Question Front mounted radiator

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liamwhalley20

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Nov 27, 2018
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Is it okay to mount radiator in the front as intake? I can only mount it in the front of the case (I will be getting a new case in the future) but will it affect gpu and vrm temps massively or will it be alright? Gpu sits at around 56°c, the aio I am using is the maelstrom 240t on an i5 4670k that I am going to attempt to overclock, thanks in advance:)
 
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I pay no attention to air flow because I never keep the side panels on my pc. I just point a 120mm fan at the vrm heatsink.

I suppose a higher cfm exhaust fan than the intake fans on the aio should take care of it. If you pull out air at the exhaust faster than the front intake should create some interesting effects. What chassis are you using at the moment? Some of them have intake vents on all sides, and the floor some of them don't. There's nothing to really stop you from adding as many fans as will fit and it will all have some effect on temps but, not all that significant.

Also nothing to stop you exhausting from the front if it really worries you, just turn the fans around. and huff in the other direction. I think it would be nice to have a floor intake just to shove some extra cool air up into the system but, it won't be any massive effect.
 
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I have a really cheap EG wider x1 case from ebuyer (was right on budget) I have 3 exhaust (120mm) and 2 intake at the moment (120mm) will be swapping the 2 intake at the front for aio rad and fans :) the case doesnt claim to support any water cooling but I've done some measurements and the radiator and fans will definitely fit, all fan bays are currently occupied, I am thinking on having it as an intake just so that the air does reach the gpu (all be it warm air but air nonetheless) xD but I think there is room underneath the gpu to fit a small fan and I have a be quiet pure wings 92mm that I may try and squeeze under there to just add a little more intake for the gpu :)
 
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The exhaust fans are more important than the intake fans, though I can say I did at one point have about 12 fans attached to my system and that's what it took to drop the gpu temps about 15c, but all of them were odd shapes and sizes from previous iterations of pc builds, and they were all noisy misfits. 'Cos my board has got 5 pwm headers and I have a front panel media dashboard that includes 2 more fan headers, some of them were molex, some were dc, and your system will only be as quiet as the loudest fan.

Then I could get my fx4350 to overclock to 4.7ghz with an arctic freezer xtreme. When I switched it to a water cooler I could only get to 4.8ghz anyway but reduced the amount of fans in it and I eventually got a couple of be quiets! for a fiver repacked. A lot of effort for 100mhz in the end, on a obsolete platform. Though I'll be able to port my cooler to a new build with a lower tdp cpu so I'm hoping it'll be more than enough.

I'm not sure you'd be getting any practical benefit from switching the chassis, temperature wise. Some of them have nice features for drive bays & cable management and have a bit of clearance over the psu so the lower pci-e slot isn't blocked for a gpu, but then who needs a low pci-e slot for a gpu these days anyway. I don't like tempered glass side panels, too heavy and smashable for me, and I'm totally uninterested in rgb. & I don't even care whether the side panels are on or off. I think my next case will be an open test bench which is more of a mount for the mobo. and drives, in a desktop format, rather than a tower, If I can find one.
 
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I will definitely be careful with install, this was my first ever build this PC and I am really taking my time with it, it runs now with an i5 4590 and a be quiet pure rock slim but the fan is failing on the cooler hence the aio and I got a really good deal on the 4670k so yeah I am excited to see how this goes xD
 
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That is the catch 22 question of liquid cooling.
If you mount the radiator in front as planned, your cpu will be cooled well, but the heat from the radiator will heat up the motherboard and gpu.
I think your plan is good though.
If you find a problem, you can change out the two 120mm fans for higher rpm versions.
That will get more cooling air into the pc.
Whatever comes in will exit the pc more quickly, taking component heat with it.
 
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As all the fans that I have right now are all mismatched (I know it doesnt really matter about them not being the same) but I would like the same performance throughout really so there isn't any lagging behind :)
 
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If you buy fans then I'd say it would be best to buy identical ones, since the system will only be as quiet as the loudest one. If you bought 1x 24dba fan and 3x 19 dba fans the system would be 24 dba noise. Which is kind of the level of a loud whisper or rustle or a low constant hum, that will be easily drowned by any ambient sound. Or you could look at it the other way. More airflow with no additional noise.

