builds, I found figuring out what fan config I might need more than a bit confusing. In particular I was convinced that I should add exhuast fans while I had the chance. Guidance here in the forum was great as always - but in the end I basically over-specced my build with fans given the cost was so cheap. I think I was influenced too by my previous Lenovo mini tower cooking itself slowly under anything more than idle load.

I have a Corsair 220T with it's three SP120's on the front, then I have two basic PCS fans as exhausts in the roof and an Artic PWM 120mm fan as rear exhaust. Plus the PCS Frostflow 100 RGB on the CPU.

I was really bored today so thought I would play around with the fans and see what difference they all actually make to the CPU temperatures with my particular setup. Everything is stock and no overclocking on anything. If the following is useful to anyone else - great - if not, the whole experience helped me pass the time this afternoon - so no loss!

I ran Cinebench R23 on a multi-core loop to have all cores at 100% use for about 15 minutes to warm everything up. To test a setup I run a config for about 5 minutes before taking a 1 minute average. The GPU was not under load at all - bear in mind that a big power hungry GPU pumping hot air into the case will obviously make everything warm up quite considerably.

The CPU Cooler was first up for some abuse.

CPU Package Temp - PCS FROSTFLOW 100 only - all other fans off.

83 Deg C - 350 RPM (Minimum Speed)
77 Deg C - 750 RPM (Upper limit of what I would call silent)
72 Deg C - 1,000 RPM
68 Deg C - 1,500 RPM
61 Deg C - 1,900 RPM (Full Speed)

I personally think these are super results given no case fans were running at all. Above 750 RPM or so the rear exhaust fan was turning slowly from the breeze the CPU fan was creating - and it reached 200 RPM when the CPU fan was a full speed - showing that plenty of air was moving through the heatsink. CPU clock speeds maintained steady at 4.3 GHz, but at temperatures above 70 degrees it reduced slowly to 4.0 GHz at 83 degrees.

I then played with adding the other fans to see which gave the most benefit. For a more useful results all speeds for the following were set to around 950-1,000 RPM - giving an audible but still very quiet system.

72 Deg - CPU Fan only
68 Deg - CPU plus Rear Extract
68 Deg - CPU plus Roof Extract (2 fans)
65 Deg - CPU plus Rear & Roof Extract (2 fans)

66 Deg - CPU plus Front Top Intake only
63 Deg - CPU Plus All Front Intakes only
62 Deg - All fans running.

Interesting that a single intake fan at the front is bascially as useful as my three exhausts. Fresh air is king! Also with just exhausts, air was being sucked in from every available place, filtered or not - not great for dust!

With the three front intakes and the cpu on it's own - basically the stock 220T case and a tower CPU cooler - temps were great. The exhaust fans added very little extra to the mix.

In summary - all the above is totally subjective and specific only to me and my system - but it does show that a decent number of fans allows you to run the same temperatures with a much quieter system - which was my initial goal really. More really is more. All my fans running quietly at or below 1,000 RPM is just as good as having only the CPU Fan running at full speed. That also shows that the case is allowing plenty of air in and out too.

But - if I had left the exhaust fans out of the mix, I would only see a degree or two difference overall. If I had a big GPU dumping heat inside the case then I would imagine exhaust fans would be much more useful - but forcing fresh air in will always give more benefit overall I would think. For the €11 the two PCS fans cost me, and the €7 I paid for the Arctic one on Amazon, I'm happy I got them all the same.

FWIW - with all fans at full speed the CPU got down to 57 degrees under full load. Not that great a difference from the 1,000 RPM results given it sounded like Noddys car after the Goblins has taken it for a run through the dark forest......

So for me - I say the 220T is a great case and seems to be plenty capable of moving air in and out. The PCS Frostflow 100 cooler also seems to be plenty good enough for me and could easily handle my personal workload all on it's own if it had to - albeit it rather noisily!

G'night all!

This was very interesting reading, sounds like a fun day too! Although one piece of info that would've been useful is what CPU you were using 😂

It's interesting to hear how little effect the exhaust fans have on the cooling and a result I was surprised to hear. I'm a big fan (excuse the pun) of the 220T case, so it's good to hear what' it's capable of!

It's also great to hear how complimentary you are of the PCS Cooler, I think we generally try to avoid them but from this testing and what I've heard about the 240 AIO, I'm coming round to them very quickly and we maybe shouldn't give them the hard time that we do. Plus I'd like to think PCS wouldn't sell us a product they know is bad!

A question about the PCS case fans, what were they like sound wise? I've wondered if they seem just a bit cheap and loud, or if they're little bargains for some extra cooling potential.

 

[NoddyPirate]

This was very interesting reading, sounds like a fun day too! Although one piece of info that would've been useful is what CPU you were using 😂

It's interesting to hear how little effect the exhaust fans have on the cooling and a result I was surprised to hear. I'm a big fan (excuse the pun) of the 220T case, so it's good to hear what' it's capable of!

