Case Fans Necessary?

scandium · Post by **scandium** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 10:16 pm

My PC specs:

P4 641 (3.2 GHz HT) w/ Scythe Katana 2 HSF
Intel 945GZ MB
Evga 7800 GT OC w/ AC Silencer
2x1GB Mushkin EM DDR2 w/ heat spreaders
Silverstone Element 500W PSU
Seagate 7200.9 160GB SATA2 HD
WD 250 GB SATA2 HD
Phillips DVD-RW
Modified full tower case

Why no case fans? Transferred the internals from my very quiet matx case to my full tower that I hadn't used in a while and learned after everything was moved over that the Vantec fan controller in it was blown out. Case has a 120 mm front intake and 2 80 mm exhaust fans, all aluminum high airflow. They are also very loud without a fan controller. Yes I could just replace it, but I'm also kind of wondering if I can go with it altogether. While running fanless with the side off and the blown out Vantec hooked up the PC was wonderfully silent... then I hooked up 1 80 mm exhaust directly to a molex, put the side back on, turned the PC back on and the moment of silent bliss was shattered.

I'm thinking that even without case fans, there are these factors in favour: (a) its a nice big case, and (b) there is still some exhaust through the rear venting AC silencer and the 120 mm PSU fan. But I'd welcome input since I haven't done without a case fan since probably my 386 15 years ago.

Edit: realized after posting that I posted in the wrong forum (its way past midnight here and I've spent the last several hours knee deep in tangled PC innards, sorry) so mods feel free to move this somewhere more appropriate.

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 12:37 am

Well, the Katana has a fan and the PSU has a fan, right? That might be good enough -- especially this time of year in Canada. Why not download SpeedFan and see what your temperatures are like?

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 2:10 am

depends on the stepping of your CPU. if it's D0 (65W), it's doable, but if it's B1/C1 (86W), trickier. CPU-Z will tell you which it is.

scandium · Post by **scandium** » Thu Oct 18, 2007 6:17 am

Stepping is D0. I ran it over night w/ no case fans and temps were 53C CPU and 40C case. Those were from the bios though, I've yet to find any software that reads the sensors on this board. This morning I put a fanmate I had kicking around on the 80 mm exhaust fan below the PSU and ambient noise levels are very good, so I'm going to run w/ just one case fan active for now until I decide what I want to do (either pick up a couple more fanmates for my other fans or a replacement fan controller).