Fractal Design R4

[Nick Howard]

I know there's a few here using the R4 case and I was wondering how the cooling/airflow is with it fully populated with drives. Have you guys added an additional 140mm fan to the front? And I also see you can spin the drive caddy round which would aid the airflow slightly, but that would mean removing the whole caddy to replace a drive I take it.

 

[indy]

Both 140mm fan trays definitely need to be populated and even then the cooling performance is sub-par.
The problem imo is the space between the fans and the hard disks and that the airflow can only reach the drives through the holes in the cages.
Probably a sizeable amount of airflow just passes the cages to the sides, never reaching the drives.
Also note that you can only rotate the upper cage afaik.

 

[Nick Howard]

I have a couple of spare 140mm fans so will more than likely add one to the side too. I'll have to play with rotating the upper cage to see what difference it makes.

 

[budmannxx]

I have this case, and it's great. I added a second fan to the front to blow on the HDDs, and another one on the bottom. I bought the same fans that come with the case.

I'm happy with my HDD temps; they get up to about 34C under pretty heavy stress.

 

[Nick Howard]

I have this case, and it's great. I added a second fan to the front to blow on the HDDs, and another one on the bottom. I bought the same fans that come with the case.

I'm happy with my HDD temps; they get up to about 34C under pretty heavy stress.

I've got a pair of quiet edition Corsair SP140's kicking around somewhere, I'll be putting those in as well. Should be here tomorrow, looking forward to putting it all together. :)

 

[budmannxx]

Cable management in this case is pretty amazing. It can all be routed behind the mobo plate. Looks great and should help with airflow too.