Help me get some airflow. - Page 2

Frankly I'd get two Cougar 120mm PWM or GELID Wing12 PL PWM fans for intake. They push tons of air, great static pressure and don't make much noise at full speed, especially the GELID. All you hear is the sound of wind.

For the Phantom 410 you don't even need to have the 120mm rear exhaust that case dissipates exhaust heat very well. i would concentrate on the intake and get two low speed 1000rpm 140mm up top. That's really all you need.

The bottom fan and side panel fan are VERY optional.

you can just take the fans you have on top and back. and put them on the side and front as intake. when you have cool air intake, the hot air up top will take care of itself since the air will naturally flow out in a positive pressure airflow design.

With GFX cards the best way to give them air is intake fan on the side-panel directly adjacent of these. Even a low rpm 120 or 140mm one will have quite noticeable effect on the GFX card temperatures which is hard to beat with any other combination of fans on the case.

For best results or if doing particularly aggressive OC'ing a strong 140mm one is good idea, but kinda loud. However You can use some kind of very simple controller, for example something like http://www.aquatuning.de/product_info.php/info/p11886_Phobya-SlimGuide-Controller---black-sleeved.html for having that single fan manually adjustable if your case does not have dedicated fan controllers. It's long enough to be able to leave it hanging somewhere outside of the case, if desired.

No problem. Still - getting some kind of control on that thing is desirable as if you go with something "strong" it can be loud enough to be heard through, for example, Logitech G35 headset, which has pretty good sound insulation. For example I have AeroCool Shark, which is a LED 140mm one, approx 110 CFM at full speed and it is very audible at full speed.

110 CFM on side-panel is definitely overkill though. Something around 25 .. 40 cfm gets you most of the benefit and anything above that just just a lot more additional noise for minor gains in temperatures. The AeroCool Shark comes with resistor cable as well if i remember correct which drops it into reasonably quiet range.

That should work fine. Even very strong fans tend stay at max 4W or under so that built in fan controller should be quite capable of handling that.

A single 140mm is a bad idea. Since no single 140mm can beat two 120mm fans.

His case already comes with a fan controller.

He doesn't need to spend more money than he should. All he needs is two strong 120mm intake fans and two low rpm fans up top.

Check out my rig pics, I spent over $300 testing various 120mm and 140mm fans. I speak from experience, not some armchair knowledge I got from the internet.

I'm basing my suggestions on the personal experience as well. While I have not specifically tested various fans I have observed that the largest effect to an air-cooled GPU temperature comes from having a fan directly next to it at the side-panel. While the effect of other fans is there if you dont have the fan on side-panel the fan closest to GPU's has the largest effect. It does not matter as much if its 140 or 120 mm as its on the sidepanel and roughly on top of GPU's.

Something like that

A single 120 or 140 mm is enough to cover both GPU's in most traditional layout cases. Sure, having more is not having negative effect, but bulk of the work is done if you have at least one 120 or 140 mm one on side-panel. If its a 700 rpm quiet one or 2000 rpm beast is no longer as important. Sure there is temperature difference but the temp difference is larger between no fan and weak fan than between weak fan and beast fan on the side-panel.

Edit: If budget is an issue I have personal experience with couple of low'ish rpm quiet ones that would do the trick. Both are still at discount in Aquatuning.de - not sure if shipping from there is worth the trouble for the OP though.
An 120 mm one for 2.38 euros - http://www.aquatuning.de/product_info.php/info/p1123_Coolink-SWiF-1201-17-dB-A-1200-rpm---120x120x25mm--.html - I have 9 of them on my radiator and they are more quiet altogether than a single Shark I mentioned earlier.
An 140 mm for 4.76 euros - http://www.aquatuning.de/index.php/cat/c846_Nanoxia.html - very quiet 700 rpm ones. I use them in my watercooled case for top and bottom intake for giving motherboard components, especially VRM's some air.
Edited by Carniflex - 6/29/12 at 11:28am