Xcalibur, sickleflow or 200 mm?

[Cabal]

Hey guys,

I'm putting a fan on my haf 922 sidepanel to cool my 6870 crossfire. My bottom card is quite cool, idling 35-37 degrees, loading 70, but my top one is sucking up the hot air form the bottom one and is getting up to 83 in benches. Not a trainsmash, but I want to bring it down. a 120mm on the side will blow directly on the cards

Was wondering, should I go with the quieter, slower sickleflow, which is also quite cheap, but will it make a difference in temps? Or should I go with the more expensive xcalibur that pushes quite a lot of air, bit seems more noisy? I'm also considering putting in the 200mm side fan, but because I'm going to mod my side panel in the future this would be a waist since I would not use it then. I have heard that the 200mm makes a huge difference though...

Will a 120mm be enough???

 

[AmB3r]

Can you fit 2x 120mm?

I have two sickles on my GPUs, although for the H70 I use excaliburs.

Think of it this way, when benching, you want your GPU fans as fast as possible as well, so noise should not be an issue when pushing your rig's limits.

 

[Ryansta]

I have 2 Excaliburs for sale

 

[Silvertongue]

for the H70 I use excaliburs

Sorry to OP for going off topic but I'm curious. How do those Xcalibur fans perform compared to, say, the stock fans? I'd have thought that on a rad those holes on the housing would have a negative impact on static pressure...

 

[AmB3r]

From the testing that I've done, it seems though it pulls more air in from those holes, rather than push it out.

 

[g0l1athrulz]

i have an aerocool shark fan blowing onto my gtx460 sli, top card never goes above 66c

 

[Silvertongue]

If you ever get the time for a little experiment I'd be interested to see what the effect of taping the holes up would be on your temperatures... More air is lovely but if it causes a drop in pressure you'll be getting less air through the actual fins of the rad.

To the OP, I use an 80mm slim fan pointed right at the top cards intake to get it cooler. It can be rather noisy at high speeds but I only turn it up when GPU intensive tasks are running. This works a treat for me.

 

[Cabal]

Thanx for all the replies guys, currently it would not make sence to fit 2 fans since they sit on top of each other (not side by side), so the top fan blows on the cpu cooler (which is redundant since my cpu temps are quite good).

I would however want to mount two fans next to each other when i mod, want to get the storm side panel and mod it to have two fans next to each other. Thing is, is two excals going to be much more noisy than two sickles in the future? And if I take one sickle now, will it be enough? I'm thingking I might need a xcal since the haf's side is buldge and there's a lot of space between the sidepanel and the cards...might need some static pressure, something the sickles apparently don't have.

Damn I can't decide...

 

[AmB3r]

TBH, the more fans you have, the more airflow you have, the more cool air is in your case, the more cool air gets pushed through your GPU, the cooler your top GPU will be.

 

[Cabal]

Ok so I took the plunge, going with the more expensive excalibur, thanx for all the input guys