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Side panel fans?

O

oramac

n00b
Joined
Jun 12, 2012
Messages
15
I'm planning on adding a couple fans to the side panel on my PC and am not sure if they should be intake or exhaust. My gut says exhaust, but I figured I'd ask before I just did it.

I currently have on front low intake and a top and rear mount exhaust. All 3 are 120mm fans connected to the MOBO. The new fans would likely hook directly to the PSU.

Thanks!
 
Intake, so your add-on cards get more airflow..and put some filters on them.
 
Side fans are almost exclusively intake. They suck air into the case, it passes over your graphics cards and CPU cooler, and is blown out out of the top and back. Anti-vibration mounts and filters are a good idea. (All intake fans should have filters)
 
Intake, for above mentioned reasons and because you already have a lot of exhaust... too much exhaust = drawing air in through unfiltered openings in your case = more dust to clean out.
 
Yeah, too much exhaust will lead to negative air pressure, which leads to bad cooling and dust intake through openings in the case. It's better to have more intake than exhaust because the resulting positive air pressure forces air to passively leave the case, allowing for better cooling of video cards, etc, and reduced dust buildup.

Have you picked out your fans yet, oramac?
 
Thanks for the feedback! Looks like intake it is.

I was looking at a CoolerMaster fan: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4675264&CatId=494.

I already have some blue LEDs in the case, so I was going to stick with that, but if there's a better option that doesnt have color I'm ok with it.

I was planning also on buying a little more RAM at the same time, but was just going to buy the same stuff I have in there now. It's not the best in the world, but I figure matching it up is probably wise.
 
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No, they are mostly cases/cooling accessories kinda place, newegg has the same fan, though a bit more.
 
How much are you willing to pay per fan and how much noise will you put up with? The best overall case fans tend to be, in no particular order Noiseblocker, Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP, Noctua NF-S12 (new better version coming soon), and deltas. Cougar's top line, by the specs, also seems like it should perform well
 
Teenyman45 said:
How much are you willing to pay per fan and how much noise will you put up with? The best overall case fans tend to be, in no particular order Noiseblocker, Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP, Noctua NF-S12 (new better version coming soon), and deltas. Cougar's top line, by the specs, also seems like it should perform well
Click to expand...

By the specs? Ummm....No, you should never take a fan by it's specs, they are fluff and that's it, wait for a fan to be reviewed by a well known place before making a choice off of "specs". Deltas are also not known for being case fans by any means, and the GT line of fans are GREAT, if not the best HS/Rad fans right now, and while they do good in a case fan setup, they are not top choice, no less for the price. NB and Noctua both make good case fans, but at very steep prices, often 20 bucks or more per fan.
 
Teenyman45 said:
How much are you willing to pay per fan and how much noise will you put up with? The best overall case fans tend to be, in no particular order Noiseblocker, Scythe Gentle Typhoon AP, Noctua NF-S12 (new better version coming soon), and deltas. Cougar's top line, by the specs, also seems like it should perform well
Click to expand...

Deltas?
 
BlueFireIce said:
By the specs? Ummm....No, you should never take a fan by it's specs, they are fluff and that's it, wait for a fan to be reviewed by a well known place before making a choice off of "specs". Deltas are also not known for being case fans by any means, and the GT line of fans are GREAT, if not the best HS/Rad fans right now, and while they do good in a case fan setup, they are not top choice, no less for the price. NB and Noctua both make good case fans, but at very steep prices, often 20 bucks or more per fan.
Click to expand...

I use both Noctua and Scythe GTs. At the same rpm, Notcua beats GT in both delta T and overall loudness (though I have not tried the AP13 and lower speed GTs). To work as a good rad fan at 1300rpm or less, the GT needs a shroud to counteract the side air leakage and the much larger central dead spot. Provided you are willing to put up the GTs spinning at 1850 or 2100+ rpm, they perform quite well. The two brands also have very different noise signatures those who do not mind the pitch of the GT can easily run the higher speeds.

As for cost, of course they are all expensive fans. If you want cheap, just get Yate Loons.

next-Jin said:
Deltas?
Click to expand...

Paneflo Delta fans. Super high CFM (and static pressure), super high price, super loud noise. Run the noise of a hair dryer through a megaphone like in a cartoon. That is the noise of the top speed deltas.
 
