I always go with enough fans to make the case hover off my desk

I'm really enjoying this "older" videos, when we got useful information for plebs like me without top of the line hardware.

Steps: 1. Locate all places where a fan could physically fit 2. Fill these places with Noctua

That guy at the end really couldn't wait 30 seconds for him to finish recording huh? lmao

Why buy fans when I can just manually blow air into the system?

Once my tower is 5 decibels louder than a Huey helicopter I know I've installed enough fans.

I have three fans intake, three exhaust, not counting the ones on the CPU cooler or video card. I read at least 10 emails a day, so you can never be too safe! :P

I like how this is recommended to me the day after I installed 9 more fans into my pc and upgraded 2 others to bring my total fan count to 21.

Can’t you just download more cooling ?

Intake and exhaust orientation should've been mentioned.

This is easily one of the most useful videos. Coming from a stock Dell XPS Desktop setup, I think just adding 1 front fan would make a lot of difference.

Looking back at the old videos, the improvement in production quality is massive. Audio is so much more crisp, and the lighting is perfect and diffused. And that's just at first glance. Missing Luke hosted videos though lol

"And what case fans do--" TUNNELBEAR!

I've always set my pc up in an icebath with an umbrella drink so it never feels to hot or stressed out

Thank you for making and posting this video. It's helped me understand the cooling requirements for a build I'd like to undertake. Thank you again.

“This is not sponsored by cooler master” *remembers the ad at the satrt of the video*

Super finds Luke! One interesting thing I've found through my own experiments is that having a *direct* flow of air to a particular component helps temperatures significantly (rather than having to go around components etc). Not something that's easily done in a normal case unfortunately though.

Awesome video Luke! Would love another test for positive/negative setups with one, two, three fans at different locations on the case...hmmm... maybe a video idea for something i should do :p

I always go for a positive pressure setup with inntake in the front and sometimes 1 in the bottom of the case if there's room and a filter that covers the position I want, then I go for a 2-3 exhaust fan setup in the roof of the case and 1 in the rear. This creates a front/bottom to back/top airflow with positive pressure, 4 inntake fans (+ PSU) and 3 exhaust fans.

It's amazing they didn't mention fan orientation although it IS possible to tell by watching the video, The "back" side of a fan (where visible wires run along the frame towards center) is the side air will be blowing towards, so for example at 9:28 - 9:30 when it shows the closeup of the top fan you can see the wires so it is setup as an Exhaust fan. We can of course assume the front & rear fan orientation as it wouldn't make any sense otherwise (rear = exhaust / front = intake).

Kudos to Canada for using degrees Celsius!

i want to see a follow up on how positive and negative air pressure affect cooling.

Very informative and well done. The one consideration that I thought you would include is the CFM of the fans. CFM airflow determines how much air is being moved into the case (intake) or removed from the case (exhaust). I would think that a balanced CFM would be the goal of cooling the compartment. You want the intake and exhaust airflow to be near the same. There are cheap devices that measure airflow. I think they are called airspeed measurers. I would also advise using fans that are speed adjustable. This would help you to balance the case airflow. It's not all that important that you agree or disagree with me as long we both agree that warm air RISES.

Always enjoy going back to see how far they have come. Luke with more to say, "So, a" cuts to tunnel bear. And then the tunnel bear notes on his phone on the desk.

Enough fans to feel the breeze from the PC in your face!

Maybe I'm stupid but a fan orientation might've made things a bit clearer. Front fans are intake and Back fans are exhaust? How about the ones on top?

