question about air cooling

[lost]

i have a yellow Chieftec Dragon Mid-tower case (http://www.directron.com/dx01yld.html)

i've included what my current fan setup. i have 2 intakes at the front bottom. #1 sucks in room temp air and passes the air over the 3 HDs. and well fan #2 doesn't have any hard drives yet, but id like to to mod it so i can put in 3 HDs depending on the space i'll have after installing my x-fi sound card.

 

what i'm wondering is that do i need intake fan #1? if i remove that, i'll get some space for some wire management, but i'll lose out on my previous intake fan. what would i do? keep the fan or get rid of it?

[wormy]

I would see how the temps were with and without it and then you would know what would be best...

[Puck]

i have a yellow Chieftec Dragon Mid-tower case (http://www.directron.com/dx01yld.html)

i've included what my current fan setup. i have 2 intakes at the front bottom. #1 sucks in room temp air and passes the air over the 3 HDs. and well fan #2 doesn't have any hard drives yet, but id like to to mod it so i can put in 3 HDs depending on the space i'll have after installing my x-fi sound card.

 

what i'm wondering is that do i need intake fan #1? if i remove that, i'll get some space for some wire management, but i'll lose out on my previous intake fan. what would i do? keep the fan or get rid of it?

Ideally you will want to balance the CFMs going into and coming out of the case, but also the direct cooling of components and the path of air plays a big role in how temps will be.

 

You can very possibly have a slightly higher case temp but still reach higher clocks with more directed active component cooling then just balancing the case intake/exhaust.

[kobalt]

You should check this thread

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?showtopic=74209

 

for this link

http://icrontic.com/articles/pc_airflow_heat_cooling_guide

[Psydotek]

I'd personally keep that #1 fan. I have the same case on my old computer so i know what you're talking about with the cable management (with the fan in place the HD sticks out rather far). However, i think having good airflow over hard drives is essential to keeping them happy for a long time.

[lost]

I'd personally keep that #1 fan. I have the same case on my old computer so i know what you're talking about with the cable management (with the fan in place the HD sticks out rather far). However, i think having good airflow over hard drives is essential to keeping them happy for a long time.

yea i kinda left that section outside to see how it runs without a fan, yea, it runs a little hotter then id like. i'm going to be adding back the fan tonight.

[ClayMeow]

As Puck said, you want to try and balance the intake and exhaust, but that doesn't mean you have to have the same number of fans. If you really want to remove fan #1, you can buy a fan with a higher CFM rating than the one you have in fan#2 slot. Calculate the cfm's of all the fans in your case and see if getting a higher one in the front would help. If you can get a fan that has an equal or higher CFM than #1 & #2 combined, then that would allow you to do what you want, and in fact maybe even improve temps slightly because fan #2's airflow (as of now) is not being blocked by hard drives like fan#1 is.

[Waco]

With how complex airflow can get it's usually just easier to try a bunch of different solutions to see what works best.