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Teenyman45 said:
I use both Noctua and Scythe GTs. At the same rpm, Notcua beats GT in both delta T and overall loudness (though I have not tried the AP13 and lower speed GTs). To work as a good rad fan at 1300rpm or less, the GT needs a shroud to counteract the side air leakage and the much larger central dead spot. Provided you are willing to put up the GTs spinning at 1850 or 2100+ rpm, they perform quite well. The two brands also have very different noise signatures those who do not mind the pitch of the GT can easily run the higher speeds.

As for cost, of course they are all expensive fans. If you want cheap, just get Yate Loons.



Paneflo Delta fans. Super high CFM (and static pressure), super high price, super loud noise. Run the noise of a hair dryer through a megaphone like in a cartoon. That is the noise of the top speed deltas.
Click to expand...

Except that in every I have come across that has both the GT's beat the Notcua, also what side air leakage? That should be the same for both fans unless you are using them on different set ups. Shrouding also depends on the rad, some see gains others don't, the fan has little to do with this. Also, any dead spot there is would not make up for almost double the CFM through a rad over some of the Notcua fans.

Also, the problem you are having with the GT's and the high pitched noise I have never heard, nor has anyone I know who uses GT's or most of all the other people who posted in your other thread.

NMB and Delta fans are not expensive, actually they are cheap when compared to Notcua and NB fans, they are also just about useless, having used many 150-200cfm deltas for a test rig the noise to cooling is not even close to being worth it, much past 70cfm and you see nothing because air efficiency drops off so far the extra air is not used. And undervolting them is pointless as most have awful ticking noises at lower speeds. He was also making a point, that people do not use deltas as case fans, other than OEM's. There is a reason the GT's are top pick for people building loops right now who care about performance to noise.
 
Air leakage refers to the the loss of air out of that little ~1-2mm gap between most of the fan's encasement and whatever it is screwed or clipped onto. All fans lose some air out the side. NF-P12 and especially F-12's have almost none due to the way the air flow from the blades and the rest of the fan is focused, GT AP15s have some and Coolermaster OEM 120mm case fans have a lot. GTs also have a very large central rotor compared to most other 120mm fans I have seen. A sealed shroud (similar to the ones Phobya makes) that provides a few extra millimeters of distance combined with a wall to prevent air from blowing out the sides mostly counteracts this. When I hooked a GT as a push fan to a tower cooler as a test, just using some Phobya sealant tape helped in this regard. None of that actually matters much for case fan effectiveness though.

As for the whistle. Here is the first link I clicked on while doing a search on youtube for Scythe GT AP15 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of2Qnz-1OIw&feature=related. The whistling begins at 46 seconds. It is an entirely separate noise from the otherwise fairly quiet whoosh of air and is audible through my work laptop's speakers when they are set to about MV ~30% Wave ~85% and the Youtube's video slider at ~85% which were the settings they happened to be at the time; maximizing the settings made things uncomfortable. At home the whistle from the actual fans is audible from more than 10 feet while the AC is running. This is a noise sensitivity issue. However, I did luck out in that my GT AP 15's have not, yet, started ticking while running them with a Noctua Low Noise Adapter (L.N.A.) cable.

When comparing Noctua vs Scythe the test is usually at stock speeds that is 1,300rpm vs 1,850 and at that point the GT AP 15 tends to come out ahead in delta T tests. Slow the GT down and the story changes. Noctua fans are also fairly specialized and if not used exactly as instructed by the manufacturer have a steep drop off in performance. As a case fan most GT APs tend to move more air because they spin faster and because only the Noctua S fans move a semi-decent amount of CFM.

Price for GT's are normally $15-19 due to high markup and Noctua fans are usually on sale for about $15 with some digging, otherwise the price is going to be $20-$27 each. Noiseblocker fans are usually at least $20.00 each and I have no personal experience with them but have generally heard good things

Switching over to the Delta fans. Newegg lists the in stock fans (with one exception) for $29.99 or more when bought individually. A quick amazon search has Deltas from $25.00-$50.00 and used for $8.00. Deltas (and Scythe GT AP30's) make for a great case fan/ side panel fan provided you are deaf. The OP made no mention about noise preference so I included them for completeness. People do buy them for a reason.
 
