Fan Orientation In Zalman Case

Origin Saint

Origin Saint

Well-Known Member
Hi all,

I'm working on getting parts for a gaming desktop build, and I'm attempting to do a little pre-planning in the way of getting the fans oriented the way I need them, before I get all my parts in there and it becomes a hassle.

I have a Zalman Z11 Plus mid-tower case. For the initial build, I will be using the stock cooler that comes with the CPU I purchase, but eventually I will go to an aftermarket cooler at some point to allow some overclocking a bit.

Here is the orientations I was going to go with.

The white lines in the middle are the possible orientations for the CPU fan, but assuming the orientation for all the other fans is as shown, I would be putting it so that it pulled the air from the rear fan and pushed that air towards the front of the case. The little fan near the bottom front is inside of the side panel, and there is another on the opposite side panel as well, they don't pull much air, and are really mainly going to be for pulling whatever little air they can out of the hard drive bay area (maybe get Noctua's in the future).

I wanted everyone's opinion on the fan orientation so I can decide how it should be set up, as I'm sure you guys will be more familiar with it than me as this is the first time I've built a desktop of my own. Thanks in advance for the help guys.
 
You only have 1 exhaust and that is in the front which is a bad idea. Front needs to be intake to cool the hdd's. Rear and top need to be exhaust, although the top could be intake as well.
 
So use the front as intake, sides as exhaust, bottom as intake and rear as exhaust.

As far as the top fans go, would it make any sense at all to have one of the fans intake and one exhaust on the top? Just wondering? Otherwise, what would make for best airflow? Also, which orientation should the CPU cooler be in? Thanks for the help mate.
 
The cpu cooler should face wherever the exhaust is. In most cases they exhaust out the rear of the case. I would think to have 1 exhaust and 1 intake fan on top would be fighting each other. You really want hot air to leave the case as there will be plenty of it. I would make the bottom and front intake and exhaust everything else.

Thats my 2 cents worth. I don't think making the top intake would help much.
 
I doubt it would with this case, considering it has angled fins above the top fans, so pulling air in wouldn't be too terribly easy. Thanks for the help mate.
 
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