HAF X (blue) finally arrived! No damage during shipping, I was worried after reading some of the posts.
I have an eternity to prepare and no restraints to mod the case since it's refurbished (90 day warranty) and I won't be buying until next gen CPU and GPU are out.
I set my mind on air cooling. I already bought 3 Noctua fans, 1 Silverstone AP181 and 1 AP121, will get more or even replace them as I see fit. I'm considering getting a small case just to house the PSU externally in it so that I have free flow from the bottom.
Despite dozens of hours of research, reading reviews, impressions and watching videos, most of my questions have been answered but few remain. I simply don't have the time until the weekend so rather than doing trial and error on my own, I thought I should shoot a few questions here and bounce ideas around in advance to save me the trouble:
1. Is the AP181 compatible to be mounted at the top, in place of the missing 200mm? I bought AP121 and AP181, as well as a Noctua 140mm and 80mm fans. Since I won't need Noctua's 120mm to 140mm adapters, I was planning to use them to mount the AP181 in the empty 200mm slot at the top. Feasible?
2. What I planned to do was: Mount ap181 at top to push air out, mount ap121 at the bottom (laying horizontally, right next to the power supply to pull air from underneath the case. Then I would mount the Noctua 140mm in the VGA fan duct and finally, mount the 80mm in the VGA holder. What obstacles am I going to run into with this plan?
3. Anyone use the fan duct and/or the VGA holder? What results do you guys get in terms of GPU cooling with the latest cards, regardless if you installed additional coolers or not?