I am well aware of what leakage is, assuming they are bother sealed right on the rad, there should be none. And again, as I said, the dead spot that might be there from the larger rotor will not over come double the CFM through a rad. Though a bit pointless as this is about case fans and I said the GT's are not the choice for case fans.

I have none of that from my GT's, then again I have never run them unmounted in free air, so that might be part of the reason. I have also never heard ticking on the GT's with undervolting, only a resonance on some when undervolted to around 1500rpm, note that is also a problem on the AP-15's and not the AP-14 which is close to that range.

And no, you can watch or look at Martins reviews, he does dbA and rpm to CFM ratios and the GT's win out by a large gap in almost all cases other than rpm to cfm, which shows that even at much higher rpm the GT produces even less noise. As most people care little about rpm, if you could have a 5k rpm fan that moved 200 cfm but made no noise, no one would care, its about cfm to dbA.

As seen here:

oh7KF.png


And for Delta or NMB, God knows you don't buy fans from newegg, no less Delta's or the like, you get those from sidewinder or other performance/cooling places, where they can be had for 10-30 bucks depending on the model, the 30 bucks would be for the crazy 252cfm monster.
 
Yes, and Martin tested the NF-F12, the Noctua fan that moves the least amount of CFM per rpm and is the loudest Noctua fan, though his is the only test I know of showing the fans being anywhere near that loud. Even then, the NF-F12 has identical CFM per rpm with the AP 15.

Random review graphs listing decibel level for the NF-S12 pulled from google search noctua nf-s12 review. Each review came from the second page of links as front page were either commercial or provided no DB readings (except rage3d which looks to have made its graph from the specs printed on the fan boxes so I yanked it from the initial version of this post).
From hardwarespot.co.uk
sound.jpg


From mega-labs.com
p092_0_01_03.jpg


Other non-grpah using reviews almost universally qualify the NF-S12's pros as quiet or silent and the cons as expensive and ugly.

Sidewinder's prices for the higher speed Delta fans are similar to Amazon and a couple bucks cheaper than the egg.
 
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He used the NF-F12 because it is even by Noctua's own suggestions (which you are very adamant about following) are what should be used on HS's and Rads. While the NF-S12B in their own words is made for "applications that don’t require high static pressure". So you are trying to compare apples to oranges.

Also, I fail to see, and you don't point out, what rpm to cfm has to do with anything? Not only is the GT right in line if not better than the NF-F12 for rpm to cfm, but at the same rpm the NF-F12 is almost twice as loud.
 
RPM to CFM shows how much air a given fan moves at a given rotational speed. How much air is pushed (not how hard but how much) at 1,000rpm? at 1,200rpm? etc... side panel fans are all about CFM which is one reason why so many of them are giant, low speed 200 or 230mm fans. These are supposed to move volumes of air and the force at which that air is moved is inconsequential.

The NF-F12 has the lowest RPM to CFM of any Noctua fan and requires an extra 200rpm to get near the same CFM as the P12 and never matches the S12 which operates ate 100rpm lower than the P12. Conversely, the F12 is the best heat sink/rad fan. Martin's review of the fans is missing a Delta T comparison. And again, Martin is the only reviewer I know of who shows the Noctua fans as loud

EDIT:
Looking through an earlier Martin review, he did test an S12B for the totally subjective noise quality category http://martinsliquidlab.org/2010/11/04/120mm-fan-testing-on-an-mcr120-radiator-round-6-summary/ and the Noctua sounded "nicer" that either GT AP 15 he tested, but the noiseblockers sounded best to him.
 
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Again, rpm to noise means nothing, I did not ask what it meant, but why you seem to care so much about it. In HS/Rad or case fans its about CFM to noise ratios. Also, we are not talking about case fans here, you brought up the fans being used on a rad and the post of mine that you quoted it for I even stated the GT's are not the best choice for case fans. So I really fail to see where you are going with this.
 
I brought up the concept of radiators merely to demonstrate the point of air leaking out from the side of a fan but finished that paragraph with "[n]one of that actually matters much for case fan effectiveness though."

I have been focused on RPM to CFM not "rpm to noise" and I pay more attention to RPM to CFM (and RPM to static pressure) because not everybody chooses to run a given fan at full speed and so it is worth seeing how much air the fan will push (or how much of a Delta T there is when used for cooling purposes) at some arbitrarily lesser speed.
 
