500r Quick Question

Hello everybody,

I am new to Corsair products. I am going to build a custom PC soon and I really like the 500r. Its design and functions are perfect according to my eyes so before I am going to purchase this case, I have some few questions that I want to be answered.

The case included 2 intake fans front, 1 intake fan side, and 1 exhaust fan rear. According to Corsair, this case can be used up to 10 fans. I suppose they are (2 front, 2 side, 1 rear, 2 top, 1 bottom, and 2 con each drives bays. I will be buying some fans (probably some LED Fans). I need some suggestions:

How can you tell if the fan is intake or exhaust fan?

This is maybe a stupid question, but I serious don't know how to determine it.

Which kind of fan you recommend and where should it be put?

I am going to use 1 200m fan on the side (included) so the total fans should be 9. As far as my knowledge, intake fan blows the air and exhaust fan sucks the air. 3 intake and 1 exhaust as default. I know that if there is too much air inside the case, the dust will fill up quickly and I have to clean it often.

The top should be 2 of 120mm or 140mm intake or exhaust fans?

The bottom should be intake I guess. Exhaust fans to suck hot air on the drives bays. The top should be 2 exhaust fans. Am I correct?

I don't know if I should use Water Cooling (H60) or just a regular CPU Fan (not i7-2600k stock)?

Last but not least, can you recommend which fans (intake and exhaust fans) I should get and where? I am going to spend around $50 to fill up all those 9 fans available for the 500r. LED or no LED will be fine. At least the temperature shouldn't be too high.

By the way I have one recommendation for you guys.

My computer right now have no what-so-ever fan. My PC right now is a crappy one with no fans and I am going to build a new PC soon. My GPU temperature before was 73 degrees Celcius. After cleaning the whole computer and got rid of the dust, my GPU temp dropped down to 63 degrees Celcius (no kidding). That's it!

Thanks guys!

I'm surprised no one has responded yet. I'm not an expert but I'll share what I can. There are two little arrows on your fans. They show which way the fan rotates and which direction the air flow is. I'm confident you will be able to find them and figure out which orientation will be intake or exhaust. The only other thing I can offer is to say that fan placement seems to be very much a personal preference; i.e., there is no right or wrong way. Whatever works for you is best. You can experiment with different orientations and see how that affects your temperatures. My personal opinion is that I choose to be guided by the old axiom that hot air rises and cold air sinks so my 500R has the H100 on top with fans blowing up (out of the case) and, also, the rear fan as an intake. Actually every other fan in my case is an intake. The only exhaust fans are the two H100 fans. It works for me though there are dozens around here who would say what I've done is "wrong".

I would recommend going with one of Corsair's liquid coolers only because there is less weight pulling on the motherboard that way. But the honest truth of the matter is that unless you're going for an extreme overclock you will be fine with any high quality cooler, air or water.

I agree with G50EED, there is no right or wrong way (well, making every fans as exhaust would be wrong :roll:) and you might want to experiment with different setups to see what will fit your needs. But let me share my experience with you. Like G50EED already mentioned, it could be a good idea to use the stack effect, having the warm air rising to the top and exit through top exhaust. If you want to reduce the amount of dust entering your case you might want to think about having a positive air pressure inside your case. That means you set up the majority of all fans as intake. I would recommend you this link about positive air pressure: http://www.silverstonetek.com/techtalk_cont.php?tid=wh_positive&area=usa

In this case, you should have all intakes filtered, this could be achieved by using a DEMCIFlex filter on the side panel (and maybe top panel). Personally, I'm having all fans as intake except for the rear fan (exhaust). My H100 on top of the case is cooled with two fans mounted as intake (Prolimatech BlueVortex 140 mm). I'm not using a filter on the top panel, since the H100 (more) and the top mesh (less) work in a way as a dust filter, but I have to clean the H100 regularly. Using fresh air from outside the case will give you a better cooling performance, but you will blow warm air inside your case. I testes both fans on top as exhaust, but that gave me cold legs within a few minutes :bigeyes:

Talking about CPU cooling, there might be another reason for using a water cooling solution: a standard CPU fan will disperse the heat inside your case. In contrast to that, the solution G50EED uses will direct the heat to the case's exit.

How can you tell if the fan is intake or exhaust fan?

If you mean that a fan is classified or designed as an intake or exhaust fan, they aren't. Any fan can be intake or exhaust, it just depends which way they are mounted.

I have a 500R case, and while it can contain up to 10 fans, that sure isn't necessary. Notice that the count of 10 fans includes the fans that come with the case (four), you can't add nine more to it. The most you could add to this case would be seven fans, if you remove the side fan and replace it with two fans. The stock 500R fan configuration is fine really, but can be improved depending upon your hardware and usage.

