3. In terms of bottom fan, you can not fit another 120mm. In fact, you're not gonna be able to fit much else in the room. I chose single fan because the whole point is to direct more air to the intake, more cool air rather than case air. Having an additional fan blow at the shroud is pretty pointless, as the heatsink is covered. Having a slim fan that has a good curve is important, as it won't blow so much air that it will move gpu fan while idle thus possibly sending a charge back to the board. If you need storage, you can choose a 120mm fan at the intake, then it should allow room for a drive down there (double check with someone else).
Ok, so I would take one of the 140mm fans off the C14 and that will run on the second fan header with voltage control. I am using a short GPU (170mm) so I will place the fan at the back to blow air into the case rather than at the GPU.
4. Haha, sorry about cabling. I'm very bad at it and it's still a work in progress. A few things I observed is that it's important to go for short and flat cable. It allows easier bending, better ability to go between low clearance situations and less cable to work with. Sx500-l comes with flat cables, but if you choose something else, I'd grab a silver stone short cable kit to make your life easier.
Does the short cabling come standard with the SX500-l?
5. In terms of psu, sx500-l is one of the only choices if you want a quiet system. While it still has the clicking, it's supposedly much better than sx600 and not very audible unless you really are sensitive to noise. It's important to note that if your gpu has a shroud like mine, it's SUPER tight and you basically have to bend the cables 90 degrees for them to fit. It'd be much easier without a shroud. You can also choose to turn the psu inward and the cables will completely avoid the gpu. However, I didn't want it to intake hot case air.
Did you do any fan replacements as others do? I am in fact very noise sensitive and my girlfriend will use the system for work and needs to be able to concentrate on documents a lot. Clicking if audible is a big issue I'm affraid.
Any improvements can be expected from fan replacements?
Hope it helps. Post your build once you're done!
I am expecting the V5 in January
Ok, thx. But running a 4-pin and 3-pin fan on one header is nonsense?Noctua's 4-pin adapter splits the PWM signal to both fans, as well as the +12V signal. If the PWM signal is strong enough, it'll control both fans as if they were connected to two headers with the same PWM curve. If it's not strong enough, strange things can happen (like the fan running full speed or not at all). With just two fans it shouldn't be a problem, though.
While I don't understand what's going on in the manual and don't know anything about the board itself, you can easily power all your fans off a single header. You have a couple of options depending on your fans.
If you use the NF-P14 fan, which is 3-pin AFAIK, for the CPU, you should hook that (and the secondary CPU fan if you want one) up to the second header. Then, assuming you don't already own the 120 mm fans, use a 4-pin splitter on the first header (possibly after an extender to reach the bottom) and buy two 120 mm PWM fans for the bottom.
If you only have or want 3-pin fans, your choices are
- Put all of them on one header, which means you lose control of their individual speeds. They will all be controlled as one which sucks if they are rated for very different speeds. It will, however work well with 3-4 identical 120 mm fans.
- Get a fan that is either already at a comfortable noise level or can be made comfortable with the Noctua low-noise adapters and put it on the first fan header. This means you have to choose one for idle noise levels and will mean higher temps at load than if you had automatic software control.
If I'm not mistaken, you can also get a 4-pin splitter and use a 4-pin fan on the side with speed control and a 3-pin fan on the side without and control them both, but I don't know what this will do to a 3-pin fans motor. If I remember correctly, I had a fan set up like this for years in my previous case.
Is running the CPU fan on a system header not a bad idea? Because I want the fan to speed up when the CPU is hot / not when the system is hot.
So at the moment the only idea I can see in order not to waste too many fans (the ones standard with the C14) is to use one of the fans in the case floor hooked to the system header and buy a second PWM fan for the CPU header. That way I am wasting one fan but don't see an alternative.
Hooking a CPU voltage fan & a case voltage fan to the same header doesn't seem like a good idea to me...