Question Optimum Fan Placement/Setup

[stravencroft]

So I finally have both the system board and case for my build. Time to plan out the fan design. I wanted to give some background as to what I'm working with but I do tend to ramble. The gist of what I'm going with is below towards the very end in bold.

The case is the Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW and the board is the Asus ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI.

The initial CPU I will get is the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 4.5 GHz . I do plan on overclocking it. I think.

Down the road, I will save up for a 7800x3D although originally I had thought about the 7900x3D or maybe the 79503D (I think that's overkill though) if it doesn't reduce my case to kindling.

The existing GPU I have from my old build which I may upgrade but I"m happy with at the moment is the EVGA XC3 ULTRA GAMING GeForce RTX 3080 10GB. The price for that was over 800 about two years ago (I upgraded from a 1070) and prices are similarly high right now for the 4070/4070ti and more so for the 4090 which I'd like to have down the road.

Power Supply is the SeaSonic PRIME 1300 Gold 1300 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular

For the CPU fan/cooler I'm carrying over my Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black as I figure if I use enough fans I won't have to bother with a radiator at least until I get to the ryzen 9 series. Maybe I'm mistaken?

The case comes with 2x 120mm corsair air guide fans which are getting tossed in favor of both the Noctua NF-A15 PWM chromax.black (for 140mm fans) and the Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM chromax.black (for 120mm fans) as my case fans of choice. Should be quiet and powerful enough. Or are there better options?

I only have one fan on the CPU cooler and plan on mounting another 120MM fan like the Noctua NF-A12 or the NF-F12 (in chromax) to give my RAM enough clearance instead of the second 140mm Noctua NF-A15 over the ram slots (I plan on using G.Skill Flare). Not sure if I should put a y adapter on both the second CPU fan and the primary cpu fan and put both through the y adapter in the CPU fan header or if I should put one in the CPU fan header and one in the CPU opt header. i was thinking of saving the CPU opt header for the rear case exhaust fan given its proximity.

Onto my case placement plan! The rear case fan as exhaust can only be 120mm so it's just getting one. the front case fans can do three 120mm fans or two 140mm fans so I thought to do two 140mm fans as intake. Alternatively, I could mount a 360mm radiator or a 280 mm radiator. I'm opting at the moment to avoid radiators if possible. the top can do the same configuration. On the top of the case, I plan on putting two 140mm fans as exhaust. there are also mounts for either three side fans or a radiator up to 360mm. I was thinking of either mounting three 120mm fans as intake but I could also two 120mm fans as intake with 1 as exhaust. I'm just not sure if the lower fan should be intake or not. I've got 5 sys fan headers, 1 CPU fan header, 1 CPU fan opt header, and 1 AIO pump header. With y adapters, I should be ok.

In summary the proposed plan:

• 2x Noctua NF-A15 PWM chromax.black fans as front intake fans
• 2x Noctua NF-A15 PWM chromax.black fans as top exhaust fans
• 1x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM chromax.black fan as rear exhaust fan
• 3x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM chromax.black fan as side case fan (3 intake unless 2 as intake and 1 as exhaust would be better)

Would that work? Is there a better setup? Thoughts?

 

[Gam3r01]

Probably too many fans overall, you would likely see similar performance with less fans.
2x140mm front intake is good.
Rear exhaust is fine.
2x140mm top exhaust might be a bit much, 1x140 would probably do the job fine.
The 3x120mm side fans are likely not going to accomplish much on top of the rest of the fans. If you did run them, intake would probably work best (as exhaust would just exhaust cool air that hasnt been heated yet).

 

[stravencroft]

Probably too many fans overall, you would likely see similar performance with less fans.
2x140mm front intake is good.
Rear exhaust is fine.
2x140mm top exhaust might be a bit much, 1x140 would probably do the job fine.
The 3x120mm side fans are likely not going to accomplish much on top of the rest of the fans. If you did run them, intake would probably work best (as exhaust would just exhaust cool air that hasnt been heated yet).

Would you recommend 1x140mm on top as exhaust and running one or two side 120mm fans as intake or just one on the side as intake then? Also, would you recommend a second CPU fan over the cooler and will a 120mm fan like the NH-A12 or the NH-F12 be sufficient as the second fan? Would a second fan be a bit much on the cpu? The first cpu fan is a 140mm Noctua NH-AF-15 if that helps.

 

[Gam3r01]

1x140 on top exhaust and one or two side 120mm intakes would still probably be fine.
Getting cool air into a case is far more important than getting hot air out when you have a case where heat escapes easily (like yours).
Adding a second fan to the CPU cooler can have some benefits, but only if you need it. Give it a shot with the single fan for now. If you do need another one, I would recommend matching the fans.

 

[geofelt]

Start slow and see how you do.
two front 140mm intakes is as good as it needs to be.
The single rear exhaust is mainly there to direct the front intake airflow past the cpu cooler, motherboard and graphics card.
If you mount a fan at the top, it will tend to direct cooling some airflow up and out of the case before it can do any good.

Tests I have seen from adding a 120mm fan to the NH-D15s does only marginal good.
Perhaps 2c. difference. I have such a fan available and am not bothered to even take the time to install it.
See how you do first before fixing a problem you do not have.

Overclocking modern processors does not yield much if anything.
The default turbo mechanism works better for gaming.
Processors are binned and if your 7700X were capable of a decent overclock it would be used in a 7900 or such which sells for more.

I was disappointed to read about the X3D failure problems.
Hopefully they have been fixed.
But, past that, the X3D chips are somewhat of a one trick pony suitable only for some games.
For general use, they do not do as well as the base product.

 

[stravencroft]

If I go with 1 140mm or 1 120mm fan on the top as exhaust on which fan mount slot should I put it? In the middle? close to the front of the case? the rear of the case?

I'm thinking about maybe going with a ryzen 7 7800x3d CPU right from the beginning rather than sticking with the 7700x CPU. Not sure if this setup would be ok for that or if I would need more cooling. I also plan on using G.Skill Flare 6600 Expo ram if that matters. About 4 sticks totalling 64GB. Maybe 2 for 32GB to start.

 

[geofelt]

I would not put a fan on top as exhaust.
A single 120mm for rear exhaust would be my preference.
Fans are not so hard to change out if you want to experiment.

 

[Phaaze88]

Everything is speculation until you get in there, run different tests in your spare time and compare.