It's also great to hear how complimentary you are of the PCS Cooler, I think we generally try to avoid them but from this testing and what I've heard about the 240 AIO, I'm coming round to them very quickly and we maybe shouldn't give them the hard time that we do. Plus I'd like to think PCS wouldn't sell us a product they know is bad!

A question about the PCS case fans, what were they like sound wise? I've wondered if they seem just a bit cheap and loud, or if they're little bargains for some extra cooling potential.

Dammit! Sorry!! 😀 I should have included my CPU!!! It’s a Ryzen 5 5600X! Before my machine was built I had read loads of reports of complaints of high temperatures (high 80’s and low 90’s) with the 5600X and its stock cooler - so I was really intent on having lots of air flowing!!

Yes I think the PCS cooler behaves very well. It is a little noisier than the rest of my fans at very high RPM but from my aerodynamics background I can say fairly confidently that this what you get when the exit side of the fan blades are immediately adjacent to the fins of the heatsink.

I think perhaps some may feel that the PCS stuff is ‘unbranded’ and therefore must be poor quality. But a lot of components are made on the same production line in the same factory but carry different brand names. I’ve no doubt PCS simply pay some company to add their logo to a product that is already out there under a different label.

That doesn’t mean it’s actually going to last of course - it performs perfectly well - but I’ll have to wait and see for how long!

The PCS fans are great. I don’t find them any louder than any of the other fans in the case. They seemed pretty sturdy too when I had them out. The biggest drawback is that they are three pin fans. I can still control their speeds without any issue but the minimum speed is much higher than with a PWM fan because they need a minimum voltage to operate - typically around 7 volts - that means they’ll run at no less than about 650-700 RPM which is what I have them running constantly at. My PWM fans can tick over at 275 RPM or so.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Yes I think the PCS cooler behaves very well. It is a little noisy at very high RPM but from my aerodynamics background I can say fairly confidently that this what you get with tower coolers - because the exit side of the fan blades are immediately adjacent to the fins of the heatsink.

Whenever you get the chance, try out a Noctua cooler, they defy the laws of physics, they're insanely quiet given how much air they manage to pump through. Amazing air coolers.

 

[NoddyPirate]

Whenever you get the chance, try out a Noctua cooler, they defy the laws of physics, they're insanely quiet given how much air they manage to pump through. Amazing air coolers.

They do seem to be on a different planet when it comes to tower coolers. Some very clever engineers in Noctua HQ I think!

 

[SpyderTracks]

They do seem to be on a different planet when it comes to tower coolers. Some very clever engineers in Noctua HQ I think!

They've recently announced a fully passive cooler due for release in the next month or so, not the first of it's kind, but I believe it may be the first (or near first) production model rather than concept:

Noctua starts mass production of its passive CPU cooler | bit-tech.net

You should be able to buy one of these 1.5kg beasts in early 2021.

bit-tech.net

Noctua's hulking passive CPU cooler delayed to Q1 2021

And the next generation NH-D15 (launched 2014) isn't coming until later next year.

hexus.net

 

[NoddyPirate]

This was very interesting reading, sounds like a fun day too! Although one piece of info that would've been useful is what CPU you were using 😂

It's interesting to hear how little effect the exhaust fans have on the cooling and a result I was surprised to hear. I'm a big fan (excuse the pun) of the 220T case, so it's good to hear what' it's capable of!

It's also great to hear how complimentary you are of the PCS Cooler, I think we generally try to avoid them but from this testing and what I've heard about the 240 AIO, I'm coming round to them very quickly and we maybe shouldn't give them the hard time that we do. Plus I'd like to think PCS wouldn't sell us a product they know is bad!

A question about the PCS case fans, what were they like sound wise? I've wondered if they seem just a bit cheap and loud, or if they're little bargains for some extra cooling potential.

I’ve tried to update my original post to include my CPU model - but it won’t let me. Probably because the post is over the forums maximum waffle limit!! 😀

 

[NoddyPirate]

They've recently announced a fully passive cooler due for release in the next month or so, not the first of it's kind, but I believe it may be the first (or near first) production model rather than concept:

Noctua starts mass production of its passive CPU cooler | bit-tech.net

You should be able to buy one of these 1.5kg beasts in early 2021.

bit-tech.net

Noctua's hulking passive CPU cooler delayed to Q1 2021

And the next generation NH-D15 (launched 2014) isn't coming until later next year.

hexus.net

Wow! That’s impressive! Looks pretty huge but hard to tell from the pics really.

Amazing what they can do passively - albeit requiring decent case airflow - but it does show the power of phase change cooling - 6 heat pipes in that as far as I can tell.....

 

[SpyderTracks]

I’ve tried to update my original post to include my CPU model - but it won’t let me. Probably because the post is over the forums maximum waffle limit!! 😀

It might be the emoji, there’s a bug on the forums that can trigger when there’s any kind of unusual formatting. Try deleting the emoji, might well go through then.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Wow! That’s impressive! Looks pretty huge but hard to tell from the pics really.