No, that quote was from your next reply to me, the post you made that brought up the rad was just a statement about them beating the GT's which is not the case. Also, why even bring it up in a post about case fans?

Again, (hope I don't have to repeat this anymore) what does rpm have to do with anything? People undervolt because of noise, not rpm. If you have one fan that runs at 1k rpm and puts out 25cfm and you have another fan that pushes the same cfm, but at 2k rpm, however its twice as quiet as the other fan, what does it matter? Everyone would pick the 2k rpm fan. Face the facts, the GT beats it in every single one of those, no matter how you want to look at it, rpm to cfm, noise to cfm, noise to rpm etc etc.

And to the edit on the first page about sound quality, yes, he gave them a whopping .25 of a rating point to the (yet again) low static pressure S12B, also as he makes clear in the title of the graph, its about how smooth something sounds and not how loud, a smoothness rating of .25 over the AP-14 to the S12B is pretty much unnoticeable and this is clear as he still picks the GT's as the winner out of all the fans. It's also worth note that the one noctua fan made for static pressure on that list also got the worst rating for sound quality.
 
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When people, myself included, undervolt due to noise the idea is to have a stronger performing fan even at the lower voltage level and to also have the option of running full out (or at some greater but not maximum speed) when the need arises.

In RPM to CFM the F12 matches the AP15. Since the F12 has a worse RPM to CFM ratio than the S12, simple logic shows that the S12 has a higher RPM to CFM ratio than the AP15. Therefore, provided a user only wants to run at no more than 1200rpm either due to total volume or simply because of the way the fan sounds at higher speeds, the S12 is the better case fan. If the fan will be run faster, or you just hate the color scheme, the situation becomes a bit more muddied
 
Wow. Here and all I was looking for was intake or exhaust! Thanks for the info guys. I'm going to have to do some more serious looking into all this.
 
Again, you are relating rpm to noise, which you said just before you don't do....Yet you are doing. Noise to rpm has nothing to do with this or performance, its about cfm to noise, no one cares if their fan is running 2k rpm if it moves the same or more cfm at less noise than the others, I can not fathom why you are so stuck on this useless metric, other than to try and say the S12B is somehow better than the GT on a rad which it is not.

Also, if you looked at the other charts or watched the videos, you would notice the S12B and the AP-14 have almost the same rpm to cfm ratios. So again, what is your point? You seem to be jumping from metric to metric to try and show the Noctua as better rad fans, which they are not, and the S12B is better as a case fan which I pointed out in one of my firsts posts before you did....I would really like to know what you are trying to prove.
 
I never claimed the S12B was a better rad fan and have never made any positive claims about how the S12 performs as a rad fan because it should not be used as one.

In post #17 of this thread I started with the NF-F12 to type that it was the fan used in Martin's comparison and that it was an identical performer to the AP 15 in terms of CFM to RPM (notice how CFM to RPM has been consistent through all of my posts that have any relation to performance numbers). To forestall any digression about when I first brought up the F12, that was in post #15 to help define what I meant by side air leakage in response to your question

Again, in Post #17 I then transitioned to the S12 to indicate that it would make for a better case fan than the NF-F12 tested in Martin's review.

The full metric I am using is CFM to RPM with a maximum RPM threshold set either by 1) the maximum RPM of the fan or 2) (if necessary) the maximum threshold of comfortable noise, whichever is less. The noise cutoff is semi-tangential and based on how noise happens to sound to the individual user rather than a strict DB ceiling. Because fans come in so many different speeds, CFM to RPM based on maximum speed of the slowest fan is a decent metric for comparing two or more since that is a near linear scale. Essentially, RPM to CFM is a measure of fan speed efficiency.

Which charts and which videos are comparing AP-14s? (typo? or did you specifically bring up the 14's because it is the AP 15 that has a similar absolute CFM value to the S12) This is the first time you have mentioned them and according to Scythe's own material the 14's require 17rpm per cubic meter per hour (yes I switched from CFM to m3/h here because that is what both Scythe and Noctua use and I do not feel like doing conversions) whereas the S12 requires just 12rpm per m3/h and the AP-14's, even at max speed, do not move as much air as the S12's. AP-15's require 18.9rpm per m3/h to eventually nearly match the same total air moved.

