Case fans

[Paiva98]

Hey guys, I'm building my new pc and I was wondering since I have two fans on the graphic card and other for the CPU, if it's truly necessary a case with fan, also the case is an atx but maybe 10 yrs old 

 

[Meganter]

2 minutes ago, Paiva98 said:

Hey guys, I'm building my new pc and I was wondering since I have two fans on the graphic card and other for the CPU, if it's truly necessary a case with fan, also the case is an atx but maybe 10 yrs old 

Yeah you need at least 1 fan intake and 1 exhaust if you don't want to be able to cook some eggs in your computer.

[ZivZulander]

Yes, as the CPU and GPU aren't the only components that need some level of cooling, the VRMs, chipset, SSD/HDD, RAM, and other components benefit from cooling. The PSU can help a bit, but you don't want it to be the sole exhaust in the system.

 

Depending on the GPU and CPU, as well as how ventilated the case is (some cases are particularly bad by constricting airflow), the heat from those two components can be lingering as kind of a heat blanket over the other components without case fans removing the heat. Heat does dissipate naturally, but not fast enough, hence case fans are used to bring in cool air and exhaust hot air.

 

You might not kill components right away without case fans, but you will see higher temps in the system, and the CPU and/or GPU may throttle. Lifetime of some components will also be shortened.

Also, case fans can help with noise. Even case fans running at low RPM will help cool your GPU and CPU, which means the fans on them won't need to run as fast, resulting in less noise; people often associate more fans with more noise, but the truth is it's generally better to have more fans (to a point - obviously diminishing returns applies) if you don't need to run them at higher RPM. There's only a small additive effect with noise when adding case fans; it's a common misconception that each successive fan is somehow multiplying the noise level exponentially, but that's not true.

 

Thermal paste on CPU and GPU will also start to dry and lose effectiveness over years, resulting in higher temps.

Fans and cases will also get gunked up by dust (you should regularly dust your computer, but not everyone does) and just over time some fans can get a little less performant (slow failure). So every bit of redundancy with cooling can be a good investment, especially given how cheap case fans are.

[apebanan]

If youre looking for budget options look around on Aliexpress, its very cheap and easy to put together a fan + controller setup. I wouldnt recommend MOLEX fans as they dont have any way to control the speed. 

[Paiva98]

Thanks for the time

[LogicalDrm]

3 hours ago, Paiva98 said:

Thanks for the time

What case? Older cases have limited airflow overall, and getting a new case with just exhaust fan might be better than buffing current with all the fans you can even get there.