Case fans and configeration?

Aug 5, 2021
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Good day everyone. I have two questions about my upcoming build. I have the Cooler Master Mastercase H500 RGB that I would like to replace the RGB stock case fans with ARGB fans as It's my understanding I can (correct me if I'm wrong) plug the fans directly into my Asus AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus motherboard and use the on board ARGB software to control the patterns.

Does anyone know what the standard Cooler Master H500 ARGB fans are as Cooler Master never replied to my email?

I'm also open to other fan brand suggestions.

Also, I'm considering going with the configuration in the video below. Both 200mm front fans as intake, placing two fans on the top as intake, and the back fan as exhaust. Is there any reason why I shouldn't go with this fan configuration?

View: https://youtu.be/XzTnUZR_0Vs


My parts:

Cooler Master Mastercase H500 RGB Mesh Front Air Intake

ASUS AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) ATX Motherboard with PCIe 4.0

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3rd Generation 12-core, 24 Thread, 3.8 GHz unlocked CPU

Scythe Fuma 2 CPU Air Cooler

G.SKILL Trident Z Neo (For AMD Ryzen) Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin RGB DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Timing 16-19-19-39 CAS Latency 16

EVGA Super XC Ultra Gaming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB GDDR6 PCIe 3.0 GPU

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB PCIe 4.0

Corsair RMX Series RM750x
 
Aug 5, 2021
27
16
535
Visit site
I'm no expert on this, but that looks very unbalanced—4 intakes & 1 exhaust. I'd expect that to cause mini tornados inside your case, instead of a nice directed flow :)

Wait for the experts, of course.

Deffinetly why I wanted to post the video, to make sure before I commit. With just the two front intakes and rear exhaust, the case already gets great thermal performance.
 
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two front intakes and rear exhaust, the case already gets great thermal performance
@Why_Me @Lutfij @Colif et al:

Just for curiosity—above sounds less ideal to me than the other way around. With 2 in and 1 out, air is building up in the case and therefore milling about a bit before making its escape.

But with say 1 in and 2 out, air is being sucked out just as fast as it can get its sweet molecules into the case—which to me sounds like the perfect recipe for a fast clean directed airflow. The trick would be to position the fans so that the flow goes across the hot spots.

Am I thinking straight, or just blowing hot air?
 
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@Why_Me @Lutfij @Colif et al:

Just for curiosity—above sounds less ideal to me than the other way around. With 2 in and 1 out, air is building up in the case and therefore milling about a bit before making its escape.

But with say 1 in and 2 out, air is being sucked out just as fast as it can get its sweet molecules into the case—which to me sounds like the perfect recipe for a fast clean directed airflow. The trick would be to position the fans so that the flow goes across the hot spots.

Am I thinking straight, or just blowing hot air?
I'm a two intake in the front, one rear exhaust fan myself along with a vented top case (heat rises).
 
In all honesty that case was designed to house some beefy components. Read - radiators or perhaps a dual GPU loadout. For the sort of hardware you have to work with, you're fine with 2 intakes and one rear exhaust, leaving the top fan mounting positions devoid of any fans. You can have convection currents take the remnant hot air out the top of the case.

GamersNexus did a review on a case with fans(set to exhaust out the top) located towards the front intake fans, they tend to suck any air being brought in by the top front fan, out the top - meaning it's fresh ambient air being sucked back out as soon as it's being drawn in, which doesn't lend any assistance to the airflow and subsequent heat dissipation of the innards of the case.
 
Both 200mm front fans as intake, placing two fans on the top as intake, and the back fan as exhaust. Is there any reason why I shouldn't go with this fan configuration?
You don't need that many intake fans. 200mm fans more than enough to cool entire case. Extra not needed


My last case had 3 x 180mm intakes, it pushes so much air it doesn't need any help. I wouldn't run them at full speed though, just as effective slower. Quieter too.

