Fractal Design Case Club - Page 177

Update on Fractal 120mm fan leaking oil...and dead fan controller



I emailed Fractal and they got back to me fairly quickly. They are going to send replacements...and also promised to look into the lot number to see if their are issues. They were actually very nice about the issue...which dented my frustration a bit.


That said, I have moved on. I ordered three 120mm PWM Noiseblockers and am removing all of my Fractal fans...and will be letting my Gene-Z control them.

The bad one and the fan controller are trash, but the other two (120mm and 140mm) are good with very low mileage...and the replacement 120mm will be brand new. My system is down now, but after the new fans arrive (tomorrow?), I will be swapping them and then selling the Fractals. It's premature to list them now, but once they are removed, they will be for sale if anyone is interested. I'll post in the appropriate forum at that time.

Just to clear something up about the fans, the ones that come with the cases are not really Fractal Design fans, they are a cheap but reasonable OEM. The fans Fractal Sell seperatly are much better quality and not the same.

The picture below shows how different they are. On the right are the fans that come with the case and on the left is one of the Fractal Design Silent Series fans i got today. The Fractal SS fans are very quiet and as a silence freak one of the only fans i will use without a controller or inline resistor. They have a nice quality feel to them.



Definintly reccomend these fans and will hopefully be swaping most fans in my system to them soon.

Hey,

I have the Define R3 and I'm looking for a good fan setup.
Currently I have the stock fans in rear (push) and front (pull) and an old fan from my former heatsink as an exhaust (top).
The exhaust fans speed is controlled by the mainboard.
Does it even make sense to have just one fan pulling in and 2 pushing out?
Could the negative pressure cause a bad airflow?
Do different fans with different speeds work well together?

Thanks

That explains why the specs are a little different.

Lot of good questions. I am sure that there are many who know far more about case cooling than I do, but I was a firefighter for a dozen years...and our rule of thumb for venting smoke from a structure (after the fire is out) is to ensure that the fans blowing in are through an opening equal to or greater than than the size of the exhaust opening on the other side of the structure (in which we often hang a negative pressure fan) to create a bit of overpressure.

Of course, we also close doors to compartmentalize things while we do it, so good luck there. That said, those structures are fairly well-sealed relative to a case from a surface area percentage point of view. Most cases have many other areas in which air can leak in or out. Less so with the R3 if you have the side sealed.

Is it better to try and pull more out or cram more in? I think that is very dependent on the case design, where your components are, where your fan mounts are, and how many fans you have. You also have to be careful not to vent hot air from one source as input to another source...if you can help it. As with smoke ventilation, fan placement can also cause "churning", which is inefficient.

There is also a lot of data that suggests that a rear exhaust fan actually results in CPU temps that are a couple of degrees higher than a case that simply doesn't have one, presumably because a CPU cooler fan running at higher RPM has to force the air through the slower exhaust fan. My plan to deal with that phenomenon is to place the exact same model of PWM fan that is on my CPU cooler as an exhaust fan and plug it into my second CPU temp-controlled fan header...so their RPMs (and CFMs) always match. Seems to make sense. Of course, I could also just pull the rear fan and set up an outflow fan on the cooler, but I like this layout a tad better.

If I had unobstructed inlet air flow path, I would prefer to have two input fans on the front of my case, directing air from front to back - the same direction as the CPU cooler fan. That said, drive cages get in the way. In my Mini, I can at least remove one. I believe that they are fixed in the R3. That seems like a challenge. Perhaps an R3 owner who has done some experimentation can weigh in.

cheers,
Scuba
Edited by Scuba Steve in VA - 3/7/12 at 6:24pm

Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Based on this information I'm going to test different layouts.
Especially the rear fan stuff.
Because I have a cubic heatsink on my cpu I can also easily switch it from blowing from bottom to top or side to side.
After I tested some layouts, I gonna post the information back here.

Excellent! The best info is actual data...instead of some wag like me blowing hot air.

Karma to you.

I found a website with temperature results from various fan settings in a fractal Arc. While not 100% comparable, the overall trends should be the same in an R3. The site is in german, but the results should be self explanatory.

The 1x in, 2x out version is actually a very good setup for temperatures. Not ideal for dust buildup, because the case will be sucking in air (and dust) from all available unfiltered openings.
I personally use a setup with two front intake fans and one rear exhaust for my R3. I also tested a setup with 2 front intake, 2 rear/top exhaust fans. Temperatures are a little higher (2-3°C) for my 3-fan setup then in the 4-fan version. I still prefer the 3-fan version with two intakes, because it is quieter and all the dust is caught on the front filters.

Excellent point about dust