Planning ventilation in my watercooled Phantom 410

White Wind

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Hi .. I own a Phantom 410 case and now is the time to plan the ventilation inside it..

So, I will be watercooling my cpu and two gpu's through a big external rad, and will be overclocking..
and since my rig is based on silence I would go with just a few fans if possible. Let me add, inside the case the walls will be dampened, so the majority of the aeration holes will be covered. All fans will be PWM fans and controlled by the board.
So here is the first thought :

-front : 1x 120/140mm-fan ( front can have 1x 120/140 or 2x 120 ) ...my tube reservoir will stand in front of it ! ..not the best idea, I know, but I can't do much about that.... maybe that will help to keep the water cool x)

-side : 1x 120/140 ( static pressure would matter here ? ) to blow onto the gpu's

-top : 2x 140 expelling air out ( top can have 1x 120/140 or 2x 120/140 )

-rear and floor : none ( both can have 1x 120 )

Maybe go for only one 140 at the top and add a 120 at the rear ?..

Oh and would it be better for the psu to sit upside down ? I don't even know if the thing expels air out or suck it in.. ( a Super Flower Leadex psu )

Would be happy to hear what you would advise me, thanks !
 
Solution
If your radiator is external and you are water cooling your major heat producers (GPUs and CPU), you can get by with: 1 120 on the top for exhausting hot air, then you can either put a 140 in the front or a 120 on the bottom for intake. Keep in mind that larger fans can move slower wile still pushing the same amount of air so I would recommend putting your intake in the front. Motherboards don't produce much heat anymore and your hard drives will be more than taken care of by the airflow from those 2 fans. Be sure that your fans have rubber mounts or other vibration dampening on the mounting points and are either PWM 4 pin fans or have low noise resistors that you plug into the motherboard to force less voltage to the fan making it spin...

rishiswaz

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If your radiator is external and you are water cooling your major heat producers (GPUs and CPU), you can get by with: 1 120 on the top for exhausting hot air, then you can either put a 140 in the front or a 120 on the bottom for intake. Keep in mind that larger fans can move slower wile still pushing the same amount of air so I would recommend putting your intake in the front. Motherboards don't produce much heat anymore and your hard drives will be more than taken care of by the airflow from those 2 fans. Be sure that your fans have rubber mounts or other vibration dampening on the mounting points and are either PWM 4 pin fans or have low noise resistors that you plug into the motherboard to force less voltage to the fan making it spin more slowly and therefore more quietly. The more moving parts you have the more noise you will have as well so in that sense less is more for fans in a silence oriented build
 
Solution

rishiswaz

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Also for the PSU either way you want it with the fan facing the bottom, if there is ventilation for it there, not too sure about the layout of your specific case. the fan would either exhaust the hot air away from the GPU/motherboard/CPU or if it is intake it would pick up cold air from under the case.
 

White Wind

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My HDD will sit in a HDD silencer box, which helps reducing its emitted noise AND keeping it cool.. that's the HFX mCubed Vertical Silence, so I think that'll be okay for my drive ( link http://www.hfx.fr/hfx-classic-vertical-silence-rev-2-black-black.html )

My two RAM sticks will be placed into two Xilence HP Duo coolers ( XPRAM.HP.DUO http://www.frozencpu.com/products/8317/ram-xil-02/Xilence_Passive_Dual_Heatpipe_DDR_RAM_Cooler_HP_Duo_XPRAMHPDUO.html?tl=c18s236b157&id=cyXX5Snu )

For the chassis fans, I will use rubber gaskets between the fans and the case.
And yeah, PWM fans so the board software can adjust rpm according to temps ..( happy happy )

I still like the idea to have a side fan blowing onto my gpu's, that may keep them even cooler and that'd be nice.
Now you say just one intake @front and one outake @top ? Great ! sounds good, and a total of three chassis fans is the kind of number I was hoping for.

Now the sizes : for the side intake, if static pressure isn't really relevant, a 140mm fan would be better so... confirm ?

Same for the top exhaust ?

Now the front intake... my tube reservoir will sit just in front of the fan ... so better go with more static pressure and go for a 120mm fan ? ..or still 140 ?