The only fan I've seen that claims to be less than 10dba is the Enermax 140mm but sounds like you're going for 120mm fans anyway.

There are many brands to choose from, be quiet!, noctua, fractal design, Arctic f12s silent version (that is silent but seems a bit slow and naff to me with low airflow), several models of enermax 120mm have high air flow with a low dba, basically there's a lot to choose from and there may not be a great deal of actual difference between them.

They seem to vary around the price but have a steady sort of 10-20dba noise level across the range of them. Some fans that are quiet are simply fans with a lowered rpm.

So it's basically a pot shot at what you think is the best value for money on sale near you. I found that my be quiets! do something a bit odd. 1st issue I noticed is something weird with my mobo headers. If I put the supposedly 19dba be quiet pure wings 2 on the cpu fan header or cpu opt header, they spin up really fast and make more noise. But if I put them on Cha Fan 4 header they are pretty much inaudible. The cpu & opt cpu header on my mobo. seems to pump more juice to the fans. But the bios setting is exactly the same, standard.

The other thing is if the fans are directly mounted against an area of the chassis that has a grille over the vent area, eg. top or rear exhaust, they are louder if butted up against that rather than free standing.

If you're wondering what I'm waffling about it's just because I'm not sure exactly how loud 19dba is supposed to be. 19dba is not 'silent' in my opinion if when these fans are being noisier is 19dba.

But I don't think you will ever get a truly silent fan, there will always be a level of air turbulence that can't be eliminated. It will be drowned out by any louder ambient sounds such as when you're playing music or gaming.
 
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I had my rad top mounted push exhaust in a fractal design R5 (not the best for airflow, but adequate). On a whim, moved it to front mount pull intake (pull gets better results below @ 1300rpm).

End result of change is mobo temps went up 2°C under stress loads, gpu went up 2°C under stress loads and cpu went down 2°C under stress loads.

Nzxt X61 280mm aio sitting on an i7-3770K @ 4.6GHz. Only other fans are 2x 140mm FD stock case fans which went from front intake to top exhaust with the rad move.

A 2°C change is nothing. Far too many ppl just say it heats up, and make it sound like the gpu will suddenly run 10-20°C hotter.

Case designers like nzxt and fractal design (meshify, one of the best airflow cases around) wouldn't put aios as front mount only if it really mattered. Your temps under gaming loads will fluctuate 10°C or more, on both gpu and cpu, depending on the scene.
 
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Noise isn't that much of an issue as there is always sound where I am and I never hear the fans unless it is dead silent (which is rare) of course I don't want it sounding like it is about to take off either Haha
 
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There are more things that can be done to mitigate noise such as, if you had a long hdmi/dvi/vga cable you could move the tower up to 2 metres away. Mine happens to sit next to the monitor so it is audible. Distance will have some effect on the percieved sound.


Another Enermax Twister bearing fan 13 - 20 dBA 47.7-83 cfm 1000-1800rpm 100,000 hours.

83cfm at 20dba is equal to some 140mm noctua fans and is a tempting at £7.85. That would be quieter than the fans that were supplied with my aio for a near unbeatable price but then one can't be sure until you try it, what the drawbacks might be, such as if they get poorly bearings after less than 100,000 hours. Might be worth looking up more reviews of those for any known issues.

The be quiet! silent wings with the fluid dynamic bearing have 300,000 hours or about 34 years mtbf but the info there is a bit misleading & confusing says 15.5dba but actually 28.8dba at 1000rpm.

In any case if you buy fans with a lower dba, quieter than your current fans you will get more airflow without any additional noise.
 
