Do intake fans really matter?

AlfonzoTheGreat

Reputable
Jun 9, 2014
10
0
4,520
No matter how much I turn up my fans (one at the bottom, and two at the front with one having an HDD cage in the way), my temperatures are always the same on the GPU, and a maybe 3 degrees different at most on the CPU. What is the point of cranking my fans up for intakes if they just bring in dust, and create noise without any temperature difference? I have a reference Nvidia card, and a 240mm all in one.

By the way, the fans are nice fans. Corsair and Noctua. I have 3 intakes because the front ones were not doing a great job in the 750D.
 
Solution
the 750D is a decent case. you just have to insure you have a good ratio of in\out airflow. also that cables and hardware aren't obstructing too much of the air's path. 1 example, if the fan is directly under your PSU, you aren't going to get much intake around it. if you have a good CPU cooler, make sure the outward path of air is aimed at an exhaust fan with enough airflow to expel the hot air.
with your GPU, if it is using the default cooling profile that's built in, you will not see very good temps. the card's fans will slow down if it's getting more cool air from your case intakes. you should use something like MSI Afterburner to set up a custom fan profile for your GPU.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


And where are they?
Yes, intake fans matter. Along with exhaust fans.
It may not matter if the intakes are at fast or medium. But if you remove them completely, your temps will almost certainly rise.
 

bmacsys

Honorable
BANNED


Yes, they do matter. You basically need to create a "breeze" inside your case to cool the northbridge, mosfets etc. There is a good chance your drive cages are obstructing the front intake fans airflow. They bring in dust? You don't have dust filters?
 

jaimelmiel

Honorable
May 7, 2012
999
0
11,360
What else comes in to play is what you are trying to cool. Please list your setup. Also how much air in cubic feet
per minute or cfm is coming In through your intake fans and going out trough your exhaust fans. Also are you Gamming.
I assume so,
 

jtledoux

Reputable
Jun 11, 2014
192
0
4,860
What kind of temperature are we talking about? If you want your GPU's to be cooler, download a GPU config program from EVGA or Asus, and crank up the fan speed in the actual Nvidia Card. On another note the reference cards do a very poor job of cooling them selves, i had 2 770's before which would not stay cool either, traded them for some EVGA 770's with their coolers and dropped at least 8C from what the reference cards were generating.
 

GObonzo

Distinguished
Apr 5, 2011
972
0
19,160
the 750D is a decent case. you just have to insure you have a good ratio of in\out airflow. also that cables and hardware aren't obstructing too much of the air's path. 1 example, if the fan is directly under your PSU, you aren't going to get much intake around it. if you have a good CPU cooler, make sure the outward path of air is aimed at an exhaust fan with enough airflow to expel the hot air.
with your GPU, if it is using the default cooling profile that's built in, you will not see very good temps. the card's fans will slow down if it's getting more cool air from your case intakes. you should use something like MSI Afterburner to set up a custom fan profile for your GPU.
 
Solution

stulumbus

Honorable
Mar 10, 2013
3
0
10,510
I'm not a gamer, just a DIY enthusiast who's always wanted to build his own system. I have a Corsair case with fan ports on the side, top, bottom, front, and of course, the one on the back of the case. Some might think it overkill, but I have a 140mm fan drawing air across the hard drive stack at the front of the case; two 120mm fans pulling air into the case and onto the motherboard from the side; a single 120mm fan on the bottom pulling air into the case (the 2nd fan port on the bottom is blocked by the PSU). That's a total of four fans pulling air into the case. For outflow, I have two 120mm fans on top of the case and the 120mm fan at the back. The PSU has it's own fan but I'm sure it benefits somewhat from all that airflow inside the case, and of course, the CPU has it's own fan as well. Like I said, it might seem like overkill, but hey, the manufacturer put those fan ports there for a reason and fans are inexpensive, y'know? I've also been pleasantly surprised that the noise level isn't a problem. The system makes about as much noise as I figured a system with seven or eight fans might make. I'm with the others though in recommending that intake is fine and all that, but you should dedicate at least one or two fans to pulling the hot air out. Depending on the configuration of your case, the best candidate for outflow is a port on the top of the case. You don't mention it but I've never seen a case without a fan port on the back, so you might consider configuring that fan to pull air out.