Geoff
VIP Member
Prebuilt computers come with case fans, they are just silent ones, otherwise customers would complain about how loud they are.you still dont need them.. airflow is also created by hot air moving up etc. look at a HP pc or so, they dont have a case fan for the hdd whathowever ;o
besides that, if you are building a pc with watercooling, you really shouldnt forget to put the chipset onto the water circuit. and HDD's.. well, the case absorbs quite some heat from it, and even better, if you place it well, the case can keep a hdd cooler than a fan blowing onto it (big heatsink ftw) but you need a large surface making contact with the hdd ofc.
also, above all, the PSU does have a Fan, wich is more than enough airflow for all the FET's, voltage regulators and RAM etc wich is in the pc, so no.. case fans are not needed when you pull out about all the heat fromming from the cpu/gpu/chipset with watercooling.
Rarely do you see watercooling setups that cool the hard drives, generally it's just the CPU, chipset, and video cards.
Yes the PSU will take out some air, but there is no harm in spending $5 and buying a quiet fan, which will drastically reduce the temps inside.