Bulbous 15x fan PC case side panel dubbed the ‘Superdome’ lowers temps by 20 degrees —  $600 worth of Noctua fans arrayed in 3D-printed structure

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That’s nearly $600 of Noctua fans, though.

Behold the Superdome
(Image credit: Major Hardware )

A TechTuber has constructed a bulbous 15x fan PC case side panel as a cooling experiment. If you think the mind-boggling design of the ‘Superdome’ is familiar, that’s probably because the fevered imagination of Major Hardware was also behind the custom domed 15x fans in the ‘Fanhattan Project’ we wrote about last month. How well does it scale to PC side panel use? Let’s see.

Building the Superdome: A 15-Fan PC Side Panel - YouTube Building the Superdome: A 15-Fan PC Side Panel - YouTube
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The freebie Noctua fans arrived before the TechTuber had drafted the Superdome in 3D, but the idea was made to work with five fans around one on top of the dome, and nine surrounding them at the base of the dome, near the PC. Cabling routing was yet to be decided.

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Next, we see Major Hardware 3D print the structure of the Superdome, and luckily, the Bambu Labs H2D and H2S build volume was just enough to prevent more design splitting than would be ideal. Still, it took days to output all the pieces.

The finished work looks great from the outside, but Major Hardware is the first to admit cable management is “a little bit of a disaster.” But it was “honestly pretty quiet,” as long as none of the cables swung into the fan blades. All the fans were configured to be intakes, so we guess that when attached to the PC, the build would have a soupçon of positive internal pressure.

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Behold the Superdome
(Image credit: Major Hardware )

Battlefield 6 gaming thermals test

The proof of any success from equipping the Superdome would come from an A/B Battlefield 6 gaming challenge, decided the TechTuber. With the standard glass panel equipped, he observed a top temperature of ~86°C in the Ryzen Master software. Swapping to the Superdome and playing a few more BF6 games, and Major Hardware saw that the CPU temps had dropped to approximately 67°C. “I dropped about 20°C just by putting the Superdome on the front of my PC,” noted the TechTuber. “This is pretty incredible, and it's not even loud.” However, sitting beside the PC, he felt “a constant breeze.”

Major Hardware has decided to share the 3D printing files on Thingiverse, so others with a Lian Li O11 case and a few spare fans can easily follow in his footsteps.

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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Notton
    I'd be surprised if that somehow didn't do a good job.
    Though I think the same results could be achieved with 2x3 or 3x3 fans on the side panel. 2x2 might not be enough.
    Reply
  • King_V
    Notton said:
    I'd be surprised if that somehow didn't do a good job.
    Though I think the same results could be achieved with 2x3 or 3x3 fans on the side panel. 2x2 might not be enough.
    Maybe. Though, the dome type arrangement, I suppose, COULD have had some flow interference/turbulence going on. But, the sheer volume of air flow would overcome that, even if my speculation was correct.

    There have been cases with a lot of fans that didn't cool well. I thought there was something like a 6-fan case that was reviewed somewhere, where the cooling was not terribly effective. Going by memory, though, so don't hold me to the exact details.

    On the other hand, I think InWin has a case (I think the InWin 301?) that could almost passively cool. It relied on airflow coming from the bottom and exiting the top, with the only real fan being the PSU's fan. Not GREAT cooling, but usable. Optionally, you could add exhaust fans to that upper channel in the case, to help pull in more air from below.
    Reply
  • bill001g
    If you look at the video he has a fully water cooled machine. It makes no sense he is getting such high temps to begin with.

    Although he doesn't show it clearly it seems his intake is from the front of the case and it is one of those stupid cases that has a glass front and trying to draw air through 2 tiny slots.

