Fan Airflow Question

[eightiethraptor]

so im curious about something, the setup i have right now includes my fractal define r4 case that has 2 140mm intake fans on the front, 2 intake 120mm fans on the top that blow down on a radiator, and a 140mm exhaust fan in the rear.

 

i am replacing the stock front fractal fans with nf-a14 flx's and the top 2 intake have already been replaced with nf-f12's, and this may seem like a silly question, but with all that intake air pressure, do i even need an exhaust fan? seems like the air is just getting pushed out the back by itself just fine without the use of an exhaust fan, the reason i ask this is that i wanna reduce noise as much as possible and since im using air from outside of the case for the rad i thought it wouldn't be an issue if i took the 140mm exhaust fan out.

[tryphaa]

Keep the exhaust. If all the fans are the same noise, the noise should be uniform, which makes the one fan make the rig the same volume.

[Excon]

If you wanted quieter then you shouldn't have gotten Noctuas. It's up to you if you wan't to leave the space empty or not but it's definitely not essential with how much airflow you have.

[KamiKatze]

@eightiethraptor

 

I don't know about your other hardware, especially CPU cooler but normally 2 front intakes and 1 rear exhaust are enough for a normal setup.

 

Anyways. I'd keep the exhaust, because you need something to shove hot air out of your system effectiveley. If you want a quieter PC, I'd use the 2 front + 1 rear setup.

 

please post your other components, especially those who could potentially make noise. (PSU, GPU, CPU cooler, Hard Drive, DVD drive)

[Faa]

The only reason you should use the top fans as exhaust is to improve your cpu cooling performance but makes the gpu warmer but its not really an issue unless you're running a sli setup.

[LogicalDrm]

You can always try how it feels. I would propably just flip top fans to exhaust and remove rear if thats noisiest. Or set to run at low speed.