Fan/Airflow for my case, Phanteks Primo

creasian · February 22, 2017

I know a few may scoff, but know that I'm planning ti give a custom loop a try later on this year or next, but given I'm building a brand new system I cannot do the job justice at this time, so for perhaps a year it shall all be air cooled. I'm investing in a twin tower air cooling, and have a single gigabyte g1 1080gtx which will gain a brother next year for SLI when I go for the water cooling.

So I wondered if anyone could take a look at this planned fan setup for my Phantek Primo. Until sometime later this year or next, it shall be air cooled entirely.

Dual Tower CPU Cooler
Single Gigabyte G1 1080GTX, Going SLI next year.

2 arrows per fan.

1x Front 5.25 bay Intake - Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-3000 PWM
2x Front intake - Phanteks PH-F140SP
2x bottom intake - Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-3000 PWM
1 rear exhaust - Phanteks PH-F140SP or Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-3000 PWM
2 top exhaust - Phanteks PH-F140SP

I had the Noctua NF-A14's already so no reason not to use them. The f140sp shall all be on the fan hub while the Noctua NF-A14's shall be on the motherboard fan heads, which with the board I'm planning they will all be on true PWM headers. Since the bottom shall need to work harder I figure it was a good place for the Noctua's if I needed to raise their rpm more.

All intakes are behind demciflex filters and I am planning to replace the bottom front mesh and the top mesh with something like modders mesh in time.

Misinthe · February 22, 2017

Well, according to the specs, it can handle 16 fans in total, so any way you put them should be fine as long as it's not negative.

LogicalDrm · February 22, 2017

The setup is fine. I would argue against filling every slot with fans. Side fans in that case look to be for drive cooling. I think you can leave them out.

Have you used iPPCs in some build already? They aren't meant to desktop solutions, but if you are fine with the noise levels, why not.

creasian · February 22, 2017

3 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

The setup is fine. I would argue against filling every slot with fans. Side fans in that case look to be for drive cooling. I think you can leave them out.

Have you used iPPCs in some build already? They aren't meant to desktop solutions, but if you are fine with the noise levels, why not.

I got them on sale awhile back, and no I haven't. I was going to put them into another case I had been considering but never got the chance since I went with the Primo. I'm also against filling every single fan slot, as I am trying to just create a nice flow of air without making everything fight each other. The most forward top exhaust slot, if filled, I feel would interfere with the top intake, and starve the cpu cooler even more.

With the length of the gpu, and how the bottom is split along the middle to separate the psu from the main chamber, I felt there was going to be so little fresh air being fed to the cpu cooler that I installed the 5.25 drive cage intake fan.

So I'm leaving out the two side fans, one bottom fan that sits in front of the side/front fans, and one top exhaust and if you count it, the bottom rear fan slot.

As for noise, I have noisy roommates in this house and I actually sleep with a AC going full bore near me just for the white noise to get to sleep. So the IPPC's will be on true PWM and generally not anyways near 3k rpm, but if i want to push them to around 2k-2400, i have that option. So I guess a good hum from the fans is actually preferred. With my headphones I can't even hear the AC only 2 feet away so during quiet movie watching it should still be fine, i hope/think.

Thank you for replying!