My approach to case fans (after 2 factory fitted ones included with the case failed) is. Buy a case without fans if possible, or remove if not. Buy some decent ones. Depending on how sensitive to noise and tone you are this can be quite in depth. Also pay attention to airflow (usually given in m³/h or cubic meters per hour) I'd say you want a minimum of 50m³/h for a 120 or 140 mm but higher is better, a high quality fan will get close to double this and should be much quieter. If you can live without LED's you'll often get a better quality fan (Corsair for one the AF 140 with LED's is lighter than the non LED variant) Pay attention to the bearing type, sleeve bearings are entry level, ball bearings are better. Personally I use Noctua fans. I use their Redux model for my case fans. Many cases can fit 3 X 120 mm fans in the front or 2 X 140 mm, here I would say it's marginally better to use 3 X 120 mm if this leaves no open spaces between the fans or case rather than 2 X 140 mm that leave gaps at the top and bottom. It also looks better aesthetically in my opinion. The airflow is similar for example 2x NF-P14 Redux PWM 1500 RPM move 267.4 m³/h compared to 3x NF-P12 Redux PWM 1300 RPM move 276.9 m³/h. The NF-P14 PWM 1500 is noticeably louder tho' @ 25.8 dB(A) compared to the NF-P12 PWM 1300 @ 19.8 dB(A) + 6db(A) is much louder, I believe we perceive sound as doubling for every +3db(A) These figures are obviously specific to these exact model types and other fans will vary wildly. If fan noise bothers you it is worth going into detail. Be Quiet fans are appropriately very quiet but they sacrifice RPM and by extension airflow to achieve this. Depending on how much heat your system generates these may be an excellent low noise solution but if your overclocked CPU and powerful GPU are working hard for long gaming sessions you may require more airflow. Fan placement is not as straightforward as you might think except for the obvious front to back flow. Top mounted fans while it would seem intuitive to have them exhausting hot air (I mean heat rises, right?) I was amazed to find that flipping them over and using them as intakes, I was able to knock 10°C off my VRM temps and a couple of degrees off my RAM temps without increasing any other temps. 10°C! That's a big reduction just for flipping your fans orientation. Bottom mounted fans, I would recommend some caution here, the last thing you want to do is to be sucking dust from underneath your PC and introducing it to the interior of your case. Unless you're struggling with high temps and you've no other options I would avoid bottom mounted fans unless used with filters. In general tho' unless you live in an extremely dusty environment I don't advise the use of mesh airfilters, especially if your case has a perforated panel in front of the fans. Adding that second layer of filtration absolutely kills the fans performance, far better to run without them and invest in an air duster and regularly give your case interior a blow out. The single most important factor when it comes to airflow management is the case. If you're running high performance components then the best approach is to choose a case which is designed to optimise airflow (Gamers Nexus channel has a comprehensive guide to help you choose a high airflow case) if however your PC is more modest then you can probably get away with choosing a case design purely on aesthetic grounds. Good luck with your build.

The pattern here seems to be that if an intake fan has a matching exhaust fan, it has a good effect on cooling, and front fans cool the gpu better (the lower the better maybe) and exhaust fans help cool the cpu better. You guys should repeat this test, but use AIO radiators of different sizes and mix and match the fans.

that ending was hilarious.... that guy couldn't wait two seconds to let him finish signing off hahaha. what a tool.

The golden rule? Just put in as many fans as possible to make the system sound like an airplane, especially if you´re building a silent pc

The total average delta T between the baseline configuration and the addition of more fans represents the total cooling capacity of the system. Due to the specific heat of air, it takes so many watts to raise a volume of air 1 degree C. Therefore going from the T4 CPU cooler alone to 1 front fan + 1 back fan represents adding 480W of cooling capacity. When you add the second front fan it goes up to 600W. Adding the next top fan gets you up to 720W and at that point you are removing heat way faster than your computer can produce it.

Great video, thanks for posting. I just swapped out the 3(120's) fans that came with the case and added one extra to the top(140's). Seems like I'm bring in more from the front but the top one isn't extracting much. I still have one more for the top and them I guess I'll have to dial them in.. Cheers

I have 10 fans in my system. 2 front, 2 rear, 2 top, and 4 taped onto the window.

The other guy seemed pissed you were using his stuff haha

A discussion of case pressure - negative vs positive - & dust avoidance when equipping 1 or more intake fans with dust filters, might be a great topic, & it's related to this one.

The whole time, even before watching the video, I had one fan configuration in mind that I was curious about. But due to the design of the case, this wasn't something that you could test. I was curious if you had a top vent/exhaust/intake, would a) two fans as intake, b) two fans as exhaust, or c) one push and the other pull (perhaps swapping as well) result in better thermals? Otherwise the rest of your setup is indicative of my own. And what about lowering fan speeds with more to be quiet (obviously many more variables and hard to fully test). Awesome as usual and thanks!

