The RGB dilemma

Hi everyone,

Right now I am running two Noctua's industrial 140mm (max 2000 rpm) in the front of my case and one Corsair ML PRO 120mm in the back (max 2400 rpm variant - no RGB) + another two ML's in the top (2400 rpm with rgb that come default with the H100i RGB).

I think the LL fans are beautiful and I want the RGB for my build, but do you think their performance will be enough? (I know that the LL's have white version with 2200 rpm but it's only 120mm and also don't match my build)

I havv Fractal design meshify c case and 9900k (overclocked to 5ghz) and a toasty RTX 2080ti which easely gets to 80c while gaming..

 

Any thoughts?

Edited January 19, 2020 by Patishi

I don’t know. Are you actually running your fans at 2000+ rpm? If not and you are using more tolerable fans levels then switching to LL won’t make much difference. If you are running really hard, slow yourself down to 1300-1500 rpm and see how it affects temperatures.

Hi,

I am usually running my fans at around 1500-1600 rpm (80%) when gaming, and In the summer I sometimes run them at full speed. My GPU tends to get really hot, more than most of the cards.

I tried using 1700 rpm (140mm) fans in the past and I guess it was ok, I just run them at full speed when doing heavy stuff. But 1300 rpm is really low, I never had this kind of fans before.

I guess I'll have to give them a try to see how they hold. fortunately the Meshify c is a rather compact case so 2000 rpm fans might be overkill..

The summer is the real test however.

You can’t do anything about the room temp and that swing up in overall temp is inevitable. The question is whether blasting your case fans actually does anything for your gpu temp. Typically only the GPU’s own fans have any effect on the diode temps. The case fans come into the equation in terms of case ambient temp. +3C increase in air temp means +3C increase in GPU temp (and everything else). If the fan is close enough, you can also get some measure of direct cooling on the backplate. That may reach 50-60C. The question is whether those things are actually compromised by reducing fan speeds from 2000 to 1300 or whatever.

 

You won’t get good backplate data without a thermal camera, so do the easy comparison and check gpu temp and the “motherboard temp” sensor at 1300 vs whatever you normally use. I’ll be a bit stunned if it is anything more than 2-3C difference, but then if you are dancing around 80C on the gpu, that could be the difference between thrilling or not. That would be critical.

Thanks.

The RGB is just so pretty :) If everybody with high end builds are using them than they must suffice.

I tend to agree with you, higher rpm might help a little bit with temp if the fan is really close and blowing 2000+ rpm, but the difference is maybe 1-3 degrees so it might not worth the noise (also more dust). The fans should only insert the cool air to the case and the actual gpu and cpu coolers do the work ,I only learned that recentely after I tried different fans.

As for static pressure fans on heatsinks that might not be the case.(?)

Edited January 19, 2020 by Patishi

Radiators are a bit different. If you can give me radiator/fan size, I can probably give you a number in terms coolant temp change vs wattage. What’s a lot trickier is direct cooling on the other side of the radiator, what side the fan is on, etc.