Case Fans Few Questions

[Jonathan90]

ok here we go would it be ok if i had one 120 mm fan at the front near the bottom and a exaust fan 80 / 120mm ( not sure which one it is yet most likeley to be 80) without a side fan or is a side fan needed? as i am going to be buying a new case cheap of ebuyer lol which has 2 fans already on it but as my side fan now is like a plane taking off i 'm not sure i should use it.if someone give me some good advice.

bascially do i need a side fan?

[Richy99]

you dont really need a side case fan as it can distrupt the airflow, i would just stick to a front fan pulling air into the case and the back fan exhusting hot air, altho you could argue that the side fan will also expell the hot air

[Jonathan90]

if i have side fan exhausting? wouldn't that cause conflict not sure

[boroboi]

On a smaller case yes it would, but on a larger one if you have two intake fans on the front, you can usually fit a side fan on the lower part of the case, so that the bottom intake fan is expelled from the side, which would cool and expell the excess air from the GPU and the top goes straight through CPU and out the rear.

[DaiNasty]

I found I actually got a better result without a side fan on my gaming rig.

What I did was mount a 120mm fan *behind* the HD bays to pull cool air in across the hard drives and blow over the northbridge and 8800GT. (hot little beggar)
This coupled with another 120mm exhaust fan upper rear.

Initially I had a side fan as well but this must have disrupted airflow as without the side fan my GPU temp dropped about 5-7 degrees.

YMMV of course..

oh yes, the other thing I did was some surgery on the metal front panel. No matter how good a fan you have at the back it's basically only as good as the airflow allowed IN at the front. So, all those neat little punched holes got expanded into two big ones.

[boroboi]

Cant forget good cable management. If the inside of your case looks like a mess of wires then you can forget it completely.