question about fans

[chinkee]

i have the antec 3700 case. there's a 120 mm fan blowing air out the back right now, but i'm thinking of putting another 120mm at the front grill. should the front fan be blowing air out the FRONT or push the air to the BACK fan? one more thing, is there an easy way to tell which side of the fan the air is blowing out of other than to just put your hand in front of it? is the side w/ the sticker usually the side that the air is NOT blowing out at?

 

[akira34]

Case fan's 101

Front and side: Intake (pull air into the case).
Rear and top: Venting (pull air out of the case).

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: akira34
Case fan's 101

Front and side: Intake (pull air into the case).
Rear and top: Venting (pull air out of the case).

Akira is correct in this. To go further, you always need to come close to equaling your intake and exhaust air ratios. If you have two echaust fans then you need AT LEAST one intake fan. In your case I would put a intake fan in front to even out the flow.

As for direction of a fan, you can blindly install a fan and hope it is facing the right way, or you can simply look at the sids of the fan. On one sid there are two arrows, one point in the fans rotation direction and one pointing in the direction of air flow. This along with visual inspection of the blades will show you what direction they push air.
-spike

 

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: akira34
Case fan's 101

Front and side: Intake (pull air into the case).
Rear and top: Venting (pull air out of the case).

Akira is correct in this. To go further, you always need to come close to equaling your intake and exhaust air ratios. If you have two echaust fans then you need AT LEAST one intake fan. In your case I would put a intake fan in front to even out the flow.

As for direction of a fan, you can blindly install a fan and hope it is facing the right way, or you can simply look at the sids of the fan. On one sid there are two arrows, one point in the fans rotation direction and one pointing in the direction of air flow. This along with visual inspection of the blades will show you what direction they push air.
-spike

Not necessarily. With 120mm, i have found they are powerful enough to suck air through the front on their own.

In my heavily modified superlanboy, with only the rear 120mm @ 6V, i can feel it drawing a good amount of air from the front intake hole and the 5.25" bays.

If you have 80mm fans, then the case is very different as they have much less pull effect.
In any case, i have found exhaust to have more of an effect on cases than adding more intakes (that is, 2 exhaust fans near each other worked out better than 1 exhaust and 1 intake). This goes without saying that you should have at least one intake to cool your harddrives actively.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: Tiamat

Originally posted by: Spike

Originally posted by: akira34
Case fan's 101

Front and side: Intake (pull air into the case).
Rear and top: Venting (pull air out of the case).

Akira is correct in this. To go further, you always need to come close to equaling your intake and exhaust air ratios. If you have two echaust fans then you need AT LEAST one intake fan. In your case I would put a intake fan in front to even out the flow.

As for direction of a fan, you can blindly install a fan and hope it is facing the right way, or you can simply look at the sids of the fan. On one sid there are two arrows, one point in the fans rotation direction and one pointing in the direction of air flow. This along with visual inspection of the blades will show you what direction they push air.
-spike

Not necessarily. With 120mm, i have found they are powerful enough to suck air through the front on their own.

In my heavily modified superlanboy, with only the rear 120mm @ 6V, i can feel it drawing a good amount of air from the front intake hole and the 5.25" bays.

If you have 80mm fans, then the case is very different as they have much less pull effect.
In any case, i have found exhaust to have more of an effect on cases than adding more intakes (that is, 2 exhaust fans near each other worked out better than 1 exhaust and 1 intake). This goes without saying that you should have at least one intake to cool your harddrives actively.

I am curious about this... what fan(s) do you have as your exhaust in the lanboy? With mine I find the best cooling is to have my front and rear 120mm's at around 8 voltes with my CPU fan at 9ish

-spike

 

[chinkee]

i have 120mm antec fans. thanks for all the advice, i'll try both configurations and test the temps.