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I am hoping to get some feedback on what I am thinking in terms of my cooling strategy for a new build. I am also trying to double check if I will need any additional power adapters or extensions, so I can make sure to order all the parts that I will need. It would be very valuable to me if anyone wants to walk me through specifically how you would expect to power the fans, either through the motherboard or directly off the power supply. I am interested in what connections, extensions, or adapters you would need to do that which I will need to order. I am new to building PCs so this is as much about learning how to do it as it is about getting better performance. I understand that some of what I am doing may be over-thinking a fairly basic build but I want to learn what I can at the same time as I try to make things a little bit better. I value silence highly, though I understand that I will need to put up with more noise than I would wish. I also value performance. I do plan to learn to overclock with this machine so that may factor in as well. I do not care at all about RGB lighting and would prefer not to deal with it. A matching color scheme to the components is also irrelevant to me. The new build I am working on is here: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qRHgVY I already have the Case, Power Supply, Optical Drive, and Keyboard. I have already placed an order for the GPU, RAM, and Motherboard. I am in the process of building my final orders with retailers trying to make sure I get the number of fans and any additional wires I need correct to save on headaches and shipping. I am new to shopping for parts, so am not very familiar with brands or the level of quality they represent. A lot of the reviewers I have been watching seem to favor Noctua for performance, but I am open to other brands as well. I have been watching some videos to become familiar with concepts like positive pressure, and static pressure vs airflow. I am going to shoot for positive pressure in my system. The case I picked out has 2x 120mm fans that came with it; one is on the front as an intake, the other at the rear as exhaust. I was planning to leave them in place. The front panel has filtering on it, so I was going to add another 120mm fan with good static pressure on the front even though it will be somewhat obstructed by the drive shelves behind it. So that would be 2x 120mm fans on the front for intake. Then the open side panel has ventilation and places to install fans so I was going to install 2 more fans (140mm) there as intake with a filter in front of them. I was thinking going for static pressure fans for those as well. Then the top of the case has a lot of ventilation cut into it with room for more fans. I was thinking of just using one 140mm high-airflow fan on top at the rear without a filter for exhaust. So I would end up getting 3x 140mm and 1x 120mm fans, plus the 2x 120mm fans the case came with. I would be pulling air in from the side and from the front, and pushing out the back and top. There is more ventilation on the top, back, and bottom where I hope the positive pressure will be pushing air out. The fans from the GPU seem a little odd to work around without creating a bunch of turbulence but it seems to me like the GPU fans won't conflict with the setup and will help push some air out the bottom of the case. The PSU is on the bottom but seems isolated by the walls of the PSU, except for what may come back in through the bottom of the case; but I think the positive pressure with some help from the GPU fans should take care of that. The ventilation in the side panel starts near the top. It looks like it would set the intake fans next to the CPU cooler. I am not 100% sure the top one would fit with the CPU cooler installed. Another thing I may consider is trying to rotate the CPU cooler to push air up instead of towards the back of the case, if the mounting system will allow for that. With all of these fans (I realize it may be a bit overkill) I will expect to have the 2x 3pin connectors from the fans that came with the case, plus another 4x 4pin connectors from the additional fans to plug in. I am having trouble telling exactly how many fan connectors there are on the Asus motherboard. I also don't know if I will need anything extra to plug some of the fans into the PSU. There is a "Peripheral" cable that came with the PSU which has 4pin connections that seems promising, but that seems like it would be female to female connections, unless the needed parts are included with the fans. Obviously I don't know what that cable is really supposed to be used with. Any help or insight is appreciated. I will continue doing research into the fans and trying to figure out the pins, cables, and connections. -JD

So I have 3x140mm Noctua ippc 2000 RPM fans rated at around 107cfm each on front intake, 3x Bora lite 120mm fans in top exhaust position rated at 54 CFM each. 1x 140mm rear exhaust fan rated at 82 CFM. I'm wondering with all this intake pressure (avg 275 CFM) from high end fans, should I swap in my two 140mm fans with higher CFM in top exhaust position? And uninstall the 120s? I was aiming for equalish pressure and even with aggressive fan profiles on the exhaust fans I'm not even within 100 CFM of my intake pressure. Seems rather unbalanced IMO. Additional Technical Data: Static pressure of above mentioned fans are: 4,00 each for the 140mm front intakes x 3 Around 1,06 each on the 120s x 3 And 1,86 on the rear exhaust fan. 1x Case is Phantek Evolv X I could alternatively swap in two higher CFM 140s in top position or crank up my 3 120s, or just replace my exhaust fans with all higher CFM variants. I like to keep my intake fans up pretty high for static pressure case restrictive reasons, that's why I'm concerned with having too much positive pressure in this scenario. Suggestions are appreciated Thanks as always

