 There comes a time in every build when you have to ask the question, how many case fans do I need? How many case fans can this case even take? Where should I put them? What types should I get? How many are going to be worth it? Do I make compromises into other components in order to get these case fans? It's kind of annoying and there isn't a ton of clear answers out there, so we're going to check that out today. Also, like the video if you want to see a bunch of build logs based around gaming themes. The MasterCase 5 by Cooler Master gives you the freedom to truly make your mid-tower PC case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories. Click now to learn more. Loads of people freak out over their fans, and I mean, I get it. It kind of feels like a manual warranty. You want your parts to stay cool. You just spent a whole bunch of money on this fancy new rig. You don't want it to overheat and die. It's freaky. I get it. But what's the golden rule? What's the sweet spot? Honestly, I don't know. But that's what we're here today to find out. You and I are going to pick a bunch of components, put them all in a case, and test a whole bunch of different configurations of fans to figure out what you need. So let's go. So on my personal Twitter, luke-a-underscore-lafr, I posted a bunch of straw polls asking people what they had in their systems in terms of CPU cooler, fans, case, and graphics card. In terms of graphics card, you guys told me that you had an internal exhaust cooled graphics card. So I grabbed a 290 that I've had for a little bit here that has internal exhaust. So that should represent that type of heat going into your case. In terms of CPU cooler, you guys said an average like single tower cooler. So I have a Hyper T4. I don't have a Hyper 212 EVO because I still don't know. But this will be a pretty good representative of that. Motherboard, CPU, and RAM all don't really matter that much, but I've got a Z170 series deluxe board here from ASUS, some random RAM from ADATA, and a 6700K that we'll use to kind of heat things up. In terms of fans, you guys said mid-range, so I grabbed some Antec Tri-Cools here. Some just random ones. I was actually going to go with Cooler Master because we have somewhat of a theme going on, which you'll see here in a moment. This is not a Cooler Master sponsored build, by the way, but a Master case because you guys said about 90 to 150 dollars is what you'd spend on your case, and this can fall somewhere in there depending on what configuration you get. We had a Cooler Master cooler already, so I was going to go with Cooler Master fans. But the spare Cooler Master fans that we have in the office on Newegg are 69 dollars when they're like almost 50% off. So there's some pricing error going on there, and I don't know how much they're actually worth, so I just got some random Antec ones. So here we go. Let's build the system, put fans all over place, see how it turns out. So I'm taking the Cooler Master fans that are already in the case out, which is a little bit silly because I'm gonna have to put them back in eventually, but the first test that I want to do is actually going to be just with the Hyper T4 running, because I want to see how effective a case is with no fans additional at all. Because I think that's, while not entirely representative because your case will basically always come with some amount of fans, still an interesting question that we should answer. I'm gonna install the T4 out of the case because it's not the easiest thing to install, and it's going to be a constant in this build, so if I just put it on, it's fine. So the backplate for the T4 is just missing, so I don't have an option really there, but I grabbed the Nefton 280L and got the backplate from that, and like the screws are actually compatible, so I don't know. I'm gonna go this direction, I don't know if it's gonna work, but I kind of really need to use this T4, so hopefully I can figure something out. Holy crap, it works! Thank you 280L. Alright, okay, so we're gonna be able to use the Hyper T4. We're moving on. So there's a lot of variables here, and I honestly can't answer them all, unfortunately. One of them being the power supply. You could have it so the power supply is pulling air from the inside of the case, or you could have it so it's in a basement like in this situation, or you could have it so that it's pulling air from the outside and then spitting out the back in its own little ecosystem, which is also like this situation. I went with the power supply not really contributing because I actually wanted to remove it as a variable. There's no way, like I just said, that I can do all the different possible scenarios. We'd need an insane amount of cases, different fans, all that kind of stuff. So I'm trying to take a very average use case, and I think either in a basement or not contributing to the system's cooling is probably more common. Okay, so I'm most of the way done building the case. Not a hundred percent, but most of the way. So I'm gonna monitor keyboard and mouse so we can check things out. I'm gonna install the graphics card real quick, and then we're going to start our first test. Alright, graphics card is in. Currently we have only one fan and it's on the Hyper T4. I'm gonna turn the system on by turning the power supply on first, and then turning the power button on the motherboard. Alright, that's booting up. I'm going to get the panels on it, then we're ready to test. My boot device isn't working. Nope, yeah, there's another blue screen, so I'll have to find another drive. Damn. Alright, so we are currently running our first test. This is with the system closed with only the T4 running. I am running AIDA 64 stress test, and I'm running Furmark on our 290. So that is only one fan. I have taken the fans out of the front of the case. There's no fans in the top, which I can even show you right now. There are no fans in the top. There are no fans. There's no fan, sorry, in the back. Nothing. We're just testing with just the T4 right now. The CPU is only at about 71 degrees Celsius, which is actually pretty impressive, but Skylake doesn't run that hot, so I'm not too surprised. The 290, however, is at 92 degrees Celsius, but at the same time we're slamming it with Furmark, and a 290 is kind of a hot card, so I'm not too surprised. I'm installing one fan in the front here, and I'm gonna install one fan in the back. I think this is a pretty common kind of bare-bones fan setup where the case manufacturer will give you one kind of in the middle of the front and one in the back. We're giving them benefit of the doubt and putting in 140 millimeter fans, which are a