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At the moment I have 2 120mm cooler master rifle bearing as intake at the front which I will be removing in place of the aio, i have 2 unbranded red led 120mm at the top as exhaust, and an arctic f12 tc with the little temperature sensor attached to the top of the case, this fan only comes on when the cpu is under high load but even then doesnt come on full speed until the case heats up a little but for the most part it is pretty silent apart from one of the LED fans which is connected via molex from the psu because it doesnt light up properly until the cpu is under load but even then isn't that bright! xD I am thinking on buying the antec dark avenger da601 case when budget allows :)
 
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I don't think a chassis really has any effect on cpu temps in the final analysis the only reason to buy one would be because you like the style or maybe just a neat freak with cable management. For quite some time some cases have rotated the drive bays 90 degrees for ease of access over the old style atx cases that have the 5.25 and 3.5 inch bays at the front. Some of them now have mounts for ssds rather than hdds.

If you are going to drop any fans from your build, put the cooler master fans as the rear exhaust and drop the molex led fans. They are probably the noisiest with the lowest airflow, and then you probably shouldn't really need any more fans.

If there are zero fans there wouldn't be any exhaust but one or two make the most difference so just use the best ones you've got. You might not really need to spend anything, since it probably won't make any significant difference.
 
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Well the first reason of wanting a new case Is this one doesnt really have much room for a start, I've had to improvise on hdd placement and would like for them to have a proper place to go, I have 4 in total including a 2.5" ssd plus that case has proper radiator mounting points instead of having to again improvise a little on this case it will definitely fit its just going to be fiddly cable management in this case is reasonably alright I am quite OCD when it comes to loads of wires in the way 😂 but for the time being until budget allows I am stuck with this case so would like to get the best I can out of it
 
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I have a thermal take chassis that was £30 with 7 3.5 drive bays and 4 5.25 bays. Great but the 3.5 bays are set about 1 inch from the exact front of the case, closer to the mobo which makes them more difficult to access when simply plugging in pwr and sata cables. Probably just so that any front fan magnet doesn't interfere with the drive's operation. Irony being that I don't have a front intake fan. I leave the side panels off. A 240mm aio can mount to the top exhaust it has to 2 vents on top for that and a 120mm rear exhaust, with a vent on the floor of the case as well.

Only a low profile 120mm fan will fit on the front mount when the facia plate is pulled off, it's removable to invisibly attach a front intake, but temperature wise, it makes absolutely no difference against an ancient 20 year old e-star atx chassis that I still have.

For usb 3 I have a media dashboard using one 5.25 bay and the ports on the case are usb 2.0 for a total of 4 front panel usb, a e-sata port, fan controller with power control for 2 fans, a thermometer built into it and various sd card ports. 2 dvd roms and 1 more removeable 3.5 drive bay in the 5.25 slot.

Loads of room for drives but the cable managment is, do what you want with zip ties rather than any channels for cables built in the case. It's also mid atx, for a full atx sized board, the psu is on the floor of the chassis but the lowest pci-e slot is obscured by the psu, for a gpu with a large heat sink that usually needs 2 slots, otherwise a normal pci-e card will fit in it ok.

All quite functional, nothing fancy, not expensive the only grumble I had about it really was they only supplied a couple of the quick snap drive mounting clips so I still had to use screws for most of them anyway. 11 bays in total and only 2 quick snap thingys. That was really cutting corners.

Oh yes and no dedicated 2.5 bays for ssds. It needs additional 3.5 to 2.5 trays to put the ssds in a 3.5 bay which cost another fiver.

And if I upgrade to a board with nVME drives, more capacity, no need for additional drive bays. So this chassis will probably not go away for a long time.
 
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43.8dba isn't the quietest though. High rpm doesn't equal low noise. It will be noisier than any fan in the whole system so, no point in buying any low noise fans subsequently.

The quietest I've seen so far with a decent air flow is the Enermax range. For £11 it does have lower airflow of 67cfm compared to 110cfm of the above noctua but it's lower rpm means lower noise where your 120mm's are probably only around 40cfm anyway, and in any case there does not appear to be any real need to replace the fans, until they wear out some time in the next 5-10 years.
 
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Fair enough, I will be keeping the coolermaster ones and probably try and use them in something else as I am planning another build at some point to use for a music studio so be good to have a few parts lying around for when the time comes
 
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