Will a 120mm cooling fan work with my prebuilt?

[abccool2020]

So I am in the market for a new cooling fan and I've noticed that the majority of the fans are 120mm. I live in U.S. and we don't use the metric system. So will a 120mm cooling fan work with my Prebuilt.

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

It depends on what the fan mount sizes are on your prebuilt system's case. Generally prebuilts can have up to a 80 or 92mm fan unless it's a prebuilt gaming PC.

[abccool2020]

Ok Thank you very much

[Himommies]

Why do you need one?

[abccool2020]

3 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

It depends on what the fan mount sizes are on your prebuilt system's case. Generally prebuilts can have up to a 80 or 92mm fan unless it's a prebuilt gaming PC.

Actually I check how far away the screws are from each other and it's about 3.25 inches or 7.7m

[abccool2020]

Well

1 minute ago, Himommies said:

Why do you need one?

Because I am doing a science experiment to see if differently prices cooling fans will affect the temperature inside my computer

[mariushm]

All fans are sort of metric. The most common fan sizes are 80 mm , 92 mm , 120 mm , 140mm . There was also 139mm (used mostly inside power supplies as a sort of workaround a patent on 140mm fans) and 135mm fans.

 

This number refers to the width and height of the fan, not the distance between holes.

 

For 120 mm fans, the holes are 105mm apart ( 2.54mm in a 0.1" , so ~ 4.1") :

 

 

For 92 mm fans, the holes are 82.5 mm (~3.25") apart :

 

 

 

 

For 140 mm fans, the holes are 124.6 mm apart

 

As for your "study" , everything will make a difference  ... fan blade style which makes the fan more optimized for air flow or for static pressure, maximum rpm  (you can have a 92mm fan running at 3000 rpm moving the same amount of air as a 120mm running at max 1800 rpm but which is more silent)

In general, there's a trend of going towards bigger size fans because they move more air with less noise as the fan doesn't have to spin so fast.

 

However, by the time you go to 180mm and higher, the weight of all the plastic in the blades is significant and the motor that spins the blades around must be made stronger with better precision in the mechanism to keep vibrations reduced and to make the fan motor last long enough. That's  one of the reasons you don't see 180mm or 200mm fans that much in computers these days, they're more expensive to make.

[abccool2020]

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

All fans are sort of metric. The most common fan sizes are 80 mm , 92 mm , 120 mm , 140mm . There was also 139mm (used mostly inside power supplies as a sort of workaround a patent on 140mm fans) and 135mm fans.

 

This number refers to the width and height of the fan, not the distance between holes.

 

For 120 mm fans, the holes are 105mm apart ( 2.54mm in a 0.1" , so ~ 4.1") :

 

 

For 92 mm fans, the holes are 82.5 mm (~3.25") apart :

 

 

 

 

For 140 mm fans, the holes are 124.6 mm apart

 

As for your "study" , everything will make a difference  ... fan blade style which makes the fan more optimized for air flow or for static pressure, maximum rpm  (you can have a 92mm fan running at 3000 rpm moving the same amount of air as a 120mm running at max 1800 rpm but which is more silent)

In general, there's a trend of going towards bigger size fans because they move more air with less noise as the fan doesn't have to spin so fast.

 

However, by the time you go to 180mm and higher, the weight of all the plastic in the blades is significant and the motor that spins the blades around must be made stronger with better precision in the mechanism to keep vibrations reduced and to make the fan motor last long enough. That's  one of the reasons you don't see 180mm or 200mm fans that much in computers these days, they're more expensive to make.

Wow, thanks a lot for that. That will be really useful. I really appreciate it

[LogicalDrm]

15 hours ago, abccool2020 said:

Actually I check how far away the screws are from each other and it's about 3.25 inches or 7.7m

You probably mean 7.7cm which is 80mm fan. 7.7m would be 25.26ft.