FT02 Top Fan (120mm)

[Skakruk]

Has anyone just removed this fan? I did and it had no effect on cooling performance whatsoever.

I guess maybe if you want extreme cooling and have the three bottom fans in their high setting it might help a little, but with them at low, the top fan seems to be more of an obstruction than anything. If you run it at 12v it adds noise, and I can imagine if you had two (or maybe even one) large external exhaust graphics cards, that fan might end up compromising positive air pressure during heavy GPU load. I tried it at 5v, and it was barely moving any air at all, so I jut removed it. Seems like it's must be redundant in most configurations...

[hudson]

I don't know your system specifics, nor am I a physics major. But, I work in tunnels and know a little about fans. Mainly, that's fans suck a lot better than they blow.

I'm building a FT03 box (same idea quite different execution) and plan on having everything 'passively cooled'. That's 2x 6770 radeon gigabyte fanless cards and a 2500k sandy with a thermalright HR-02. I plan on having one fan at the top.

My logic for this is, if I suck air out of the case at any rate, it MUST be replaced by new air. However, if I blow air into the bottom of the case at a moderate rate, I can't gaurantee anything. How far will the blown air go? Unless you crank the fans up, or duct tape your case like crazy, most of the blown air is going stop being blown. Pushing air sucks.

For the same leaky case issues, I wouldn't be concerned with negative air pressure. The fan at the top is also close to where the heat is, so for my leaky case argument, you're getting new air where you need it regardless.

Cheers and happy new year

[hudson]

I guess my point was, try removing the bottom fans and just use the top

[Ihmemies]

I removed it. I saw no point in it really since the case is meant for positive air pressure cooling anyways.

The fan felt reasonably quiet though so I used it on my CPU heatsink @5V to reduce max load temps.