    If you don't get the fans and 3d printer filament for free from a sponsor it will always be better to just buy a proper case to begin with.
    Reply
  • das_stig
    Wonder how case with a bunch of 120mm intake fans angled on the side, with front fans to force air down to the motherboard under a divider/deflector then fans angled to exhaust out the side, in a U shape? Admittedly it will stop the use of slots, but would provide a constant supply of cool air for CPU and radial style cooler for GPU?
    Reply
  • rluker5
    Makes a good case for a side fan.
    On older and cheaper cases they are positioned to blow fresh air on your air cooled GPU.
    They look a lot better than this thing as well.
    Reply
  • TechieTwo
    A waste of fans/money/time/space and not even close to the ideal airflow arrangement. Clearly this was for entertainment and online clicks. No one with a clue would build a fan cooling system like this. :eek:
    Reply
  • SkyBill40
    TechieTwo said:
    A waste of fans/money/time/space and not even close to the ideal airflow arrangement. Clearly this was for entertainment and online clicks. No one with a clue would build a fan cooling system like this. :eek:

    Have you not seen his channel before?
    Reply
  • timsSOFTWARE
    I have wondered why nobody makes a case side panel like that, but with just one giant fan - like a regular house fan/air circulator. It could have its own separate power supply and run at relatively low speed.

    I've also wondered about something similar to the old Apple "trashcan" style design, using a single large fan on the bottom, the motherboard bisecting the center of the "can", and the expansion cards - connected via riser cables - arranged in a circular pattern around the edges.
    Reply
  • TechLurker
    bill001g said:
    If you look at the video he has a fully water cooled machine. It makes no sense he is getting such high temps to begin with.

    Although he doesn't show it clearly it seems his intake is from the front of the case and it is one of those stupid cases that has a glass front and trying to draw air through 2 tiny slots.

    If you don't get the fans and 3d printer filament for free from a sponsor it will always be better to just buy a proper case to begin with.
    He already stated why his build is suboptimal if you watched the video; he has two radiators; top and bottom, both exhausting out, with the bottom one being done for aesthetics (in order to see the RGB on the front side of the fans). The front has the slim intake as you mention, and the rear of the case is open with no fan on the rear mount, allowing it to draw air from what would be the rear and PCI slots into the case and up/down the radiators.

    The net gain from just putting any kind of extra airflow in place of the glass side-panel (or just taking it off) would easily improve his temps, and having 15 fans worth of airflow obviously would do even better, since all of it would just end up being channeled through the radiators and back of the case. There's also a case to be made that he's recycling the heat back into the PC from the bottom exhaust, but in other videos, he claims it's air-conditioned enough to keep the heat from all the 3D printers and gaming sessions from becoming an issue.

    Personally, this is why I miss older cases that had at least 1, if not 2, fan vents built into the metal or acrylic side-panels, allowing for extra airflow directly over the PCI slots. Not to mention, being able to cut them up to add more fans if needed. I don't need the RGB; I want the extra cooling. And I wouldn't need to tidy up the wires much if it was a solid panel too. As it is, I have to buy a spare "rear panel" that can replace the default glass panel and then cut into them myself.

    timsSOFTWARE said:
    I have wondered why nobody makes a case side panel like that, but with just one giant fan - like a regular house fan/air circulator. It could have its own separate power supply and run at relatively low speed.
    Big fans never really caught on in the PC market until relatively recently. The largest were the weird 200mm fans made by CoolerMaster back in the day. Only now are we seeing modern 180mm and 200mm fans, and the 200mm fans (by ASUS for the ProArt series) are still unicorns to buy.

    Back then if anything, it was the DIY'ers who figured out how to cut and drill the side panel to bolt on a 12v car radiator fan unit, then custom wire said fan to a voltage controller. Before that, it was just duct-taping a small box fan to the PC tower.

    timsSOFTWARE said:
    I've also wondered about something similar to the old Apple "trashcan" style design, using a single large fan on the bottom, the motherboard bisecting the center of the "can", and the expansion cards - connected via riser cables - arranged in a circular pattern around the edges.
    There was a 3rd party Chinese manufacturer who made an ITX "trashcan" to build into, but it wasn't very popular.

    The design intent works well for a purpose-designed product, like the XSX, the Apple Trashcan, and the Steambox, but not so much for the custom market without some compromises (like all the other mATX or ITX cases trying to rely on one 120mm or 140mm fan to the majority of its airflow).
    Reply
  • beyondlogic
    Honestly enjoy this guy's content from. Time to time
    Reply