safe to use seasonic 12cm as only fan for midtower atx?

dan · Post by **dan** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:28 pm

is it safe to use seasonic 12cm PSU fan as only fan for midtower atx? in this case a cpu that puts out about 25 watts of heat, and a video card that puts out 10 watts.

i would like to get rid of other fans including CPU fan and case fans to make this the only fan in hte case.

anyone have any opinions on whether a seasonic tornado 300 watt 12cm would be able to do the job? it rotates at around 800rpm and as far as i can tell, is virtually silent

jamesm · Post by **jamesm** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:36 pm

sounds like it would be OKAY, depeninding on your setup. I've run athlon xp system with just a 80mm psu fan before

qviri · Post by **qviri** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 12:46 pm

You'd have to make sure the PSU fan actually pulls air through the CPU heatsink, though. Most stock heatsinks I've seen have fins stupidly oriented perpendicular to what the airflow from a 120mm PSU fan would be.

But, with a halfway decent heatsink, preferably ducted to PSU fan intake, it's definitely possible.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:40 pm

With a good passive heatsink (ex: Scythe NCU-2005 or Scythe SCNJ-1000) and a low-power processor, you shouldn't even need to worry about ducting the CPU heatsink. My undervolted Turion64 (17.2w according to Benchtest) usually stayed at 40*C or lower with an NCU-2005. This were load temps, not idle.

I'd recommend a low-power video card (which it appears you already plan to use), a notebook hard drive, and non-nForce3/nForce4 motherboard. Via would be a good choice, as their chipsets generally run cooler, and are located in an area that won't as easily interfere with the VGA if you plan to use a larger heatsink.

IIRC the fan in my Seasonic S12 never ramped up higher than 775-780RPM.