I am a huge fan already

"lots of people freak out over fans" being popular isn't easy :(

I always looked out to get the most amount of fans in my system while caring for a good airflow. Front bottom as intake and rear/top as exhaust works usually very great. But fans in the side panel are often times counter productive for that kind of airflow, so I use them. My last PC was pretty much the only one, where I ditched my usual airflow build since it's build in a "Tacens aluminium extreme" case which got an insane 40cm intake-fan in... or rather AS the side panel. This baby spins at only 800rpm and while completely silent it just pushes around 250 cfm of air in the case. Used it as only case fan and with the silent "Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev. 2" on a Phenom II X6 945T and a Gigabyte GTX 960 4GB with dual-fan design, that system was basically completely silent & cool. Still runs today like a charm ;D

I have a filter on top of the case for mounting the water cooling radiator with its two exhaust fans, and only one other fan. I'm currently using it as exhaust on the back, but you've convinced me to try it in the front, lower, as intake. My other option was to mount the radiator as intake in the front, but I was thinking it would just blow warm air in so I skipped that. Warm air would still excape through the filter on top and through the back fan hole, of course (my PSU is encased in the bottom). Of course, adding more fans is a good idea according to this video so I'm going to do that. Maybe I'll also run a milder benchmark too and return with results. I know it's old, but thanks for the video - it's helpful / informative.

Smoothest cut to the post ad so far.

$69 for a case fan? Da faq?

Real great info for us analytical gurus. Thank you for this!

needs the blower style exhaust fans, those things are amazing

Amazing tests, I always wondered about it.

Why are computer temps the only thing in America measured in Celsius?

I'd like to see comparisons between having only exhaust fans vs intake and exhaust fans. for example; 2 exhaust (back and top) only vs. 1 back exhaust and 1 front intake. Also would like to see comparison using same fan config and components in a smaller mid tower vs that giant full tower, and maybe even a mini ATX tower.

This test is really well done, very straightforward, insightful for sure

"Some random ram from Adata". What!? *Adata dislikes this video*

Just make an entire case out of Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-3000 PWM's Run them all at 3000rpm's Coolest system ever

Great video, thanks for the summary :) Very helpful!

so much efforts to put in to make a good benchmark videos like these. appreciate it..! and thanks you.

I had 2 on the front wall and 3 on the top of the case. The cooler: Wraith Prism. Idle temp (3800X): around 50-55C Load max temp around 80C Chipset temp: 60-65C Then I replaced the Wraith Prism with NH-D15S and surprisingly the temps didn't change at all. After several hours of trying to fix it I decided to see what happens if I remove the three top fans and add one on the back wall. It was a huge surprise to see the temps afterwards. CPU idle temp now 36-42C and max load temp when doing normal stuff 58C. Chipset temp 51-56C. The three top fans messed up the airflow that badly. Also now my PC is very silent.

Actually really digging this kinda video Luke. It's relevant for the consumer and viewer instead of the 4 TitanX black benchmarks. It's interesting to watch. Easy to play around with even if the viewer is the avg John Doe fiddling with his PC and will give huge improvements over the usual craycray stuff that gives a 0.1% improvement for a loooot of work. So thumbs up on the idea for this video. Really enjoyed watching it even for a tech veteran.

I have 2 in front + 1 in rear. I wanted to put 2 more on the top of the case, but your video made me save money (and noise). Thanks.

I still have a new Antec 900 in the box (ya 10 years on the shelf), and will be building a 2020 system in it this year. With all the moderan temp drops and smaller sizing drives (M.2) etc this beast should stay cool on the warmest days.

So weird to look back at these videos from around the time when I started watching LTT. Luke is in them and the content seems so unprepared and quickly put together. Also Nick doing simple tasks like getting some peripherals for the WAN show set instead of only sales is odd. Now there are people for the inventory and loads of writers to prepare everything for a video.

10/10 editing guys! "soTUNNEL BEar!"

