How many case fans?

Naikon

At present my new rig I built last august is fine,but one of the L.E.D case fans is flashing like a strobe light and has been deemed faulty so my question is:
Is it safe to have only one 120mm case fan at the rear along with a cpu heatsink and gpu heatsink to provide adequete cooling?
Is it reccomended to have a single rear case fan and to remove the second fan?
I know this question might sound a little stupid:p
My cpu temp is about 33 degrees celcius at the moment and i dont intend on overclocking.
Any response appreciated

christophicus

That is a very good CPU temp , You should really have at least one front fan and one back fan though aswell as the PSU.Are you running a pentium m or somthing?

Naikon

No i am running a AMD 3200+ with a third party cpu Heatsink.(Evo 33 from akasa
to be exact)

Is it really not a good idea to have just one 120mm fan?
I do understand the cpu temp would rise with just one fan.

christophicus

Well at the moment you cpu temp seems to be quite good so it doesnt look like you need to get another fan. But the next time you are getting anything pc orientated get a fan aswell to put on the front.

Naikon

Cheers for the info:D

christophicus

no problem, man

awhir

hey 33 aint that good for a amd on ideal.

mine 22 ideal.

DemonOfTheFall

I don't think it's really possible that your CPU could be running at 22 degrees, unless its about 10 or 15 degrees in your room. Faulty motherboard sensors ?

L31mr0d

Yeah 33 degrees is good if that is the CPU temp at full load, but i'm guessing it ain't. Try running something like OCCT then prime95 then 3Dmark06, then post your CPU temp, thats what I did on my +3700 @ 2.8GHz and it maxed out at 55'c, which isn't good but then i'm using stock cooling and no 120mm fans. As long as it doesn't break into the 60's you should be fine. Mine idles at 35'c, so since yours isn't even overclocked 33'c isn't anything special.

You need an intake fan and an exhaust fan. Preferably the intake should be at the front and the exhaust at the back. Are any of your fans actually pulling air into the case? What was the LED one doing before kaputski? Do you not have any spare fans you could use? Ones from old PSUs even?

Naikon

I have the front fan which is an intake for air and the rear fan is the exhaust.
I havent actually pulled the "broken" intake fan out yet as it is only the L.E.D
lights in the unit which are flashing like crazy but the blades are spinning and it is sucking in air.
before the intake went crazy the BIOS reported the cpu temp at about 26 degrees which because no other software was loaded (i.e windows)was idle.
My case is a little dusty inside but not too bad although even it stayed at 26"
before the fan went mad;)
I will just replace the fan as i dont have spares lieing around and i am not too confident in opening up a spare PSU considering the unit still might have some charge in the capacitors;)

Endurance Man

awhir wrote:

hey 33 aint that good for a amd on ideal.

mine 22 ideal.

Thats not possible, are you living outdoors or something .

jesus_thats_gre

Endurance Man wrote:

Thats not possible, are you living outdoors or something .

Or not using fans WC or something mate.

Naikon

well you cant compare WC to air cooling mainly because water is much better at shifting heat.

Kintarō Hattori

Two 120mm fans in an exhasut configuration here, with an 80mm at the top taking out all the hot air. With that I have a Zalman Reserator doing a nice quiet job. I haven't measured the temps yet, but I can't imagine it's too hot, and it is quiet!

B00MSTICK

Is it an AthlonXP 3200+ by any chance?

awhir

im using water

mp3guy

I'm running a prescott with stock HSF, and one exhaust case fan. Sure, the prescott is about 50c idle and 70c full load, but its still within boundaries.

BadCharlie

I used to run a amd1700+ with out any intake or exhaust fans and i used to overclock it also. I dont think u need to worry about your temps. Also i have a computer that only has a 120mm exhaust and its also overclocked and its fine it does get hot all right but i have yet to kill a chip from heat (its hot due to the amount of volts i put into it).

po0k

19 casefans is optimal.

Naikon

I have actually pulled my computer from under the desk and since its not backed up agaisnt the wall, the airflow has incresed and to my surprise the bios reports
an idle temp of abou 20 degrees:eek:.
Didnt think it would make such a difference:D

L31mr0d

WTF... 20'c, there has to be something wrong there, i left the balcony door open last night and my sitting room was bleedin freezin when I booted up last night around 3am, and my temp was 28'c immediately. Maybe try checking your temp when the OS is fully loaded, as you don't use the computer mainly in DOS or the BIOS, so reading a temp from there means nothing.

Have you accertained whats causing the LED flickering? LEDs don't have a slow failure rate, they either work or they don't. So flickering means theres something wrong with the way the voltage is getting to them, it could be something wrong with the PSU or could even be inducing a current back down the power line which could damage your mobo, unless its your HDD activity light, no LED in your system should flicker.

Naikon

I have no idea why it is flickering but i recently noticed the affected fan is spinning at a slower rate than the normal exhaust fan.
I suspect it could be a problem with the psu but all other l.e.d fans are fine at the moment.

BadCharlie

Naikon wrote:

I have no idea why it is flickering but i recently noticed the affected fan is spinning at a slower rate than the normal exhaust fan.
I suspect it could be a problem with the psu but all other l.e.d fans are fine at the moment.

Slower fan speed means less noise. I have one computer my server computer that is on most nights. With that computer i try and keep it quite as i sleep so fans speed on them is very low.

po0k

If it's a speed-controlled fan, and particularly if it's PWM-controlled, flickering is par for the course in most generic LED fan designs.

Drapper

I've read on forums that DFI Boards report very low temps! which are not accurate! usually out by 4-8 degree, sensors are poorly located

Asus and Abit are more accurate!

Naikon

My mobo is a gigabyte K8N-SLIpro and i am certain the flickering is not a design feature as for a short moment it is was fine and spinning a the correct speed.
Also the flickering has no pattern it basically flickers randomly like a botched up light;)

Cuddlesworth

Drapper wrote:

I've read on forums that DFI Boards report very low temps! which are not accurate! usually out by 4-8 degree, sensors are poorly located

Asus and Abit are more accurate!

Thats not entirley true, I have had both my dfi boards, a Asus sli-deluxe and a gigabyte motherboard all give me temps similar to each other as long as I'm willing to spend 3 or 4 hours on getting the perfect mount.

awhir

Drapper wrote:

I've read on forums that DFI Boards report very low temps! which are not accurate! usually out by 4-8 degree, sensors are poorly located

Asus and Abit are more accurate!

leave dfi alone i could say lots of bad stuf about asus