Amazing what they can do passively - albeit requiring decent case airflow - but it does show the power of phase change cooling - 6 heat pipes in that as far as I can tell.....

What’s your background then, you’re obviously quite clued up on this stuff?

Always amazes me that something as "simple" as a cpu cooler can have so much groundbreaking science going into it. Makes you wonder what other applications a company like Noctua may be involved in.

 

[NoddyPirate]

It might be the emoji, there’s a bug on the forums that can trigger when there’s any kind of unusual formatting. Try deleting the emoji, might well go through then.

That did it SpyderTracks! Thanks a mill!

So - is there actually a max waffle limit then?

 

[SpyderTracks]

That did it SpyderTracks! Thanks a mill!

So - is there actually a max waffle limit then?

I think there is, but have no idea what it is

 

[NoddyPirate]

What’s your background then, you’re obviously quite clued up on this stuff?

Always amazes me that something as simple as a cpu cooler can have so much groundbreaking science going into it. Makes you wonder what other applications a company like Noctua may be involved in.

My personal background is aviation - flying currently, but a number of years as an engineer previously.

My father was a Chemical Engineer and my brother is a Doctor of Physics, so there’s family background too.

We’re a bit of a weird family really - we have fun throwing random questions at eachother now and then. This was today’s:

“Sunday Electricity Quiz!

Your AC supply voltage is quoted as the equivalent DC voltage that would produce the same heating effect as the AC supply. Mathematically, it is the square root of the mean value of the square of the instantaneous values.

So, if your supply is quoted as 230 VAC - what is the actual peak AC Voltage achieved at your plug socket?

Don't google or look it up! It's easier to estimate than you think! “

Weird? Absolutely! Fun? Completely!

 

[SpyderTracks]

My personal background is aviation - flying currently, but a number of years as an engineer previously.

My father was a Chemical Engineer and my brother is a Doctor of Physics, so there’s family background too.

We’re a bit of a weird family really - we have fun throwing random questions at eachother now and then. This was today’s:

“Sunday Electricity Quiz!

Your AC supply voltage is quoted as the equivalent DC voltage that would produce the same heating effect as the AC supply. Mathematically, it is the square root of the mean value of the square of the instantaneous values.

So, if your supply is quoted as 230 VAC - what is the actual peak AC Voltage achieved at your plug socket?

Don't google or look it up! It's easier to estimate than you think! “

Weird? Absolutely! Fun? Completely!

Lols, that’s awesome! Talented family.

I could never get on with electricity or physics. Chemistry I understood the basics and biology (mostly sexual) I was quite interested in

 

[NoddyPirate]

Lols, that’s awesome! Talented family.

I could never get on with electricity or physics. Chemistry I understood the basics and biology (mostly sexual) I was quite interested in

Ha ha! Yes biology was more practical than theoretical for me too! Plenty of trouble created that way also!

My Dad was great when I look back on my childhood. I remember our old lawnmower gave up - so he had me take the engine apart with him so I could understand how it all worked. That was typical of him really. I learned so much from him but also got the inquisitive bug too.

Another turning point was taking Applied Maths in Secondary School. Previously - like most people I imagine - I wondered what the point was of all the theory and crazy maths. But the first time I saw useful and helpful practical applications for complicated mathematics a switch flipped in my head. I found it all exciting and fascinating - and physics was all wound up in it in many ways. It coloured everything I subsequently did really.

I look back now and wonder why the hell they teach regular maths they way they do. Everything seems abstract and isolated and useless!!

 

[NoddyPirate]

I have woken up this morning - re-read my recent posts above - and realised why I have no friends.

 

[AgentCooper]

I have woken up this morning - re-read my recent posts above - and realised why I have no friends.

This is a safe place, you're in a nerd-friendly environment.

 

[NoddyPirate]

This is a safe place, you're in a nerd-friendly environment.

View attachment 23658

Hey! Where’d you get my graduation photo?

 

[ubuysa]

Sunday Electricity Quiz!

Your AC supply voltage is quoted as the equivalent DC voltage that would produce the same heating effect as the AC supply. Mathematically, it is the square root of the mean value of the square of the instantaneous values.

So, if your supply is quoted as 230 VAC - what is the actual peak AC Voltage achieved at your plug socket?

Ok, so.....assuming the age of the Universe to be 13.6 billion years and rounding the value of Pi to 13 significant digits, not forgetting of course to add in the effect of precession in the orbit of the Earth and the speed of light in a vacuum, then the answer must be ... a fish.

 

[NoddyPirate]

Ok, so.....assuming the age of the Universe to be 13.6 billion years and rounding the value of Pi to 13 significant digits, not forgetting of course to add in the effect of precession in the orbit of the Earth and the speed of light in a vacuum, then the answer must be ... a fish.

The answer is.......42. Mr Adams told me so.....