Airflow 540, case fan setup and management advice

shumaa1 · Feb 16, 2015

Hello!

I am looking for some advice regarding airflow and fan management, as it's something I've never quite mastered.

I recently upgraded my case to an Airflow 540 (previous NZXT hades was old, loud and hot) and I'm having some issues.

Here is my proposed plan.

Now the issues:

* Is this set up ideal? The 540 doesn't have many dust filters (apart from the front intakes) and I'm worried about having negative pressure and sucking dust in all the vents

* In total I need to connect 6 fans, but only have 3 fan connectors on my motherboard. I have connected a couple straight to the psu with a molex>3 pin adapter, but obviously they run at 100% and this is noisy. Is it a good idea to get a fan controller, or to use y-splitters and try to connect them all to the motherboard?

* The case is on the carpet, it was either taat or have it 1ft from my head, and with the fans running 100% it was way too loud. Would it be worth buying these dust filters? Theyre pretty expensive, but if they are worth it I might do it.

* Final issue, my PSU is about 3/4 years old, and the fan now sounds like a cricket chirping when running. Is it worth trying to replace the fan or will the whole PSU needs replaced? Its a corsair 750w HX

Thank you for any advice, I realise its a lot but it all sort of ties together.

BrandonYoung · Feb 16, 2015

I'm loving my 540 air. I wish it came with another filter for using the top slots as intake as well. My air flow looks very similar to your diagram, with the exception of my H100i is mounted at the top as exhaust, and I'm using the included fans (2 on front for intake, 1 on back for exhaust), in my experience, this does provide negative air pressure, and I have my case on my desk to minimize dust accumulation. The "perfect" setup from what I can tell would be to turn the fans around on my H100i and use it as intake as well, assuming I added a filter (4 intake, 1 exhaust total).

Currently I am driving my front intake fans pretty hard, and my exhaust (back/h100i) fans pretty low, to stay above negative air pressure, dust is minimal in this situation, however if i run my fans normally, I do see a bit more dust accumulation near the bottom of the case, and from the back around the vents.

I would look into a highly rated, high quality 6 port (15-30watt/channel) fan controller. My motherboard's controller doesn't really suite my needs as well as it could for this case. A nice fan controller is one of the next investments for my setup. This would make it trivial to maintain a slight positive pressure, and optimize cooling (and noise) levels on any given situation (gaming vs browsing the web).

If you don't mind how your motherboard is handling its existing fan ports, you could simply get the y-cable adapters you mention for a quick fix, or look into doing some cable splicing for an even cheaper fix (assuming you don't mangle any of your fans...).

It does sound to me like the fan on your 750HX is starting to give up, perhaps before replacing it you could look into some canned air and giving it a good de-dusting. I recently (after 3 years of operation) gave mine a cleaning and I was astonished by how much dust was hiding in it. I'm sure you could replace the fan in the PSU, but have no experience on this with the Corsair line (it was pretty easy in a cheaper PSU that I had in the past). Just be careful, the caps in PSU's can give you quite a jolt. I have a nice burn scar on my finger from bridging it across some pins in a PSU. This can be avoided by unplugging the PSU from the wall, and attempting to turn on the computer a few times, this should release the power from the capacitors rendering it harmless (aside from maybe sharp metal).

The best idea would probably be to check to see if the PSU is still within manufacturers warranty, as this solution wouldn't void your warranty.

That filter kit for the 540 looks sweet, I may invest into it just to make sure everything fits right! It does seem a bit expensive however.

Good luck!

shumaa1 · Feb 16, 2015

BrandonYoung :

I'm loving my 540 air. I wish it came with another filter for using the top slots as intake as well. My air flow looks very similar to your diagram, with the exception of my H100i is mounted at the top as exhaust, and I'm using the included fans (2 on front for intake, 1 on back for exhaust), in my experience, this does provide negative air pressure, and I have my case on my desk to minimize dust accumulation. The "perfect" setup from what I can tell would be to turn the fans around on my H100i and use it as intake as well, assuming I added a filter (4 intake, 1 exhaust total).

Currently I am driving my front intake fans pretty hard, and my exhaust (back/h100i) fans pretty low, to stay above negative air pressure, dust is minimal in this situation, however if i run my fans normally, I do see a bit more dust accumulation near the bottom of the case, and from the back around the vents.

I would look into a highly rated, high quality 6 port (15-30watt/channel) fan controller. My motherboard's controller doesn't really suite my needs as well as it could for this case. A nice fan controller is one of the next investments for my setup. This would make it trivial to maintain a slight positive pressure, and optimize cooling (and noise) levels on any given situation (gaming vs browsing the web).

If you don't mind how your motherboard is handling its existing fan ports, you could simply get the y-cable adapters you mention for a quick fix, or look into doing some cable splicing for an even cheaper fix (assuming you don't mangle any of your fans...).

It does sound to me like the fan on your 750HX is starting to give up, perhaps before replacing it you could look into some canned air and giving it a good de-dusting. I recently (after 3 years of operation) gave mine a cleaning and I was astonished by how much dust was hiding in it. I'm sure you could replace the fan in the PSU, but have no experience on this with the Corsair line (it was pretty easy in a cheaper PSU that I had in the past). Just be careful, the caps in PSU's can give you quite a jolt. I have a nice burn scar on my finger from bridging it across some pins in a PSU. This can be avoided by unplugging the PSU from the wall, and attempting to turn on the computer a few times, this should release the power from the capacitors rendering it harmless (aside from maybe sharp metal).

The best idea would probably be to check to see if the PSU is still within manufacturers warranty, as this solution wouldn't void your warranty.

That filter kit for the 540 looks sweet, I may invest into it just to make sure everything fits right! It does seem a bit expensive however.

Good luck!

Thanks for the response! Yeah I'm loving the case so far, so roomy and looks great, once i have the fan/dust situation sorted ill be a happy guy.

I might just bite the bullet and buy the fan filter set and a fan controller, it'll be expensive but I might as well do things right if I want peace of mind.

I think the PSU fan might just be dying, I looked up corsairs website and apparently they have a 7 year warranty on HX PSU's, which surprised me, although if they do replace it I might be without a PSU for a while..

Dust shouldn't be the issue, when I was switching cases I took every component and thoroughly de-dusted it, although I was surprised at the amount of dust in some components.

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Airflow 540, case fan setup and management advice

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