GamersNexus did a review on a case with fans(set to exhaust out the top) located towards the front intake fans, they tend to suck any air being brought in by the top front fan, out the top - meaning it's fresh ambient air being sucked back out as soon as it's being drawn in, which doesn't lend any assistance to the airflow and subsequent heat dissipation of the innards of the case.
i have that feature. But as I use an AIO as intake it really doesn't matter. I have more exhausts than intakes so heat doesn't stay in case long. Only part of PC that could use some more airflow is my nvme but air would have to get past ram so might not really help.
 
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An intake fan at the top front can bring in fresh air directly to the CPU cooler and help to keep hot GPU exhaust from being drawn in when using a tower cooler and air cooled GPU. It might seem unintuitive but natural heat convection is weak compared to the effect of even one low RPM fan in a box the size of a PC case.

You can also remove the unused PCI-E slot covers in the back of the case to help let more air out of the back. If you're really mad for it you can take tin snips or a dremel to your rear fan grill and get totally unrestricted exhaust. :p

Personally though, if you're not overclocking to the wall, I'd just start with 2 in at the front and one out at the back like @Whyme, set up an auto fan curve that you can live with and see if it works OK for you.
 
Intake fans in the bottom and front, exhaust in the top and rear is the golden rule and the best way, and there's no discussion. Don't have radiators on intake. Yeah, your CPU will be cooler, but everything else(RAM, GPU, chipset, VRMs) will suffer from it.

A few more things:
*Have filters on the intake fans, and remove the filters that are on the exhaust if there are any. Some cases have filters on the top where the exhaust should be.
*Have more intake fans than exhaust to keep positive pressure inside the case. That way you have full control over where the air comes in, and it won't suck in dust through where you don't have filters.
*Use the same fans everywhere and use the same curve. Fans running on the same speed will make less total noise.

As far as fan curve goes, try finding the sweet spot between fan speed and noise. Try avoiding having the fans spin up and down all the time, as that noise is the most annoying. Same RPM all the time will make you forget about the noise.
 
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having AIO as intake doesn't effect GPU temps at all. GPU doesn't care where the AIO radiator is, it makes no difference.

You don't need more intake fans to get positive, if you use larger intakes than exhausts, you get it anyway. Essentially if he added an extra exhaust, there would still be more air coming into case due to using 2 x 200mm intakes.
 
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having AIO as intake doesn't effect GPU temps at all. GPU doesn't care where the AIO radiator is, it makes no difference.


You don't need more intake fans to get positive, if you use larger intakes than exhausts, you get it anyway. Essentially if he added an extra exhaust, there would still be more air coming into case due to using 2 x 200mm intakes.
My experience is different than the one in the video. Especially during long sessions in CPU heavy games. Not just 30 minutes. It can take a while for the water to reach its max temp. But enough about that.

Also, easiest way to kill your AIO, is to put it exactly like that video. ;)

Yeah, I agree about the fans, but I was talking about identical fans. But atleast we agree on positive pressure? :)
 
It might depend how many watts your putting through the radiator? A 7700k at 1.4 5 ghz like in the video might be around 150 watts. If you were running an OC 12900K and a 3090 on a custom loop with dual rads you might be putting 700 Watts over both of them.

If its a Ryzen 5 or 7 youre only talking 100 watts or less at stock worst case, its probably not so much a factor.
 
It might depend how many watts your putting through the radiator? A 7700k at 1.4 5 ghz like in the video might be around 150 watts. If you were running an OC 12900K and a 3090 on a custom loop with dual rads you might be putting 700 Watts over both of them.

If its a Ryzen 5 or 7 youre only talking 100 watts or less at stock worst case, its probably not so much a factor.
Yeah, true that, and I should have taken that into consideration. I stand by the radiator placement though, as you will kill it if you put it exactly like in the video. The pump will run dry.

My experiences are with Ryzen 9 3900x, 5900x, and Intel i9 10900X.
 

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