water cool case

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jester6565

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i am putting water cooling in, i have a case with 4 fans, do i need to buy a different case without fans to put in water cooling?
 
Nope. I haven't heard of any WC-specific cases.

Heck, you could remove some of your case fans and put them on your radiator or heatercore. Dependent upon the size of your radiator or heatercore, you could use up to three 120mm fans.

You will still need a degree of ventilation through your case. Even though you are getting water cooling, it would still be wise to keep a couple of case fans. I would assume that case fans would attract all the dust and keep it off the other parts.

I will be installing my water cooling rig within two weeks. My case came with three fans: 2x120mm for the wind tunnel and 1x80mm front intake. I will be using the 2x120mm fans on my double heatercore. I will have to remove the 80mm in order to fit the heatercore. I may end up running the case open though. I'll let you know of the temperatures so we can decide whether case fans really are necessary.
 
Yes, case fans are necessary. Thats the problem people were making when water cooling first came about. They thought they could eliminate all case fans, but they couldnt, because the machine would crash. The parts that need very little cooling, but cooling notheless, are now no longer cooled and are slowly heating up. Therefore, they get too hot and cause instability and crashes. Your computer cannot ever be cool enoough, unless you start talking -250ºC, then things start to go wrong, but since you will never be getting those temps, more case fans will never hurt. You also need some on your radiator, like Cal said, and you should still have one on your chipset and RAM (water cooling either of those is a waste) and should still cool your voltagge regulator circuits and your MOSfets and your PSU and other things with the fans. IMO, water cooling should be in ADDITION TO all of your current cooling, minus the stuff it directly replaces.
 
leavin ur case open aint good 4 ur computer cuz the walls make the airflow right so everything gets cooled right
 
I say take out the fans that cool the less stressed parts, like ones that hover over the sound card or something. If you have fans that are over your processor and video card, then leave those in and send the watercooling in thru the fans you just took out.
 
Yes, leaving it open is actually very detrimental to cooling. Granted, there will be more air for the fans to push, but it wont be directed in any specific direction. They will blow a lot of air everywhere, resulting in lower cooling. If you have a closed case, the air really only has one directionto go, and that is in the direction that you set the fans to move it in. Ideal air flow is intake on the front, and exhaust on the back. It's not just the buildup of heat inside the case, it is alot to do with the moving of heat from the heatsinks and other parts to outside of the case. Removing any heat possible from a case is what you want to do. You have lots of little things that give off very little heat. REsistors, tiny SMD ones, MOSfets, capacitors, etc... While they each would give off less than 1/100th of a watt of heat, lets say for pusposes of this that they each give off 1/100th of a watt, thats not very much. However, when you have HUNDREDS of resistors and several mosfets and capacitors all giving off heat, it adds up.

I read an article years back on Toms Hardware about watercooling, like I said above. They wanted to try to make a entire case JUST water cooled (No fans whatsoever) and it would work for a little while until heat built up in things, and then it would start to crash. They put one fan in there, ONE, and it stopped crashign. If one fan makes that much of a difference, imagine what several would do.

In conclusion:

More case fans = Good
No case fans = Bad
 
Him said:
Ideal air flow is intake on the front, and exhaust on the back.

That follows the exact concept of the wind tunnel in my case. There is a front intake and a rear exhaust. The wind tunnel sections off the RAM and CPU from the rest of the case since they are the hottest parts (aside from the GPU's own cooler).

I have a huge full-size tower, yet the fan layout will make it difficult for my double heatercore. It would've been so much easier to just take the two existing 120mm fans from the wind tunnel and fit them onto the heatercore. But if I NEED case fans, there must be an alternative.

Could I just use one exhaust case fan?
 
You need case fans to push the air out. The water will pull the heat off the components cooled, and the fans will blow that hot out of your pc, or it will cause the system temp to heat to much, thus heating the components.
 
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