There comes a time in every build when you have to ask the question,
how many case fans do I need?
How many case fans can this case even take?
Where should I put them? What types should I get?
How many are going to be worth it?
Do I make compromises into other components in order to get these case fans?
It's kind of annoying and there isn't a ton of clear answers out there,
so we're going to check that out today.
Also, like the video if you want to see a bunch of build logs based around gaming fiends.
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Loads of people freak out over their fans, and I mean, I get it.
It kind of feels like a manual warranty.
You want your parts to stay cool.
You just spent a whole bunch of money on this fancy new rig.
You don't want it to overheat and die.
It's freaky, I get it.
But what's the golden rule? What's the sweet spot?
Honestly, I don't know.
But that's why we're here today.
To find out you and I are going to pick a bunch of components,
put them all in a case and test a whole bunch of different configurations of fans to figure out what you need.
So let's go.
So on my personal Twitter, Luke underscore LAFR, I posted a bunch of straw polls asking people what they had in their systems
in terms of CPU cooler, fans, case and graphics card.
In terms of graphics card, you guys told me that you had an internal exhaust cooled graphics card.
So I grabbed a 290 that I've had for a little bit here that has internal exhaust.
So that should represent.
That type of heat going into your case.
In terms of CPU cooler, you guys said an average like single tower cooler.
So I have a Hyper T4.
I don't have a Hyper 212 EVO because I still don't know.
But this will be a pretty good representative of that.
Motherboard, CPU and RAM all don't really matter that much.
But I've got a Z170 series deluxe board here from ASUS.
Some random RAM from ADATA and a 6700K that we'll use to,
kind of, heat things up.
In terms of fans, you guys said mid-range.
So I grabbed some Antec tri-cools here.
Some just random ones.
I was actually going to go with Cooler Master because we have somewhat of a theme going on,
which you'll see here in a moment.
This is not a Cooler Master sponsored build, by the way.
But a master case because you guys said about $90 to $150 is what you'd spend on your case.
And this can fall somewhere in there depending on what configuration you get.
And we had a Cooler Master cooler already.
So we're going to go with Cooler Master fans.
But the spare Cooler Master fans that we have in the office on Newegg are $69 when they're like almost 50% off.
So there's some pricing error going on there and I don't know how much they're actually worth.
So I just got some random Antec ones.
So here we go.
Let's build the system, put fans all over the place, see how it turns out.
So I'm taking the Cooler Master fans that are already in the case out,
which is a little bit silly because I'm going to have to put them back in eventually.
But,
the first test that I want to do is actually going to be just with the Hyper T4 running.
Because I want to see how effective a case is with no fans additional at all.
Because I think that's, while not entirely representative because your case will basically always come with some amount of fans,
still an interesting question that we should answer.
I'm going to install the T4 out of the case because it's not the easiest thing to install.
And it's in this build, so if I just put it on, it's fine.
So the back plate for the T4 is just missing.
So I don't have an option really there,
but I grabbed the Nefton 280L and got the back plate from that.
And like the screws are actually compatible.
So I don't know, I'm going to go this direction.
I don't know if it's going to work,
but I kind of really need to use this T4.
So hopefully I can figure something out.
Holy crap, it works.
Thank you 280L.
All right.
Okay.
So we're going to be able to use the Hyper T4.
We're moving on.
So there's a lot of variables here
and I honestly can't answer them all, unfortunately.
One of them being the power supply.
You could have it so the power supply is pulling air
from the inside of the case,
or you could have it so it's in a basement,
like in this situation,
or you could have it so that it's pulling air from the outside
and then spitting out the power supply.
And then spitting out the power supply.
And then putting it back in its own little ecosystem,
which is also like this situation.
I went with the power supply not really contributing
because I actually wanted to remove it as a variable.
There's no way, like I just said,
that I can do all the different possible scenarios.
We'd need an insane amount of cases, different fans,
all that kind of stuff.
So I'm trying to take a very average use case.
And I think either in a basement
or not contributing to the system's cooling
is probably more common.
Okay.
Most of the way done building the case,
not 100%, but most of the way.
Except for monitor, keyboard, and mouse
so we can check things out.
I'm going to install the graphics card real quick.
And then we're going to start our first test.
All right, graphics card is in.
Currently we have only one fan and it's on the Hyper T4.
I'm going to turn the system on
by turning the power supply on first
and then turning the power button on the motherboard.
All right, that's booting up.
I'm going to get the panels on it.
And we're ready to test.
Well, my boot device isn't working.
Nope, yeah, there's another blue screen.
So I'll have to find another drive.
Damn.
All right, so we are currently running our first test.
This is with the system closed with only the T4 running.
I am running IDA64 stress test
and I'm running Furmark on our 290.
So that is only one fan.
I have taken the fans out of the front of the case.
There is no fans in the top,
which I can even show you right now.
There are no fans in the top.
There are no fans.
There's no fan, sorry, in the back, nothing.
We're just testing with just the T4 right now.
