Noctua case cooling question

[cibie01]

Hi

I just treated myself to a Corsair air 540 case ,so happy with it a lovely case now my build is in.

i have noticed the front dust filter seems to be very limiting the airflow coming in to the case, if its removed then theres a strong wind tunnel effect going on with positive pressure (what i really want).
was just thinking is this my fault because of my fan chose or is that the trade of for dust filters i will have to put up with.

i am running 2 x 140mm Noctua NF A14 PWM intake in the front and 1 Noctua 120mm NF S12A PWM exhaust at the back.

if i ramp up the 2 front intakes over 60% it gets noisy but i have to to get any decent airflow through the filter, but the rear 120mm i can ramp up to 90% and still total silent.

so do you guys think its worth me getting 2 more 120mm and putting 3 120mm as intakes in the front and run them fast and silent and putting a 140mm as exhaust but run it slow to medium so its quiet as theres no filter on exhaust of coarse.

so basically do you think 3 120mm's will pull any more air through that filter than the 2 140mm's at the moment.
after all i brought this case fore the cooling for my OC but it all seems suffocated by this filter not the cool strong wind i was expecting.

thanks for any advice lads in advance.

Mark.

 

[lodders]

Are you sure you need all this cooling?
I apologize in advance if you have 2 GPU and an AMD 9590..... but generally one or two case fans is plenty. Once a CPU or GPU is safely below its maximum temperature, cooling it further has no real benefit.

 

[cibie01]

Are you sure you need all this cooling?
I apologize in advance if you have 2 GPU and an AMD 9590..... but generally one or two case fans is plenty. Once a CPU or GPU is safely below its maximum temperature, cooling it further has no real benefit.

Hi lodders thanks for the input.
i am running i5 4690K OC and a GTX 970 soon to be OC and i agree with you i have seen people go way over the top with fans etc.
the reason that made me ask was because my old case just retired (Corsair spec 3) had these two same 140mm in the front and the airflow was twice as strong with a dust filter compared to the 540 .
i guess the dust filter on the 540 is better quality or finer that the air is not running the same through it?.

i just thought the three 120mm might of given it that extra kick while running silent.

thank you for your help there made me think in a different way now.

Mark.

 

[Bearmann]

I would try to use the filters for dust control. I wouldn't expect 3-12cm fans to cool much better than 2-14cm fans. The two 14cm fans have an area of 392 square cm's combined, while the 3-12cm fans have a combined surface area of 432 square centimeters- not much difference. Of course this is only an approximation and you have to subtract the 3 hubs surface areas versus the two hubs. What you really want to know is if your cooling is adequate. For that I would install something like HWMonitor and measure your temps: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

 

[cibie01]

I would try to use the filters for dust control. I wouldn't expect 3-12cm fans to cool much better than 2-14cm fans. The two 14cm fans have an area of 392 square cm's combined, while the 3-12cm fans have a combined surface area of 432 square centimeters- not much difference. Of course this is only an approximation and you have to subtract the 3 hubs surface areas versus the two hubs. What you really want to know is if your cooling is adequate. For that I would install something like HWMonitor and measure your temps: http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Bearmann thats just the information i was wanting concerning 2 fans output to the 3 thank you.

i have just done some experimenting with HWMonitor (i have been using speccy till now).

room temp 20c.
running vally and heaven to benchmark the GPU in a closed case with dust filters it topped out at 57c for both tests.
same test with out dust filters on the intake 55c.
so not much difference and well in the safe zone yes? (GTX970 G1 gaming).

i then run prime95 benchmark for the CPU closed case with dust filters, topped out at 66c.
same with out dust filters on the intake 65c.

then i ran project cars to test a typical game i play with 39 cars on track and it came out as CPU 57c GPU 55c with filter, with out filter CPU 55c GPU 54c.

so have to hold my hands up i was expecting far bigger gaps in the readings looks like the dust filter do's not do as much damage as i 1st thought (if you keep it clean of coarse.).
so are my running temps looking ok?, either way the dust filter might as well stay now lol.

Mark.

 

[Bearmann]

Those temps look good to me, but hopefully someone with more experience with a i5 4690k overclock will chime in. Here's a video which might interest you showing the incremental benefit of each additional fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OmkmluAYAQ