I'm trying to get positive case pressure in my bequiet Pure Base 600 case. Mainly because my front IO is getting too much dust, I also recently added an optical drive and don't want that to also become dusted. I have added 2 additional 140mm fans, one at top and another front. Case comes factory equipped with front 140mm and rear 120mm. I remounted fans B) and C) inside the case, as opposed to the standard position, to increase the distance from the front panel because I found they were being choked somewhat. I did a smoke test and this has increased their airflow through the front panel. The fan configuration is; B) C) D) are controlled by case fan switch (usually on medium unless it's hot and high usage) A) is motherboard header DC mode with quiet/low speed fan curve. The Foam things highlighted are dark grey foam panels to redirect airflow to exhaust fans. The case has an adjustable top panel that I leave open on the first height, about 5mm. I would have thought the fan config would produce positive pressure, considering fan A) runs at such a low speed and B) C) and D) are identical and run at same speed. Does anyone have any ideas for what I could change to net positive pressure? Bear in mind that the point of this build is low noise. Also, ignore the ddr2 sticks and floppy disk, they're just for lols

So to start this off I will give you list what case I have because it probably matters It is a Thermaltake Core V31 mid tower. Can be found here https://www.thermaltake.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00002469. I have been looking into getting new fans for this case because it was a prebuild from cyberpower with some unknown brand in them, in the past week or so I removed the HD cage placed the 2 TB HD (mounted ofc) into the extra drive bay that you can convert to a fan speed control bay. Then proceeded to do a ton of cable management to swap from a zotac gtx 950 to a zotac gtx 1070ti amp extreme, also I swapped my boot to a Samsung 860 evo 2.5" 500GB ssd all I can say is leaps and bounds. Now that we have got all that out of the way onto the real reason this post is being made lol. SO i want to place 2 Corsair Air Series AF140's (https://www.corsair.com/eu/en/Categories/Products/Fans/AIR-SERIES-LED-CONFIG/p/CO-9050017-PLED) that have a airflow of 66.4 CFM each in the front for the intakes and 2 Corsair Air Series AF120's (https://www.corsair.com/eu/en/Categories/Products/Fans/AIR-SERIES-LED-CONFIG/p/CO-9050015-PLED) that have a airflow of 52.19 CFM each in the rear for exhaust. Would this technically be a positive pressure case at that point at least on paper or adequate enough to flow cool air in and out quickly to cool everything on hot summer days where room temps are between 70-75 °F or 21- 29 °C for the rest of the world. Maybe even use the SP120 by corsair for the exhaust because they have a slightly better flow at 57.24 CFM (https://www.corsair.com/eu/en/LED-Color/Fan-Size/AIR-SERIES-LED-CONFIG/p/CO-9050033-WW)

Hey there, so I’m a first time builder and have a few questions. I have done allot of research on all of my parts and are finally coming to a conclusion on everything that I want in my build. My only concern is what to do about the airflow and air pressure in the case... what I have for cooling is the Thermaltake Water 3.0 280mm AIO mounted at the front of my phanteks p400s case, the aio claims to blow a max of 40.6 cfm per fan (not sure if that is true, it seems quite low for a 140mm fan when compared to others) I chose this because it looked nice and had allot of good reviews, plus RBG using the AIO as intake, I planned on getting 3 120mm Thermaltake Riing fans for the top and rear, only problem is that if i use all three as exhaust then I will be having negative pressure in my case, I really don’t want to deal with allot of dust buildup. I know I could just use one fan on the top and then one at the rear, but then the aesthetic of having both top mounted fans would be gone. My question is if it would ok to turn my rear fan around and use it as an intake and add a filter too it in order to achieve positive pressure. i apologize on advance if this has been asked before, but I wanted to have up to date input on my specific setup. Thanks, Pteric

Hi I’m planning on building a pc and I’m wondering about case fans and airflow. If I were to put 3 fans as exhast spinning at 1600 rpm and 2 intake at 2400 rpm, will I get neutral/positive pressure? Note that each fan is rated at 44cfm and 74cfm respectively. Also will the psu fan affect airflow?