Thanks rishiwaz
 

White Wind

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PSU position : check ! thanks

Oh and if I have two intakes and one outake, does it still make sense ? I mean, that's more air entering than being expelled, and I don't know if that configuration would be adequate for the circulation of the air, its path to the outside and so on..
 

rishiswaz

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static pressure is really important for radiator fans, it is a good metric of performance otherwise as well but if we are talking about air circulation for VRMs and other motherboard parts along with some GPU components it is not a big deal. The air in vs. air out the issue is not that big, I have a big exhaust fan (200mm), and 2 front intakes (120 each) my CPU is cooled with an external rad as well but my GPU is air cooled, and 2 SSDs don't need much cooling. The best way if you want to keep airflow even in terms of airflow for intake and exhaust would be to use the cfm of the fan and then adjust it to the speed you are running it at to estimate how much air is coming in and how much you are pushing out. For fan size, the bigger the better; a bigger fan can rotate more slowly and still move the same amount of air as a smaller fan. Ideally if you can get 140s everywhere you can run them slower and still get similar performance to faster/louder 120s.

You also have to keep in mind, basic physics comes into play with air flow: hot air rises, cold air sinks. Keep intakes low and exhausts high, you will be pushing out more hot air from inside the case and pulling in more cool air from outside. The situation is a bit of a wash with front fans but generally you should have those as intakes because the air there will be cooler than inside. If you had intakes up at the top you would be pushing cool air into the hot air already present from the VRMs, CPU, GPUs, etc. and that wouldn't be as efficient as letting the cool air come in and naturally flow from bottom to top. For you because most of your big heat outputs are being cooled through an external radiator the heat going into the case from the CPUs and GPUs is significantly lower.

Sorry if the answers are a bit confusing and all over the place but I think I addressed your main questions.
 

White Wind

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Yes you did ! that's helpful and there are good advices too, I will follow them

So two 140's, one for front intake one for side intake, and one 140 for top exhaust. Then I can regulate the amount of air each will be moving.

Thank you very much !
 

White Wind

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One last question if you don't mind

Concerning the four fans that'll be on my external rad... I'll need extenders to make them reach the motherboard. And I plan to use two 3pin-to-(2x)3pin splitters, so there are two fans per header ( shouldn't be risky for the two headers )

Now can I go :

fan---\
''''''''''''>--(splitter) + extender
fan---/

Ignore the '''''''''''' . That's for two fans, the other two would give the same figure.
Would that set up overload the extender with two fans connected to it ? ( through the splitter )
 

rishiswaz

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If you have an external rad you would be better off getting a fan controller. You can get a NZXT Sentry-2 fan controller, it has temp sensors as well to monitor your temperatures. I personally use my temp sensors to measure temps in various locations in my case (near the pump, in the hard drive cage, 2 near the exhaust fan, near the intake fans) rather than put them on parts. I have just pull on my radiator and I have the targets on both of those fans setup to my motherboard temperature and the exhaust air temps, my intake fans are based on the intake temperature and the hard drive cage (right after the intake fans) to keep it constant, and the exhaust fan is also based on the exhaust air temperature. I just set my NZXT to auto to keep it simple but you can also specify the percentage of maximum speed of the fan. I use my CPU fan header for my pump and there is a 4 pin and 3 pin header left empty on my motherboard for if I ever decide to add fans on my side panel for my GPU.
 

White Wind

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Well.. my plan is to set a curve in Asus FanXpert3 so the rpm of my rad fans would be automatically regulated according to the temps of the water inside my reservoir ( through a temp probe ). And my chassis fans will be PWM-controlled, by FanXpert3 as well, according to the temp sensors on the board.
I don't want to spend on a controller; as is, I don't need it, but nonetheless that Sentry 2 seems to be nice !

I'll stick to my splitters and extenders.. Do you think an extender could burn with a splitter and two fans attached to it ?
 

rishiswaz

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no, if it is a quality extender it should be fine. I can say though that afaik splitters end up giving each fan 1/2 the voltage so if you have 50% set as the PWM speed it would be 25% to each fan (assuming that they are the same fan). You can check with documentation on the product as well to see if your splitter does that but there is no other way I can see that working.