Gaming PC systems are built with high-horsepower hardware under the hood.
High-end CPUs, oversized GPUs, and a whole host of other components are needed to play today’s most ambitious, graphically intensive, and hardware-hungry gaming titles. Those components will be stressed at least a little bit under typical gaming sessions. And that means they are going to be putting off quite a bit of heat.
A little bit of heat inside your PC case might not be that big of a deal, especially if that heat is only blasted for a short time. But a lot of heat from gaming hardware over extended gaming sessions can do a real number on the components themselves. It doesn’t take much to shorten the life of these always expensive pieces of hardware, and it doesn’t take long until those overheated components start to misbehave.
Thankfully, modern cooling technology makes it easier to keep your PC cool. You only need to set up the suitable fan array and correct configuration, and you’ll be sorted right out.
But how many case fans do I need, really? Let’s dig into that below!
The Importance of Keeping Your PC Ice Cold
High temperatures inside your PC case can wreak havoc on every component, including components that aren’t necessarily contributing to the gaming session itself.
Your CPU will always run pretty hot, no matter what you are doing on your PC. Many browser windows open, multiple programs running at once, or even just tooling around streaming videos or music on the Internet will start to tax your CPU.
Throw resource-hungry modern games into the mix, and your CPU could do a halfway-decent job cooking omelets if it had to!
Today’s GPUs are larger than they’ve ever been before – and while that extra surface area helps dispel heat more efficiently, there’s a lot more hardware to fire up, meaning they get warmer than usual.
All that heat will stress your components – your RAM, your motherboard, your buses, your hard drives, and everything else tucked inside your case. It is so important to keep your case temperatures as low as possible.
Overheating will lead to burnout, and you’ll be replacing expensive components a lot sooner than you expected.
Fans Are the Backbone of Any Cooling System
Today’s computer fans are far more effective and far more efficient than they ever were.
The backbone of any PC’s temperature management system is fans. Even liquid-cooled systems use fans to move hot air out of the PC while pulling cold air in. This air exchange works to keep things nice and cool, especially when airflow has been carefully considered and fans are intelligently designed to work with one another.
How Many Case Fans Do I Need?
As a general rule of thumb, every PC builder will tell you that you need at least four fans running in your setup.
You’ll want two case fans dedicated to pulling cold air into the case itself. These intake fans are essential: they are usually positioned in the back of the case and near the bottom, and they face inwards so that colder air is sucked into the case to keep temps under control.
On top of that, you need two more fans near the top and front of the case to move hot air out as efficiently as possible.
These fans will work with the low, rear position fans that pull in heavier colder air, creating negative airflow inside the case while drawing the lighter and hotter air up near the top right out of your PC.
A couple of extra fans into the mix won’t ever hurt. But, you need to make sure that they are strategically placed and contributing to the airflow situation you’ve established.
Are More Fans Always a Net Positive?
No. Believe it or not, more fans tucked inside your case are not always a net positive.
More fans working together will help you keep temperatures cool across the board. But many fans that have been installed willy-nilly – facing this way or that with no real consideration to airflow – will work against one another.
For example, let’s say that instead of having intake and exhaust fans in your PC, you just had nothing but intake fans or nothing but exhaust fans. All the hot air inside your PC would remain stagnant because the fans would compete against one another to move the hot air out. That’s not a situation you want to find yourself in.
Good airflow is the name of the game when you want to keep your components nice and cold.
Think about how your fans work together, think about the airflow path they create, and then add fans throughout to work synergistically with one another.
This is just as important in a liquid cooling setup as it is with cooling handled 100% by fans. Too many people think a liquid-cooled structure on their CPU is enough to keep case temperatures cold, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Sure, you’ll be able to keep your CPU chilly. But what about your GPU, your RAM, and your motherboard? What about your hard drives?
Always make sure that you have fans – at least four of them – rocking and rolling in conjunction with one another to keep case temperatures down.
