280mm fans vs 360mm fans, no AIO

RailRay · July 31, 2023

Hi Team Orange!

I'm looking to build my first PC and a question came up. Will two 140mm fans do just as good of a job as 3 120mm fans to air cool a PC?

Thanks

ChrisLoudon · July 31, 2023

6 minutes ago, RailRay said:

Hi Team Orange!

I'm looking to build my first PC and a question came up. Will two 140mm fans do just as good of a job as 3 120mm fans to air cool a PC?

Thanks

Hi buddy,

3 x 120mm fans will shift more air than 2 x 140mm fans but it all depends on the rest of the setup.

If this is your first PC build then you should start with the innards. Mobo, CPU, Ram, GPU, PSU and SSD. Once you locked in the spec then you should think about what case you want.

The case then has a limited amount of fan mounts. These will almost certainly be 120mm mounts but you might find space for 140s or even 90s.

How far have you got with speccing it out?

PDifolco · July 31, 2023

2 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

Hi buddy,

3 x 120mm fans will shift more air than 2 x 140mm fans but it all depends on the rest of the setup.

If this is your first PC build then you should start with the innards. Mobo, CPU, Ram, GPU, PSU and SSD. Once you locked in the spec then you should think about what case you want.

The case then has a limited amount of fan mounts. These will almost certainly be 120mm mounts but you might find space for 140s or even 90s.

How far have you got with speccing it out?

3x120 shift some more air than 2x140 but they have to spin faster and there's 3 of them, so more noise and higher pitched

For case airflow I prefer 140mm which are quieter and do the job nearly as well

SorryBella · July 31, 2023

4 hours ago, RailRay said:

Hi Team Orange!

Dont think any of us have a fanbase name.

4 hours ago, PDifolco said:

3x120 shift some more air than 2x140 but they have to spin faster and there's 3 of them, so more noise and higher pitched

For case airflow I prefer 140mm which are quieter and do the job nearly as well

+1.