Single 120/140mm fan for 4L Mini ITX build. BeQuiet fans?
Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:36 pm
Hi spcr,
Newbie here but I'm a member of several tech forums but as I prefer silent over actual cooling results, I figured spcr would be the best place to ask for advice.
My current build consists of an acrylic case that is 21x22x8.5cm (4L) with an undervolted AMD A6-3500 (1.1V with a 5% overclock), Asus F1A75-I Deluxe and a 120W PicoPSU (the one with no power boards), a crucial M4 64GB and a WD Scorpio Black 250GB 7200RPM 2.5" HDD. The WD Scorpio Black is loud so I've just gotten a Samsung M8 500GB 5400RPM 2.5" HDD to see if I can bare the sound from a HDD. However, I think I'm going to go for two 128GB SSDs as I'm a "low powered" user so I don't need so much storage. They mount underneath the motherboard in the case. I may move my stuff into a Streacom F1C/Wesena ITX2 as they are smaller at only 3L (19.7x19.7x75cm) but here's my plan regardless of the case I go with:
I plan to somehow cut holes at the top of the case which will be lines (BeQuiet E7 PSU series style) and then I will mount either a 120mm or 140mm fan. I've tried this right now with my current hardware and as my current acrylic case has no holes for exhaust with only tiny vents at the top, the CPU temp is in the low 30s when idling but if I move the lid open, leaving about 5cm of a gap, the temperatures drop to low 20s for the CPU. This obviously means that my plan will work easily. This is with a Thermalright AY-140 spinning at around ___ (need to check) RPM. It's very quiet and the airflow is good enough, however, there's one problem with this fan. The problem is that it's really, really ugly. I'm really into aesthetics so I don't mind paying a bit more for similar performance.
I think a 140mm would be better as 120mm fans are generally louder with higher SP which I believe I don't really need. I would also prefer a 140mm fan as it would be able to blow over the chipset and PicoPSU as well as the CPU cooler of course. I need to emphasize I don't need that much airflow though and that silence is more important. As long as it's enough to move air then it's fine as I've run the PC with only the cooler's 70mm fan on and although the chipset and PicoPSU got hot, they've never given me any problems.
I really, really like the looks of the BeQuiet! fans and have seen good recommendations for the Silent Wing 2 (Dark Wing) fans but my board only supports PWM fans (has 2 4 pin headers) and I can't control 3 pin fans at all. I was thinking of getting the Shadow Wing 140mm pwm fan but it performs worse than the SW2 both acoustically and thermally from what I have managed to gather. Is there a neat way that I would be able to slow down the fan? I do know how to solder if that helps. The resistors look really ugly and being a mini ITX case, cable management is very important. The PicoPSU cables I've cut to custom length and my SATA cables are 15cm too with all the cables in the case braided, I really don't want to run a resistor cable. Seems I should be looking for aestheticallypleasingandsilentpcreview ha.
Anyways, it's 3:30am so I realise my ideas aren't fully getting across and even when rereading my post it's a bit jumbled up. Hope you guys can understand what I'm looking for and give me some advice. Thanks!
Newbie here but I'm a member of several tech forums but as I prefer silent over actual cooling results, I figured spcr would be the best place to ask for advice.
My current build consists of an acrylic case that is 21x22x8.5cm (4L) with an undervolted AMD A6-3500 (1.1V with a 5% overclock), Asus F1A75-I Deluxe and a 120W PicoPSU (the one with no power boards), a crucial M4 64GB and a WD Scorpio Black 250GB 7200RPM 2.5" HDD. The WD Scorpio Black is loud so I've just gotten a Samsung M8 500GB 5400RPM 2.5" HDD to see if I can bare the sound from a HDD. However, I think I'm going to go for two 128GB SSDs as I'm a "low powered" user so I don't need so much storage. They mount underneath the motherboard in the case. I may move my stuff into a Streacom F1C/Wesena ITX2 as they are smaller at only 3L (19.7x19.7x75cm) but here's my plan regardless of the case I go with:
I plan to somehow cut holes at the top of the case which will be lines (BeQuiet E7 PSU series style) and then I will mount either a 120mm or 140mm fan. I've tried this right now with my current hardware and as my current acrylic case has no holes for exhaust with only tiny vents at the top, the CPU temp is in the low 30s when idling but if I move the lid open, leaving about 5cm of a gap, the temperatures drop to low 20s for the CPU. This obviously means that my plan will work easily. This is with a Thermalright AY-140 spinning at around ___ (need to check) RPM. It's very quiet and the airflow is good enough, however, there's one problem with this fan. The problem is that it's really, really ugly. I'm really into aesthetics so I don't mind paying a bit more for similar performance.
I think a 140mm would be better as 120mm fans are generally louder with higher SP which I believe I don't really need. I would also prefer a 140mm fan as it would be able to blow over the chipset and PicoPSU as well as the CPU cooler of course. I need to emphasize I don't need that much airflow though and that silence is more important. As long as it's enough to move air then it's fine as I've run the PC with only the cooler's 70mm fan on and although the chipset and PicoPSU got hot, they've never given me any problems.
I really, really like the looks of the BeQuiet! fans and have seen good recommendations for the Silent Wing 2 (Dark Wing) fans but my board only supports PWM fans (has 2 4 pin headers) and I can't control 3 pin fans at all. I was thinking of getting the Shadow Wing 140mm pwm fan but it performs worse than the SW2 both acoustically and thermally from what I have managed to gather. Is there a neat way that I would be able to slow down the fan? I do know how to solder if that helps. The resistors look really ugly and being a mini ITX case, cable management is very important. The PicoPSU cables I've cut to custom length and my SATA cables are 15cm too with all the cables in the case braided, I really don't want to run a resistor cable. Seems I should be looking for aestheticallypleasingandsilentpcreview ha.
Anyways, it's 3:30am so I realise my ideas aren't fully getting across and even when rereading my post it's a bit jumbled up. Hope you guys can understand what I'm looking for and give me some advice. Thanks!