The CPU is only at about 71 degrees Celsius,
which is actually pretty impressive,
but Skylake doesn't run that hot, so I'm not too surprised.
The 290, however, is at 92 degrees Celsius.
But at the same time, we're slamming it with Furmark
and a 290 is kind of a hot card.
So I'm not too surprised.
So I'm installing one fan in the front here
and I'm gonna install one fan in the back.
I think this is a pretty common
kind of bare bones fan setup
where the case manufacturer will give you
one kind of in the middle of the front and one in the back.
We're giving them benefit of the doubt
in putting in 140 millimeter fans,
which are a little bit more common these days.
Also took out the hard drive cage
that was sitting right here
because A, there's a hard drive cage down here
and a lot of people are opting for, like, just one.
They're opting for, like, just SSD rigs
or just one hard drive where you could probably get it
out of the way of the graphics card
and that hard drive cage was in the way of the graphics card.
So we're gonna give it the benefit of the doubt there as well.
Wow.
Okay.
We'll see what it's actually like when it's done heating up,
but it looks like a huge improvement already.
Okay, so it's been 10 minutes
with the one fan in the front, one fan in the back.
The CPU is running at about 60 degrees,
which is down from 71
with just the T4 running
and the GPU is running at 79 degrees,
which is down from 92.
So just adding one fan in the front
and one fan in the back
was actually a pretty huge improvement,
but we haven't really gotten to the point
where you're actually adding fans to the system yet
because this is a very common stock setup.
One fan in the front, one fan in the back
is usually what you're gonna kind of get
in terms of fans in your system
is two that come in the case.
It's actually very common.
I don't know if that's usual,
but at least two in the case is very common.
All right, so now we're running two fans in the front,
one fan in the back, no fans in the top.
And this is our third test.
So far, we've seen some pretty significant improvements
from our first test to our second test.
We're gonna see how much this makes a difference.
I can already tell it won't be making
nearly as much of a difference,
but it does seem to be a little bit better,
but we do need to let it sit for 10 minutes.
Okay, so it's been 10 minutes.
This is again with two fans in the front.
One fan in the back.
We've got a CPU temp of about 57 degrees, I'm gonna say.
58 degrees looks like a better average there.
I'm taking the second highest number on real temps.
So we'll take 58 degrees and a GPU temperature of 77,
which means we went down two for CPU
and we went down two for GPU,
which is not a huge improvement, but very noticeable.
Two degrees in both categories is definitely very noticeable.
So we're gonna move on and put one fan in the back of the top
and we'll see how well that does.
So this is getting to the realm of,
you might've added a fan or two to your system possibly.
All right, so it's been 10 more minutes.
Our CPU temperature is about 55 degrees.
That's down three, I believe, from our previous number.
And our GPU temperature is 76,
which is actually only down one degree
from our previous temperature.
Not that surprising, given the position of the fan.
All right.
So with all the fan slots filled,
we're still running at 55 degrees Celsius on the CPU
and we are still running at 76 degrees on the GPU.
So there's actually no thermal change
by adding the last fan,
which is actually pretty interesting
and might save some people some money.
Although that is fairly specific to this setup.
But yeah, diminishing returns was the point
and I think we found it.
Okay, so one of our extra tests is the T4
and just one fan in the back
of the case.
I just kind of wanted to see how much of an impact
just that back case fan did.
Okay, so we're done testing just the one in the back.
For CPU, we got 64 degrees
and for GPU, we got 85 degrees,
which is pretty good,
but I'm very interested to see how it compares
to the one in the front.
So let's swap the fan position and move on forward.
Okay, so I just finished testing
with only one fan in the front.
I'm now taking that fan out.
WAN Show's coming up soon
and I don't want to be late like we always are,
so I'm trying to go quickly.
But with just one fan in the front,
it got 67 degrees on the CPU and 80 degrees on the GPU,
meaning that it went up by three degrees for CPU,
but it went down by five for GPU, which is interesting.
So you get a trade-off
depending on where you want to put your fan.
Maybe something to take note of.
I'm gonna shove this fan at the top.
We're gonna see how it goes.
All right, so our last test, no fans in the front,
no fans in the back.
One fan on the T4, one fan in the top,
gave us 65 degrees on the CPU and 83 degrees on the GPU,
which lands it kind of right in the middle
of having one in the back and one in the front,
which is surprisingly perfect, in my opinion.
So in conclusion, as we probably knew,
there are diminishing returns
when it comes to adding fans to your system.
Although surprisingly enough, in my opinion,
once you kind of get past the stock amount of fans
that come with your case,
it doesn't really end up
helping that much anymore.
One of the most interesting parts to me
was actually when we started putting single fans
in different positions in the case,
because that showed how much different areas
actually affected different parts of your system.
As you can kind of see here,
I need to get ready for a WAN Show,
and I stole a whole bunch of the monitor, keyboard,
and mouse and stuff from the WAN Show set,
so Nick is gonna take those and go work on the WAN Show set.
But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed the video.
It was an interesting look at what case fans kind of do
and affect in your system.
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