Hi again guys, I have a quick question (I know, everyone asks this question at one point but the environments differ so much that it's tricky to use their examples every time). I have an Enthoo Pro M case, and am busy planning my airflow configuration now. At the moment I have planned 2x 140mm intakes at the front, and 1x 140mm exhaust at the back, with an additional 1x 120mm intake at the top. The CPU is cooled by a Phanteks CPU cooler. The case will obviously also contain a graphics card (1080ti - not a blower-style card, but a normal one that just blows the air out of its fins back into the case). I have sketched it as follows: As you can see, as per the sketch I have a total (estimated) intake CFM of 196 CFM, and total exhaust of 97 CFM. The air cooler's fans blow the CPU air directly into the exhaust fan, which is good. But: 1) Is that too much intake vs exhaust ratio? I'm trying to obtain positive pressure, but I'm not sure if this may be "too much" intake? 2) Is the top intake fan a good idea? The goal in theory is to provide cool air that the CPU cooler can grab and send through its fins, while the front intakes' air can go more towards the GPU. Or will the air from the top clash with the air from the front and create issues? 3) Does the GPU have adequate cooling in this sketch? It'll have to send its hot hair back into the case in the hope that it makes it to the top and then gets pulled through the CPU cooler.. but then again, that top intake might mess with that? I don't know.. the positive pressure seems to be really high in this case, so possible most of the hot GPU air will be pushed out of the back vents, mostly bypassing the CPU cooler anyway. 4) And lastly, is that enough exhaust for the heat generated in the case (CPU + GPU)? What are your thoughts?

I'm building a low end VR system for my dad with older parts I have lying around and a few cheap things off ebay.. Now the problem is that I only have the stock fan in the front and I have more exhaust than intake so it's negative pressure right now. I'm trying to stay under a budget so I don't want to spend anything more on fans or filters. I know you're not supposed to do a rear intake because it creates turbulence inside your case in terms of airflow., but the front intake is so weak and is feeding air under the graphics card so I don't think that there will be much interference between the front and back so I don't think it's going to matter. I have two 140mm fans up top that'll pull out all of that air anyways and are going to more than overpower the airflow coming from that weak little front fan. Do you think it matters that much? I don't. I honestly think that in this case, a rear intake will actually be better and I have one filter that I can use for it to make sure it doesn't bring in anymore dust. His old computer had a lot of dust in it. It looked like a rat died in there so I think maintaining positive pressure is just more important here. What do you guys think?

What would be the optimal route to go with my fans??? Right now I have stock case fans, an Enermax liqtech 240 w/ high pressure fans, and the Fury X rad and fan. The enermax rad has 2 of my 3 exhaust fans, with one exhaust fan at the back of the case. At the front I have the Fury X mounted inside, and 2 stock case fans for the intake. Ive ordered 5 Noctua NF-A14 (2000 rpm) and I cant figure out how I would get optimal cooling with these components. PLEASE HELP. ITS IRRITATING ME.

He so i will buy a graphics card ( Asus Dual GTX 1060 6GB) in the next days and im concernd about wether or not my air flow will be enough to cool the card and my 6600k. So far i have the preinstalled 200mm fan from Thermaltake in the front. i have space for fans everywhere, front, top, back, bottom?(not sure). Where should i put extra fans ? I want positive pressure in my case because its really dusty here and my dust filters should keep the dust out, filters are in the front and at the top so there should be my intake fans. I will buy these fans, they are also available in 120mm. Im thankfull for any recommendation. Thanks Photo shows PC ( dont tell me somehting about cable managment , I will work on that when i have the GPU)

I just built my first rig using a Phanteks Enthoo Luxe case. I'm using a Corsair H100i GTX cooler in a pull setup at the top, and a gtx 980ti hybrid also in pull, both are exhausts as well. I removed the 200mm fan and replaced it with the two 140mm fans that were the original exhaust fans. I've also removed the bottom hard drive cage to reduce resistance. I'm not obsessive about keeping my system silent so I have all of my fans (that I can controll) at full speed So I'm looking for advice on achieving positive are pressure while maintaining full fan speed, even of that means buying different fans. The pic is from before I actually removed the bottom cage and switched the intake fans.

