The (new) Official PC building thread!

Typically you want

Front: in
Side: in
Bottom: in
Rear: out
Top: out

whichever you've got. Not many PCs have bottom fans, but mine does lol.

 

I'm sure that sammorris and theone will answer here but here's what I found at CoolerGuys

AC 80mm fan

AC 80mm fan w/cushioning

Simple and CHEAP fans BUT I don't have one so I'm going by the name Arctic Cooling and the specs of the fans. They don't have ball bearings and are black but HEY they L@@K good to me. L@@KS like the specs indicate they are quiet too.

.....gm

EDIT: Yep little bugger beat me to it. LOL. LIKE sam said on the air.

 

Arctic fans aren't the best, they're better at heatsinks, but they're pretty quiet.

 

NOT going into the fan debate again. Well I hope not to read about it cause I have very little experience LIKE I said. LOL. I liked the specs on the AC fans and they offer a 6 year warranty. Good deal if you ask me. I'm sure there are better fans out there but hey $5-$6 bucks each ain't to bad I'm saying.

....gm

 

greensman,
Generally with a case that has a large air intake below the side fan, I've found that I want a lower airflow fan blowing in on the front as an intake, A higher airflow fan on the rear blowing out and a side fan blowing out.

My front is about 30 cfm, the rear about 70-75 cfm and the side about 30 cfm. I've tried it both ways with the side fan and I get better results with it blowing out. When I blow it in, the airflow seems to disturb the air going through the CPU cooler and it runs warmer. What I find all of this does, is insure a good airflow through the side vent, but spread over a larger area than from a fan so it doesn't disturb the natural front to rear air flow and keeps the video card cooler. It's the imbalance between the in and out that creates all the side vent airflow. It's all a matter of getting the heat out of the case as efficiently as possible! With the temps I get, it seems to work for me with my Cooler Master Cavalier case, so I can't argue with success!

Using the Silverstones allows me large airflow at low rpms. Rear 120mm is set to 1400 rpm and the side 80mm 1300. I have the CPU fan under control from the bios where I've enabled PWM control for it. I've also enabled C1E in the bios as well and have found it makes no difference in performance or benchmarks. This allows my CPU to idle at 2.1GHz but instantly jumps to 3.2GHz when needed. I've tried the C1E both ways and my temps and performance remain to same. It's pretty cool in here tonight (25C) and I'm idling at 27C with a chipset temp of 35C.

Even though ball bearing fans make more noise than other types, the main benefit is that their rpms remain more constant, so you get no annoying surge. The rear fan has now broken in to where the rpms only vary about 3 or 4 rpm, so the sound doesn't vary enough to hear the difference! They also become quieter after a couple of months use, which I think is because the bearings get bedded in and develop a set. All in all it's very quiet and not the least bit annoying! Overall, it's a much quieter and cooler running machine than when I first built it!

Best Regards,
theone :>)

 

With the side fan positioned towards the top of the case I'd agree. However, if it's in the middle or near the bottom, I'd say usually it makes sense to have the side fan blowing in.

 

sammorris,

I quite agree. Blowing in only seems to be a problem if the fan is located over the CPU cooler, then (at least with the Arctic) it seems to interfere with the airflow through the cooler. When it does, it raises both the CPU and the chipset temps! Many cases today have an air duct for the CPU which is usually positioned right over where the CPU cooler is located, and most of that type seem to have a large air vent below it. I've tried it with window cases that have no air vent, and on them it works best blowing in!

Best Regards,
Russ :>}

 

@theone,
Thanks for the FAN lesson. Much needed and to the point. It will help me when I do my next computer. I've just about got the wife talked into it and I'm sure that I'll do an Intel E6750 with the Gigabyte board that you show in your sig. I think it's the same. If there's any other mobo you think would be better in any way let me know.

Where do you get your Silverstone's? I've read up on them but you guys always know where to get the GOOD stuff and most times cheap too.

ADD: As you (@ whoever.... ;P) remember I purchased the Cooler Master Elite 330 case and it's pretty good. The "tool less" drive connectors are a little different but work just the same. I added the Antec tri-cool fan to the front and it brought my temps down 5-7 C*. So I'm happy with that. I think the case is WAY better than the POS I had before. lol.

Thanks to Mort81 and all that helped with my decisions.

....gm

 

greensman,

I have to confess, I just ordered them from Newegg. I didn't look around except for Tiger Direct. I kind of weight things out by what they cost. Low cost items I don't worry too much about, and I know if I have any problems Newegg will take care of it! I mean, how much can you save on a fan? Couple of dollars! The piece of mind knowing that if I have to return one, with Newegg it won't be a problem!

I was going to put a stronger intake fan in the front of my case so I ordered 2, but I'm glad now that I didn't change it. I would have had to run the others at higher speeds to maintain the airflow through the side vent. I wound up leaving the stock Cooler Master 80mm in it and it worked out well for me. I put the other FN-83 in the D-940 as an intake because there is no side vent and the fan is in the middle of the window! At 1300 rpm it moves 30 cfm and is quiet doing it!

Best Regards,
theone :>}

 

Okay - got what I have so far put together. (thank goodness for having some fans laying around)

Fired her up - cables are a mess and would have really been worse without the modular setup.

Got POST = hit del.

started looking at things to make sure everything is running right.
CPU fan (my freezer7) was not running.

Went into PC Health section of the BIOS showing 0 rpm on CPU fan and System fan (sys fan doesn't have sensor - need to replace with one that does probably)

Opened case and gave a turn on freezer7 fan to see if it just needed help (was worth a try)

Got an RPM reading on the bios when i spun it but it didn't pick up and run.

With all this new stuff, is my fan not running because my cpu was still cold? (i didn't let it get past 16C) or do I have to replace my freezer7?

 

By default, a lot of boards will turn the fan off until the CPU gets warm. HOWEVER, turn the PC on when you're looking at the fan, it should power on for a few seconds then turn off. If it doesn't, plug it into one of the other fan plugs on the motherboard (one that isn't the CPU socket) if it will reach, the freezer 7's control is quite short.
The only other way I can think of testing it is with a 12V DC power supply attached to the blue and black wires. (It annoys the hell out of me that they're the direct power connections, because you can't connect it to a 3-pin plug)

 

nighters,

Mine does the same thing! It's simply not got enough voltage to kick it over. Once the temps go up it will fire up! Plug it in where the chipset fan is and it should start right away!

Best Regards,
theone :>}

 

my 1st DOA part. the hdd for the build I'm doing for my buddy was DOA. I was getting error beeps and the hdd was not recognized. I even tried it in my pc and got the same thing. RMA'ed.

tried one of the hdd's from my pc in the build for my buddy and it recognized it imediatly.

 

Your first ever?
How lucky are you?!

 

I've been lucky in the past, more so than most

 

particularly more than me. I've lost count of how many faulty components I've had.

 

-theone

chipset fan plug being the one labled NB_Fan?

Guess I will try that if it doesn't spin on boot

 

That's correct.
Don't be worried if it doesn't spin when the PC's cold. It's when your PC is hot that it's needed!

 

Hey fellas

I need a little input here. I just recently purchased a MSI K9vgm-v motherboard with a AMD 4200 64bit dual core processor for 150 bucks from compusa. I also purchased two 1gb 667/mhz ram for like 40 bucks each which maxes the motherboards ram out. So total wise i have spet like 230 bucks or so and i'm thinking the case is atleast another 50 bucks. I'm now starting to have second thoughts on if i should keep investing money into this or go with another system

 

You've got a decent processor on a recent socket (AM2). Keep it!