Question Can I get more cooling by installing more fans?

[Franj0]

I have an I7 11700kf, and have recently upgraded to an Deepcool Assassin IV cooler, and also installed a Phanteks T30 120mm fan to the front of the cooler.

My temps after using Cinebench was about 76 degrees C at stock CPU defaults with most cores reaching 4.9-5.0 ghz.


My case is a Fractal Meshify 2 mid tower case.



I have installed 3 x 140mm Arctic P14s front intake fans, 2 x 140mm Arctic P14s as top exhaust fans , and also a rear 140mm Arctic P14 exhaust fan.



Beneath my RTX 480 there were no fan mounts, so I managed to zip tie down 2 x 120mm Arctic P12s as bottom intake fans.

All the additional fans brought my temps down to 69 degrees C after using Cinebench, so am very happy with the cooling results.

Playing CP 2077 for 2 hours straight sees my temps max out at 66 degrees C.



I was wondering whether installing a third 140mm Arctic P14 fan up top as exhaust would make any additional cooling contribution to the rig, my initial thoughts were no being so close to the front intake fans, would assume it would just suck in the cool air from the nearest front intake fan and exhaust it straight out of the case?



Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

 

[Lafong]

Diminishing returns set in pretty quickly as the fan number rises.

I wouldn't worry in the least about anything under 80 or so on Cinebench, but you may be highly fearful for whatever reason.


Or maybe you are just curious about more fans rather than worried? A half hour of experimentation would answer most of your questions.....if you are willing to take the time and spend the money on more fans. Maybe a drop of 2 more degrees would be a big deal to you?

 

[Franj0]

Thanks for the prompt response, curiosity more than anything else in me asking, reason is that I do have a spare Arctic 140mm fan here, probably won't install it as I don't think a 1-2 degree drop is worth the effort....a simple task like this becomes infinitely more troublesome and time consuming as I have 3 children under the age of 5 in the house...I'll probably just keep the fan until one of them in the rig goes kaput.

 

[Lafong]

Thanks for the prompt response, curiosity more than anything else in me asking, reason is that I do have a spare Arctic 140mm fan here, probably won't install it as I don't think a 1-2 degree drop is worth the effort....a simple task like this becomes infinitely more troublesome and time consuming as I have 3 children under the age of 5 in the house...I'll probably just keep the fan until one of them in the rig goes kaput.

Yeah, you can drive yourself crazy chasing 2 degrees.

If you drop temps from 69 to 67, you'd then be left to wonder if 20 more hours of fiddling will knock it down to 65.....some folks would not be able to give up the chase and would never say "that's good enough".

And if parts fail, who's to say how much temps had to do with it?

Good luck.

 

[Paperdoc]

Your thought, "my initial thoughts were no being so close to the front intake fans, would assume it would just suck in the cool air from the nearest front intake fan and exhaust it straight out of the case" is right on! This would be a waste of a fan. I agree with the other replies you got above.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I was wondering whether installing a third 140mm Arctic P14 fan up top as exhaust would make any additional cooling contribution to the rig, my initial thoughts were no being so close to the front intake fans, would assume it would just suck in the cool air from the nearest front intake fan and exhaust it straight out of the case?

Yup, that's what happens.

In addition, even putting a fan on the top rear of the case may not help as much, if at all. I have a Fractal Design Meshify 2 Comapct with a DeepCool AK500 CPU cooler. I saw almost no difference in cooling performance with a fan on the top near the rear. And I went a bit further and taped a piece of paper over the entire topside as a cheap solution to "seal" off the top just to see what would happen.

No real appreciable increase in temperature. At least as far as I care about it. The way I see it, as long as the important places are getting some airflow, air's going to circulate and be replaced. And that's the most important thing.