For people who want a lower speed fan for the sake of a lower speed fan, the S12 is the better case fan choice than a similar speed GT. Tangential to this discussion but still worth considering is the 6 year warranty and the assortment of options included in the S12's package.

Introducing the element of sound to the mix:

For people who want a fan that sounds "better" or "nicer" odds are the choice is the S12 (as per the limited sampling of Martin's earlier perception or my own ear) unless you really hate a deeper hum and prefer a higher pitched whistle. For people who are concerned about absolute noise at a given rpm, because the S12 is generally rated as silent or near silent by reviewers and at least by the admittedly potentially dubious DB box spec, the S12 should test with a lower DB than the AP 15 even when Martin's oddly aberrant/outlying result for the NF-F12 is used a guide. All while moving ever so slightly more total air than the AP 15.

In contrast people might want the AP 15 if they might consider switching it from case fan to rad fan at a later date, because AP-15's are usually $3-5 cheaper, or because the Noctua fans are really, really ugly.
 
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You made claims that the Noctua fans were better than the GT's on rads, if its not this fan or that fan from Noctua that you brought up....Then which model is it? I have used every model you listed and given chats or the like for that fan and show its not better than the GT's, so please do state the exact model number of the Noctua fan that you say gets better temps than the GT's, or better yet post proof of it from respected review sites so I don't have to go hunt it down myself, as it seems every time I do its the wrong fan. :rolleyes:

Yes, I noticed how you always go on to talk about rpm to cfm...and then link both of those to noise levels and performance, of which is clear that on a rad the GT, while being the same in rpm to cfm as the Noctua and other fans produces far less dbA at the same rpm. You have not said why you care about this metric so much other than to link it to noise levels, of which I can show and prove do not always relate, as the case we have here of the GT vs Noctua where even though at the same rpm/cfm the GT's produce far less dbA, which would prove your whole assumption wrong.

As for the AP-14 it is listed in all the charts and videos, as are the AP-15 and AP-13. And as stated before, using listed data from the mfg is useless and pointless, the rpm to cfm data is listed on the charts and can be seen by watching the test videos. Also, all the statements you have made about rpm to cfm are in free air and not on a rad, the S12B will have to spin much faster to move the same cfm when dealing with restriction. Which was my point when I replied to your post where you listed using the GT as a case fan, and I said they do ok, but are not the best choice for case fans.

Lower fan speed for the sake of fan speed is also pointless and serves no point unless the fan is to loud and reducing the speed reduces the noise, however, this does not mean that one fan at 1,000rpm is quieter than another different fan at 1,200rpm, and this is why this metric fails when using fans that are not of the same model, if using the same fans it can be helpful in finding the "sweet spot" of the fan but it does not work when using fans that are nothing alike. As for the 6 year warranty, the first fans I listed as suggestions for a budget have a 6 year warranty, fared better than all the Noctua fans in the tests even though it is also built as a case fan, and has a smoother sound rating than the GT's and the Noctua's all the while only costing 8 bucks.
 
Teenyman45 said:
Paneflo Delta fans. Super high CFM (and static pressure), super high price, super loud noise. Run the noise of a hair dryer through a megaphone like in a cartoon. That is the noise of the top speed deltas.
Click to expand...

Oh I know what they are, I have just never seen them used as case fans. If you loaded out and entire case with Deltas it might collapse in on itself and the noise would be absolutely horrible.
 
interesting links, thank you both for the starting point. My HAF922 picked up some filters last month, and I don't have enough airflow to keep me happy right now. It's a bummer how few 200mm fans are geared toward more static pressure, but after going through your listed top three I stumbled on the NZXT FN-200 series. Anyone have any experience with NZXT fans?

Edit: Nevermind, I just found out that it's a proprietary size for their cases. Double bummer.
 
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Honestly, for case fans you can't go wrong with Yate loons. They're quality fans, they're cheap, and they perform well. At $5 a pop you can't go wrong.
 
I just found Bitfenix Spectre Pro 's on sale at Xoxide, not to bad pricewise and that way I can have a set of 200/120 that match (anal, I know). the 200's have great reviews and I have not found anything particularly negative for the 120's. I just need enough static pressure (vacuum?) to pull through filters in the summer.
 
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