[harrywolper]

Hello,

First post so please be kind ;-)

Just received a new PC from DinoPC in the UK. Overall good so far apart from the fact that they did not connect the 2 case fans to any power (both fans have a 3 level switch to change the speed). I asked DinoPC about this and their reply was: "The fans weren't connected as the case fans may disrupt the airflow of the CPU cooler." The CPU cooler is a Coolermaster Hyper TX3 sitting on an Intel i5 750 CPU. This response seems a little odd / not quite correct. What do other people think please? Given it is only 1 week old I want to get them to fix it now if that's what I should do.

The system also has a NVIDIA 9500GT (which has its own fan).

[BG-0]

That may, or may not be true. We cannot know without seeing what kind of a case you have, how is the CPU cooler oriented, where are the fans that are not connected, where are the fans that are connected, etc...

[harrywolper]

Case is an Antec 300 with Asus P7P55D motherboard. The case fans are at the back towards the top and on the top of the case towards the rear. Not sure if that helps. Thanks for reply either way.

[br1ng3r]

Hi harrywolper, welcome to Tech support guy. Ok iv'e had a look at both your case and your motherboard, and to be honest i think the guys at DinoPC have a point (possibly). The position of the two fans are both very close to where the heatsink and fan are on the Mobo, due to the case having a bottom mounted PSU. So the only thing that i can reccomend is that there are optional spaces at the front of the case designed primarily to cool the hard drives. I would suggest moving the top fan to the front of the case as an intake fan, and make sure the rear fan is blowing as an exhaust. That way you should have airflow accross your board.

[BG-0]

The top fan won't fit in the front, it's a 140mm fan and the front takes 120mm fans.

How is your CPU heatsink seated? Is the fan facing to the front and blowing towards the rear through the heatsink? Or below the heatsink and up through? Either way, one of the two fans, top or rear would only greatly benefit the airflow, and not disrupt it.

[raybro]

I suggest that rather than guessing at it, you should run some programs that really load up the processor (like games) and monitor your temps for hard drives, processor and GPU. A good utility for doing this is HWMonitor or PC Wizard. Both are free downloads.

Empirical data beats guesswork every time.

Raybro

[harrywolper]

Thanks. HWMonitor (great program) gave an average CPU temp of 45C when I tried opening/running a shed load of programs (no games but itunes video, Paint.Net and the like). I have yet to check CPU fan but I think it was on top of heatsink. If 45C is well within 'safety' limits then I will swap fan as suggested and keep an eye on things with HWMonitor.

[BG-0]

For real checking on whether the cooling is sufficient, run Prime95 Small FFTs test for about half an hour, see if temps go over 50-60 C.
When you check the CPU cooler fan, see which way it blows, too... It's not just how it "about" works, everything really matters. If it is a vertical flow, then swapping the rear fan to the front (make sure it goes to work as an intake fan, if it blows out the front it will seriously mess things up) may be a very good idea.