Just ordered 2 more fans because of this video. Small fan for top and back and big fans for front. Trying to create positive pressure to minimize dust all while keeping my Pc as cool as I can.

My first 2 cases had a fan on the side panel that would disrupt airflow. I'll never make that mistake ever again. With my current case, I took the time to learn all about airflow and diminishing returns. Settled on a *MESH* Corsair H500 and it never comes close to overheating.

"random RAM" 02:02 Random Random Access Memory. ok.

12:12 “I hate my job...”

I went with 2 front, 1 back, 1 top. My front bottom fan made a big difference to the basement area where my mechanical drives and power supply are. Corsair 4000D Airflow case.

This really helps since my GPU is running at around 76c under full load and i have one fan in the back and one fan in the front, so if i buy at least 2 more fans i can expect it to be around 3c cooler than before

Cool ^^ Hmm, making me rethink buying 2 fans to install in the front of my case rather than 1 fan. The Cooler Master Q300L case only comes with 1 pre-installed rear fan.

I just moved my GPU from vertical mount with PCI extender cable back to board mount and temperature dropped from 72C to 62C. When vertically mounted it was pretty close to the glass so that's probably why. Plus the PCI extender cable adds a touch of lag to the GPU so also better board mounted.

i use an old hyper evo cooler, my top fans are one intake 1 exhaust, this creates a sort of cooling loop for the tower and makes sure that there's air flowing through my ram. After that i've got two low speed intakes in the front to keep hard disks cool and to contribute to a positive pressure environment in the case, a fan on the side to make sure my video card is getting air, an exhaust on the back to evacuate whatever the top exhaust can't. PSU is independent and all intakes are filtered. Additionally my case has some open air venting on the back which because of positive pressure are usually for excess exhaust air, and, i popped one of the 3.5" drive bay doors open and covered it with filtering foam because it's in-line with the cooling tower so that if it needs more air air its more encouraged to pull from in front than around the case. All filters do get dirty and all open vents are usually venting excess air and if I needed any more proof its working effectively, my room gets hot as hell while pc temps stay nice and cool because there is no heat accumulation within the case. I also wear headphones, so this jet engine sitting next to me cannot be heard. As far as essential fans go, you typically want 1 exhaust near mosfets, 1 intake that flows over hard drives, 1 intake that flows near video card, and, ideally, PSU at the bottom of the case. This should prevent most cases of heat related hardware failure. Case windows are not essential for a budget gaming, you have nothing to show off anyway and the objective is performance for cost so you can use the cost of a case window and spend it somewhere more important. Additionally, if you are using either a tower cooler or a liquid cooler you must make sure there is airflow on the board. There are things on a board that have no sensors but can still fail to heat, heat pockets are lethal. Even if its the cheapest most enemic fan ever, as long as it can move air over the entire board, or at least the area around the cpu+mosfets+ram, you're good.

Thanks, exactly what I was looking for as I build my 15-12600k system. Next I will search to see what orientation of my CPU cooler is best (Noctua NH-U12S)

I'm building my first PC struggling so much with all the cables but your video out of the others really helped me although wish you had better lighting would of made the process better.

1,996,533 fans an counting.....

thank you Floatplane's luke. I was actually trying to decide how many fans I need

Wow, I actually understood the benchmarks in this video, lol. When others start comparing CPU clock speeds and such, I'm clueless as I'm thinking, "Does it really matter if it's 2 milliseconds faster?" But here I can understand why you'd want the CPU a few degrees cooler.

I love Luke’s face right before he starts talking after a transition.

you shouldve tested a side panel fan and its effect on the gpu.

you need to try with two fans on top, the first towards the back taking out air and the one next to it taking in air. This will make some real difference to the CPU because they would directly be circulating air around its intake and exhaust. Also I always mount a fan at the bottom rear of the cabinet if possible to take all the hot air out from the graphics card. Try this combination and you will see a difference. Also what I have noticed is that you have not dont any poistive/negative air pressure balancing inside the case and why is that?

ive been using my FX8350 with 1050ti without extra case fans for years. works like a charm running at 43c

I disagree with you, it's not that more fans is a diminishing return, it's that when you increase the internal pressure by installing more fans it will need to be balanced. You need to tune the individual fan speeds to create an optimal pressure and flow pattern. Try using a fan controller and smoke to balance the flow pattern, then use a photohelic or a manometer etc. to set your case pressure. You may need to tape off case vents (since no pc cases on the market have flow gates that I know of) to achieve a good balance. That's how to make the fans do their job and give you the biggest bang for your buck. I've worked in the Semiconductor cleanroom industry for 30+ years, I know this topic well.