little bit more common these days. I also took out the hard drive cage that was sitting right here because, A, there's a hard drive cage down here, and a lot of people are opting for like just SSD rigs or just one hard drive where you could probably get it out of the way of the graphics card, and that hard drive cage was in the way of the graphics card, so we're gonna give it the benefit of doubt there as well. Wow! Okay, we'll see what it's actually like when it's done heating up, but it looks like a huge improvement already. Okay, so it's been 10 minutes with the one fan in the front, one fan in the back. The CPU is running at about 60 degrees, which is down from 71 with just the T4 running, and the GPU is running at 79 degrees, which is down from 92. So just adding one fan in the front and one fan in the back was actually a pretty huge improvement, but we haven't really gotten to the point where you're actually adding fans to the system yet because this is a very common stock setup. One fan in the front, one fan in the back is usually what you're gonna kind of get in terms of fans in your system, is two that come in the case is actually very common. I don't know if that's usual, but at least two in the case is very common. Alright, so now we're running two fans in the front, one fan in the back, no fans in the top, and this is our third test. So far we've seen some pretty significant improvements from our first test to our second test. We're gonna see how much this makes a difference. I can already tell it won't be making nearly as much of a difference, but it does seem to be a little bit better, but we do need to let it sit for 10 minutes. Okay, so it's been 10 minutes. This is again with two fans in the front, one fan in the back. We've got a CPU temp of about 57 degrees, I'm gonna say, 58 degrees. Looks like a better average there. I'm taking the second highest number on real temps, so we'll take 58 degrees and a GPU temperature of 77, which means we went down two for CPU and we went down two for GPU, which is not a huge improvement, but very noticeable. Two degrees in both categories is definitely very noticeable. So we're gonna move on and put one fan in the back of the top, and we'll see how well that does. So this is getting to the realm of you might have added a fan or two to your system, possibly. Alright, so it's been 10 more minutes. Our CPU temperature is about 55 degrees. That's down three, I believe, from our previous number, and our GPU temperature is 76, which is actually only down one degree from our previous temperature. Not that surprising, given the position of the fan. Alright, so with all the fan slots filled, we're still running at 55 degrees Celsius on the CPU, and we are still running at 76 degrees on the GPU, so there's actually no thermal change by adding the last fan, which is actually pretty interesting and might save some people some money, although that is fairly specific to this setup. But yeah, diminishing returns was the point, and I think we found it. Okay, so one of our extra tests is the T4 and just one fan in the back of the case. I just kind of wanted to see how much of an impact just that back case fan did. Okay, so we're done testing just the one in the back. For CPU, we got 64 degrees, and for GPU, we got 85 degrees, which is pretty good, but I'm very interested to see how it compares to the one in the front. So let's swap the fan position and move on forward. Okay, so I just finished testing with only one fan in the front. I'm now taking that fan out. Wansho's coming up soon, and I don't want to be late like we always are, so I'm trying to go quickly, but with just one fan in the front, it got 67 degrees on the CPU and 80 degrees on the GPU, meaning that it went up by three degrees for CPU, but it went down by five for GPU, which is interesting. So you get a trade-off depending on where you want to put your fan, maybe something to take note of. I'm gonna shove this fan at the top. We're gonna see how it goes. Alright, so our last test. No fans in the front, no fans in the back. One fan on the T4, one fan in the top gave us 65 degrees on the CPU and 83 degrees on the GPU, which lands it kind of right in the middle of having one in the back and one in the front, which is surprisingly perfect in my opinion. So in conclusion, as we probably knew, there are diminishing returns when it comes to adding fans to your system, although surprisingly enough, in my opinion, once you kind of get past the stock amount of fans that come with your case, it doesn't really end up helping that much anymore. One of the most interesting parts to me was actually when we started putting single fans in different positions in the case, because that showed how much different areas actually affected different parts of your system. As you can kind of see here, I need to get ready for a WAN show, and I stole a whole bunch of the like monitor, keyboard, and mouse and stuff from the WAN show set, so Nick is gonna take those and go work on the WAN show set. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed the video. It was an interesting look at what case fans kind of do and affect in your system. TunnelBear is the private internet browsing app that has itself on iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and they even have a Chrome extension. You can use these things to tunnel into 14, up to 14 different countries, and access the internet as if you are there. That allows you to get around things like geoblocked websites. It's easy to install and use, and if you have any trouble during the installation or use of TunnelBear, they have SupportBear standing by 24-7. So check them out. They have 5 million users at tunnelbear.com slash LTT. You can sign up for a free account that gives you 500 megabytes of data per month, or if you need more, you can sign up for Unlimited Plants, which are starting at $6.99 per month, but if you use that link of ours, you save up to 10%. So if you're tired of geoblocked websites, if you just want to watch that freaking thing on Netflix, or live in Canada and want to watch any thing from Comedy Central ever, check out TunnelBear. So if you guys liked it, like it, if you didn't, you probably know what to do. Like the video, dislike the video, favorite it, share it, use our Amazon affiliate code to shop on, well, Amazon. Check out our shirt link in the video description down below to buy a shirt that's from us, and go on the forum and become a forum contributor because it helps a ton. If you guys are wondering what to watch next, click this video up here where a mystery thing will be played, because I'm not reading off a script and I don't know what to say.