I plan on buying an Enthoo Luxe and having it water cooled. I plan to put a 360 Rad on Top and a 240 Rad in the Front. The question I have is that I was gonna have both of them be intakes which totals 5x 120mm fans as Intakes and have the 1 rear fan function as the only exhaust to create positive pressure. This seems like too much intake compared to the exhaust. I wish I could have a bottom and front radiator be intakes but there is essentially no room on the bottom of the case with the power supply and the pump. Thoughts and suggestions? Image for Illistration: http://i.imgur.com/ulxNxk6.png

I need some help on what type of fans (AF vs SP) and positioning in the case for my build that I am working on. I was thinking 3 140mm intake fans (2 on front and 1 bottom) with 2 120mm exhaust fans along with a phanteks PH0TC12DX_RD Cooler. Also I am confused on which would be the best way to position the PSU. It will not be on carpet, it will be on a desk. Below is a schematic of what I came up with. I would like to use the Fractal Design Arc Midi R2 and would remove the top HDD cage. Would Air flow fans or Static pressure fans be better for the intake fans etc.? I would like to get positive air pressure as well. Thank you for the help!

Hello all, I'm in the planning stages for a new build and this time I've decided to go small, since I've had enough with big, bulky enclosures. So I've chosen the Bitfenix Prodigy. Since it's a small case, well thought airflow is a must. I've read some articles, including OCN Dave's Air Cooling Guide, saw some Youtube movies. I've reached the conclusion that a positive pressure cooling scheme would be best, since it helps keep dust at bay. However, the case being so small I thought I' ask for your advice. I've quickly sketched a picture below on how I plan to do it. Quick spec sheet (heat generators only): CPU: i7 4790K GPU: Saphire Radeon r9 290 Tri-x PSU: don't know yet, something around 750W, fan on bottom, most probably I'm thinking to use: Noctua NF-F12 Industrial PPC 3000 PWM 120mm for the case intake Something with high CFM for the exhaust. It should'n need static pressure, since it's an exhaust, right? Corsair H100i for the CPU (maybe in a push/pull?) I tried to represent how the air would flow in the case and the way I see it would heat up. The only thing I didn't represent is the airflow from the GPU. So, any opinions? Thanks!

Hi guys, I'm thinking of getting a liquid CPU cooler, and I have the mounting position at the top of my case. My question is, how do I maintain positive pressure when I have 1x140 and 1x120 intake, 1x120 exhaust and then another 2x120/140 exhaust with the radiator? Cheers

I'm going to be buying 6 new fans, 2 Corsair AF120mm Quiet Edition Blue LED's (one for back exhaust and the other for a bottom intake) and 4 Noctua NF-F12 Industrial PPC 120mm IP67 PWM's (2 in pull/exhaust config above the radiator and 2 at the front of my case as intakes because of drive bays) when I upgrade my motherboard, ram and add in a AIO water cooler sometime in the near future. The case I have (Thermaltake Chaser A31) already has what you could call 'dust filters' on most, if not all the area's I've been talking about situating fans (although fan filters on exhausts doesn't matter as much I assume?). Wondering whether or not that particular setup of fans will create a positive pressure area inside the case or if I would/should need to invest in fan filters to keep dust out (I want to minimize dust as much as possible). Cheers, BabieZ

Would having 9X 120mm intakes (480 at the top, 360 at the bottom, and 240 in the front) and a single 140mm rear exhaust be too much positive pressure? The rear of the case is basically mesh and all intakes are filtered. The case is a Phanteks Enthoo Primo, so it's quite tall inside, and I'm not sure if the opposing fans on the top and bottom would really be fighting each other. From what I can tell it's a trade off between having cooler air on all the rads, vs the air cooling required for the motherboard and memory. The other alternative is to have the front 240 and bottom 360 as intake, and the top 480 and rear 140mm fan running as exhaust. Running the rear 140mm at low RPM should equal slightly positive pressure, and smooth airflow from the front/bottom to the top and rear.