Fans inside a computer tower?

More movement of air is better. ... but that many fans may be over-kill. I would think that at least the fan in the back should be running. If ALL of the fans are hooked up maybe the noise level would be too high. electricitym

With regard to this suggestion, some computers have diagnostics to read the temperature of the cpu and sometimes the inside of the system enclosure. Maybe you would be able to judge the correct cooling by monitoring these temperatures. I would like to see the fan in the back running as well as it usually cools the power supply. Front fans are usually set to add cooling to the disk(s) if they are mounted near them.

Good luck Jim

Thanks to the two of you for this. You have given me an idea. As this computer even with the one ARCTIC COOLER fan is not quiet enough to have it in the same room as a microphone, I might as well have the other three fans running just to ensure the greatest longevity of the machine! Unfortunately, for recording, I am going to have to put the computer in an adjacent room (with extension cables) anyway. So does having four fans running sound reasonable - or unnecessary? If, as Jim suggests, the two front fans are meant to cool the disks mounted above them, then at the moment those disks aren't being cooled at all - unless that ARCTIC COOLER fan up near the top of the back is just so great it's cooling everything!

Ellie.

In my own experience, the intake fans at the front do very little, I would just remove that one to improve airflow. The rear exhaust fans will help though, I recommend plugging those in, it was probably simply never done when the system was built. If the fans are too noisy you can get special quiet fans, same goes for the one on the CPU. Do some googling for quiet PC or silent PC and you'll find lots of good info.

So does having

For me the more fans the better. I have seven hard drives in my video editing computer which generates lots of heat. If you count all my fans... there are: one in the power supply, one on the processor, two in the case rear, one in the case front, one on the video card, one on the motherboard's chipset, one in the side of the case

In case I missed any, ther are somewhere between 9 and 13 fans in my tall tower case. It's noisy but necessary to keep it running cool.

Jumpster and James, thanks a lot.

Jumpster, you have all those fans running at it hasn't done your machine any HARM, so that's a good indicator I should get my dead ones running.

James, this morning as a result of yesterday's answers from people in this group I took another look round the interior of my chassis and discovered I in fact have FIVE fans in there! This is quite surprising for me because over the years, having moved from one reasonable desktop PC to another, I have always noted just one little fan attached to the CPU.

This morning I have found that what I reported yesterday is incorrect. Yes, three fans are incorporated in the chassis itself (supposedly coming with it from the manufacturers of the chassis) and, yes, there is a fourth added fan attached to the ARCTIC COOLER device. But I was wrong to say that that little fan alone was keeping the ARCTIC COOLER cool. This morning I discovered a much bigger fan sitting within a "large" horizontal compartment directly above the ARCTIC COOLER. What is actually happening is that the small fan is drawing air towards the ARCTIC COOLER (through the hole in the chasis where there is a dead fan) and the big horizontal fan above is then drawing air away from the ARCTIC COOLER and out the back of the chassis through a grille.

So, now that I find that TWO fans are at work in there, I am thinking that maybe the company that built this audio computer for me know what they are doing, and that maybe the work of these two fans is sufficient.

On the other hand, looking at the manual this morning, I see there are only two sockets to supply the fans. One of them, designed for the rear fan, is being used to power the two added fans working on the ARCTIC COOLER. The other socket, adjacent to the two fans at the lower front of the chassis, is empty. I see there seems to be a bundle of spare connectors clipped away inside the chassis, so maybe it would be fine and safe to connect those two little fans to the empty socket.

What do you think? When I put my tower in the other room during recording, it will be five metres away. Do I need to hunt for THREE separate five-metre extension cables for keyboard, video, and mouse? Or is there by any chance some kind of cable which combines all three so you only have one cable trailing from one room to the other? I have tried looking for something suitable online but the choice of fittings is bewildering and the descriptions aren't particularly helpful.

Any advice?

Many thanks,

Ellie.

I don't think computers, with all those fans and spinning hard drives, would be suitable in a silent audio room... Maybe a fanless power supply in a diskless machine operating as a terminal to a "real pc" or something similar.

Regarding fans, the front intake fans are best for cooling hard drives in their airflow - high-speed drives get too hot to touch when tucked away from the airflow, which is never good. The fans were not plugged in either by mistake or intentionally so that you would decide the noise vs. cooling or plug them in as you add new components to the machine.

You can get a single cable combining keyboard, mouse and monitor. A KVM cable would probably be ok but it must be male-to-female (male to PC, female for the devices themselves)

Intentional or otherwise, this is definately a good thing.

Cool your drives. Modern drives drop like flies when they're run too hot.

Alex

I just want to say a big Thank-You to you, Alex, AND EVERYBODY else who has been so helpful on this question of fans in an audio computer.

As a result of all your different pieces of help and points of view over the last few days, little Ellie got down on her hands and knees this morning and snipped her way into several little bundles of wires tucked away in corners of her tower and then from all the plugs and sockets that were released she matched up two by wire-colour and socket type and, bingo, the three integrated fans of my chassis whirred into action. So now all FIVE of my fans are operating AND the extraordinary thing is that the increase in noise is only slight! But the draft that is being pushed out of the rear grille is now CONSIDERABLY stronger and that makes me happier about all the components of this machine being as cool as possible when I am recording in future.

Thanks everyone for helping me get there and with confidence!

Ellie.