THANK YOU : very clear and interesting vidz !!! thx from France !

Great test as i have this case, but it would've been extremely helpful and important to test this will all fan spots filled. This case supports a total of 6 fans (Not including CPU Cooler). Unfortunately you only test 5. Also, the top front fan that was never tested is almost directly in line with the CPU cooler, so it could have had a significant performance improvement on the cooling of the CPU.

So funny to see how far the production quality has come 😄

you did not test push, pull, that also makes a huge difference, pulling the heat out or blowing cool air in

One thing not mentioned...Using a variable speed (PWM) fan array: more fans @ lower RPM make less noise than fewer fans @ higher RPM. So, if noise is a concern for you, keep this in mind.

I haven't upgraded my case in 10 years. Still running an Antec 900 gaming case and have only needed to replace a single 120mm front fan. 2 front 120mm intake fans, rear 120mm exhaust fan, and top 200mm fan.

nice testing of fans locations. my setup currently have 2 120mm front 1 back and 1 on top.

*coolermaster ad after the intro* “This is not a coolermaster sponsored build, by the way” 2:30

The test would be more interesting by adding some fans to the sides! 😀

Awesome test. I have been thinking if I should add a fan to the top or not.

I`ve just built my first gaming pc and as a bit of an inventor I thought about cutting a circle in the same place as the cpu fan in the side casing and then fitting a tube inbetween the fan and the case to get fresh air all the time.

Looks like I had my fans set up for the best performance the whole time. 2 in the front, one in the back and one on the top

I had to run mine backwards. Two 140mm intake fans on the top and one 120mm intake on the back. NH D15 with the fans pushing down towards the gfx card. Two 140mm exhaust fans on the bottom and and two 140mm exhaust fans on the front.

My old Chieftek case is still serving me well. Plenty of space in it and i only use one 140mm fan at the back. Im running a Ryzen 3700x with the wraith prism cooler and a Gigabyte RTX 3060 12GB, cpu temp under stress-tests sits at around 60 degrees (i manually set it to 3.9 GHz since i feel the fan ramps up/down too much at default settings with core performance boost on) My RTX 3060 is usually around 62-63 during benchmarks.

Watching this in 2019, just bought the MC500P (the redesign of the case used in this vid) so this is perfect to give me an idea how to hit the cooling sweet spot. I think I will go with the 3x 120mm front, 1x120mm back. Going to use the Evo 212 Phantom for CPU cooling.

Apparently I've reached the end of LTT videos and youtube has sent me back to start from the beginning again.

I think you’re seeing diminishing returns due to excess air pressure. Your 1 exhaust fan is bottlenecking your 4 intake fans. You could possibly further increase cooling possibilities by adding bottom mounted exhaust fans, turning one of the top fans around, or using an exhaust fan that’s much stronger than the intake fans

Awesome video and it got me to thinking. What about a dimilar test bench using AIO, for CPU and GPU cooling. Run the same tests on an air cooled CPU / GPU setup.. To give an idea / starting point on the best fan orientation depending on ones choice of cooling. 🤔

thankyou Sir, it Helps a lot

I have been following the same formula for years: Front: 3X 120mm or 2X 140mm or 1X 200mm Rear: 1X Exhaust fan on low speed Radiator: set to exhaust air out of the case. Sometimes I have another intake in front of the PSU, but thats not always needed.

12:25 My friend when they don't care what I'm saying

Another thing to take into account is dust buildup: you'll want more filtered intakes than exhaust fans, which won't work with just 1 or 2

5:10 I'm looking at a power supply that may often not run its fan so not relying on that is a good idea. (Corsair's Zero RPM Fan Mode technology)