Cooling a Lian Li PC71

DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
edited December 2003 in Hardware
I'm changing my computers up a bit, I'm gonna sell off my AMD and just go with the P4 that I have. I'm definately getting rid of the Antec lanboy case that I have, and am not sure about the case. I've got a PC71 black full tower from lian li. 2 80mm fans in the front, 2 80's on the backplane right by the kb and mouse connectior and 2 above the shelf under the power supply.
I'm trying to figure out if I should keep this one or go with something else. I'd like to keep the pc71 because it's massive and I would have room to run 3 cdrom drives and a lot of hard drives, but want to get the best from my air cooling. I'm not interested in water cooling anymore.
If I did keep it, I plan on making a custom plate that the power supply would hook up to that would hold the psu and a 120mm fan(I saw that mod either here or at icrontic before it went down), and shouldn't be too hard.
Will this case be sufficient to cool 6x7200rpm, 1x10,000rpm and 3 cdrom drives with an overclocked P4 that is being cooled by an SP94? And without making my ears bleed. I wouldn't be totally against cutting some holes in the side once I pick up a decent hole saw.

Comments

  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    It'll probably be SUFFICIENT to cool it, yes, but you could probably do better, too.

    Don't bother making a custom PSU mounting plate; 2 80mm fans are probably better because you can use the Thermaltake SmartFan2. Incidentally, that's also what you should use on the heatsink (don't bother with a 92mm fan; there is almost no performance difference between a SF2 @ full and a 92mm Tornado @ full) and in the other 4 case fan mounts.

    Set up the bottom 5 with thermal control, and the top two with manual control, and you'll have a quiet system that should run cool, too.

    At any rate, the fans are $10 each at newegg, so 7 of them is cheaper than any case that is better than the LianLi would be, so you may as well try the fans first.
  • DanGDanG I AM CANADIAN Icrontian
    edited December 2003
    The cheapest I've found the TT smartfan 2's in canada was $21 each, but I'm still looking through my list of fan people.
    Is it just that the smart fan2's are thermally controlled? Or are they special for some other reason.

    Edit. Just found them at Bigfoot for $20, but they also have the vantec thermoflow for $12, 80 or 92mm.

    For the 92mm.
    2.0 ~ 3.12 W
    1850 ~ 3100 RPM
    34.8 ~ 58.5 CFM
    29 ~ 40 dB(A)
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited December 2003
    92mm fans aren't worth using on the SLK series of heatsinks. I'm going to write an article or a long post going into it in detail as soon as I have time, now that I've collected all the data. But basically, given an 80mm fan that flows the same amount of air as a 92mm fan, the 80mm will perform better. In fact, the 75cfm SmartFan2 performs basically on par with the 119cfm Tornado 92mm.

    The SmartFan2s are special for a number of reasons:
    -They're the only fans on the market that offer you a choice of thermal control or manual control
    -They've got the widest airflow range of any 80mm fan on the market
    -Their thermistor is on a wire lead, so it can be used as an intake and/or CPU fan. Most thermally controlled fans (the Vantec included) have the thermistor built into the fan frame, so they can only realistically be used as exhaust fans.
    -The temperature vs. speed curve on the SmartFan2 is much better than that of any other thermally controlled fan on the market; they hit full speed @ ~55*C, versus the 60-70*C+ of other thermally controlled fans
    -They're actually powerful enough to warrant thermal control. All of the other thermally controlled 80mm fans (except the Thermoflow) move so little air at full speed that they may as well just run at full speed all the time.
    -The SmartFan2 is the only fan I'm aware of that comes with a flat thermistor that's thin enough to place on the CPU itself, right next to the CPU core, which allows the fan to actually serve as a thermally controlled CPU fan; sensing the temperature of the heatsink isn't a good way to adjust fan speed.

    So, basically, they're the only 80mm fan that I use (except for special applications) any more, and they're the only one worth looking at 99.9999999....% of the time.
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