After going through the "more fans are better" phase, I learned that many fans does not mean better cooling. That is true more times than not IMO. Fans that are located without thought can ruin the air flow in a case, and actually raise temps and just add noise and waste power.

First, the fan controller on a 500R (really a three position switch) has proprietary cable connectors on it that are not compatible with any fan you can buy (besides 500R fans) and adapters for them are not available. So the fan speed control switch and LED switch can't/won't work with any other fans. So you'll need to determine how you'll get power to all your new fans, and how you'll control their speed, if at all.

Second, the side panel with the 200mm fan, may be replaced with two 120mm or 140mm fans. If you keep the 200mm side fan (which I suggest) that puts the new fan count from seven to five (more on this later), since another fan won't fit on the side panel with the 200mm fan in place. The 200mm fan is set up as intake, and you should keep it that way.

Regarding the positive vs negative pressure case thing, I consider positive pressure a more advanced (as in difficult) technique to accomplish, and is not done by just having all intake fans. IMO, creating positive pressure in a case with a large mesh side panel like the 500R is difficult, since the mesh panel "leaks" air out while at the same time a fan on that panel is pushing air into the case.

Two fans can be mounted on the bottom inside of the case, but you must remove one of the two 3.5" drive bays to put one of them in. That leaves room for only three 3.5" drives. The second bottom mount fan is very close to the power supply (PS), and if your PS is not modular or semi-modular, you'll need to dress the wires carefully away from that fan. Any fans on the bottom should be intake.

Mounting fans on the rear of the 3.5" drive bays is not easy. Two are possible, one on each half of the drive bays. Unless my 500R has defective drive bays, the mounting holes for the fans aren't threaded, and I could not find any special mounting hardware for them in the parts bags. The two front 120mm fans that come with the case push air across the drive bays, so adding two on the back of the bays might help if you are using more than four HDDs. Those fans would also blow air on the mother board and video card, but that's what the side fan does, and that is an example of what I consider confused air flow. The air flow from those fans would be perpendicular to each other, the result being a confused, mixed up air flow. Any fans on the bottom would also disrupt the air flow from the side fan, and the air flow from the drive bay fans. That can happen in any PC case. IMO, forget the two extra drive bay fans.

All that's left is the top, where two 120mm or 140mm fans can be mounted. The radiator of all the H-series coolers, except the H80, can fit there too, or the fans used with those radiators. The top mesh black panel can be removed by pressing down on the end towards the front of the case, and it will unlock and pop up (a little secret not mentioned in the manual.) So depending on what type of CPU cooler you use, you have a few options. If you don't put a radiator in the top of the case, you can use two fans there for exhaust. All I added to my 500R is two 140mm fans for exhaust.

As far as I can see, if you leave all the stock fans in the 500R, the greatest number of fans you can add to it is five. Two on top, two on the bottom, and one on the top half of the drive bay, or two on top, one on the bottom, and two on the drive bays. Skipping the unnecessary extra drive bay fans, brings us to three new fans, or four if you remove the bottom drive bay.

Since this sounds like your first PC build, I would recommend concentrating on assembling all the components like CPU, CPU cooler, mother board, memory, drives, video card, and power supply correctly. Make sure the parts are compatible, particularly memory with your mother board. Then you must install Windows and the drivers for at least your mother board and video card. All that is much more important and difficult than adding fans to a case.

If you are going from a PC with one fan in the power supply, to nine or ten fans as you said, be prepared for a big change in the noise level from your PC. You may one day be cursing your 10 fan PC, which is cool but loud.

Thanks for the replies guys!

parsec: I know that the case can take up to 10 fans which already included 3 stock fans. So you can actually make the fan to run as intake or exhaust as you want which is very cool. I am planning to use the stock fan on the side, the stock fan rear, and the 2 stock intake fans front. The rest maybe like this (correct me). Replace the rear fan and mount at the bottom (next to the dust filter panel). 2 of 120m or 140m exhaust fans on the top. H60 (maybe) will be at the rear and set it as intake. 2 of exhaust fans on each of the drive bays. Another exhaust fan will be mount at the power supply. I like the LED fans stuff, but what you mean is that they don't have fan controller so the LED will be useless?

Your plans for your fans sounds fine. I don't understand what you mean by, "... Another exhaust fan will be mount at the power supply.". If you just mean the power supply's built in fan, I get it, or do you mean one of those PCI card slot fans, or something else?

I also don't get: "I like the LED fans stuff, but what you mean is that they don't have fan controller so the LED will be useless".

I can't see where I wrote "useless" anywhere.