Is the NZXT S340 case good for cooling a gaming PC with an R9 295X2 and a Core i7 2850K?

rafa0794

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I know this case has space for 1 radiator 2x140 mm (I plan on including one liquid cooler) and it comes with a top 120mm fan and a rear 120 mm fan. Will this be enough fans for gaming without compromising performance? Or should I go with another case that supports more fans and a radiator.
 
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Correct, the 295x2 is a 120mm fan and radiator screwed together, so you'd put it (most likely) in the place of an existing 120mm exhaust fan in the case. It'll still exhaust air out of your case like a regular fan, though it'll be a lot hotter then it was before :)

Dat_Robot

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I think the S340 is very good case and it will cool your components very well. The R9 295X2 runs very cools against the other options but if you plan buying this card , the 800D / 900D might be a perfect case for all the liquid cooling you plan
 

TryHardVermin

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Personally I don't like the S340 because it doesn't come with preinstalled front fans. Source:http://www.nzxt.com/product/detail/151-s340-mid-tower-atx-case.html
However, if you are willing to buy fans then your cooling will increase. On the case of other cases if you could reach your case price to $100 I would recommend the Phanteks Ethoo Pro (http://www.phanteks.com/enthoo-pro.html) However if you need to be within the ~$70 range I recommend the corsair 230T (http://www.corsair.com/en-us/graphite-series-230t-windowed-compact-mid-tower-case). Also yes it does come in different colors.
 

rafa0794

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I already purchased the liquid cooler so I will be using the front fans for that...or am I not understanding what you're saying? I also realized that the 295X2 comes with 2 pumps and a radiator to dissipate heat but wouldn't this radiator require a fan amount to get rid of the air?
 

TryHardVermin

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Oh I'm sorry I miss understood you. But the other cases I listed are excellent for watercooling as well.
 

rafa0794

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No worries. I appreciate your help. It's my first time building a gaming PC so I'm a bit confused. Also, since liquid cooling takes up 2 mounts, I will only have 2 fan mounts left. However, the 295X2 also has a radiator that would require another fan mount. Leaving me with only 1 fan left for airflow. Is this problematic?

 

TryHardVermin

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Air will be coming though the rads, so no not very problematic.
 

jaiden

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Correct, the 295x2 is a 120mm fan and radiator screwed together, so you'd put it (most likely) in the place of an existing 120mm exhaust fan in the case. It'll still exhaust air out of your case like a regular fan, though it'll be a lot hotter then it was before :)
 
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Deviant Savant

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I think the amount of heat output from an R9 295X2 will be tremendous and the fact that is comes with a fan instead of a full water cooling block says a lot, the water cooling is not top of the line which should be expected for the price of this GPU. I can see that a case could easily be transformed into a hotbox because the water cooling is not really up to the job - even with one GPU.

An article covering this was featured elsewhere that showed even when a full waterblock and custom cooling is used the performance increase is minimal but the noisey fan is eliminated of course. Having water cooling with noisey fans is a huge turn off for me, the whole point of watercooling or a big part at least is to have no noisey fans and high performance. Really disappointing they chose to not fully deliver.

The military developed technology to integrate air conditioning system into chips so I hope to eventually see that in retail end consumer computer components in ten or so years, but I won't hold my breath, it will some day become an absolute necessity to integrate better water and or AC cooling solutions as smaller sizes of components and higher performance increases, so will heat and lack of dissipation.

I am really a loss with these GPUs because while I would like to upgrade, I probably will also have to immediately buy water cooling blocks for them because having dual CrossfireX config may mean the hoses to the rads will not reach to fit anywhere - inside of a large case such as a Corsair Obsidian 900D, this will depend on positioning of PCI-e slots on MB and how many 295X2 GPUs are in use but all in all AMD should have done better with their water cooling for the price.

Update:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2287977/installing-295x2-corsair-900d-case.html
 

jaiden

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Are you talking about the fan for the VRM/RAM modules? It doesn't generate that much heat (compared to the fan on the radiator), though it is a bit louder then the radiator fan. As long as you give it the spacing it needs, it doesn't cause any throttling (and better cooling doesn't affect performance, as you stated). You can definitely argue successfully that the 295x2 is trying to hit the market segment that wants the high performance but isn't willing to have a high maintenance rig (custom watercooling). I think it is successful in that target (at it's current 1k price point, at least).

You'll have bigger issues going to dual 295x2's (quadfire) then where to mount your radiators. a 295x2 requires more then 8x PCIe 3.0 speed (so basically it needs a full speed 16x PCIe 3.0 slot) as well as 50 amps on your 12v rail (or 28a per rail if multi-railing). Going to two of them means you have to go to an enthusiast chipset like the x99, with at least 32 lanes of PCIe 3.0 (16x\16x) and the motherboard has to have the 16x slots far enough apart to allow for the cooling with the onboard fan, as well as 4x 28a rails (or 100a single rail for GPU's alone) and a 1000w+ (quality) PSU. The requirements for 2 295x2's is higher then 4x 290x cards (but requires less slots)

If you already have a watercooling setup, you'd be better just buying individual 290x GPU's and scaling up to something like Trifire 290x (performance drops off a lot from 3 GPU's to 4). Some of them come with waterblocks already installed, even.

I'm not familiar with the chip you're talking about but it sounds like a thermoelectric cooler (like a peltier?). The problem with those is if you have any humidity in the case (and you would), you'll get condensation on the colder then ambient temp components.
 

rafa0794

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Which chip are you talking about? Are you talking about the Asetek liquid cooling?
 

will31

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I just completed a build, the airflow on the front is really good, I went from a Corsair 600t to this and was worried initially that the airflow will cause the temps to rise on the cpu, but with the Static Pressure fans and the slots at the top and bottom of the case the H100i cools just as good as it did in the 600t.

http://s1369.photobucket.com/user/Will3134/media/Computer/DSC03415_zps77e19577.jpg.html