DAN A4-SFX v4.1

Fazer

Trash Compacter
May 14, 2019
39
7
My A4-SFX was shipped Friday night by Caseking using DHL, but I haven’t heard from my package since. Anybody here in the same case ?
 

UnknownBehemoth

Trash Compacter
Mar 27, 2019
49
19
Hi,

I have almost all my parts together so I am excited to start building - except the 2 Noctua 92mm fans for the bottom still havent arrived.
Can they easily be added in later or would I have to tear the whole thing apart again?
(Building on the Gigabyte Z390 board with Black Ridge cooler)
You'd have to remove the mobo again to install the fan under it
 

91Mackmr2

Trash Compacter
Jun 6, 2019
54
6
Is it possible to use 105w tdp cpu in DAN?
I read all of the post on Dan case and a lot on Dan A4 SFX, unless you are using your pc on demanding things like rendering, video editing, very demanding games, they had problems with overheating even with AIO water cooling. They said something about having to do some undervoltaging, things I'm not sure about, for now I will be sticking with the recommended 65w that the Ryzen 7 3700x provides, whenever it hits the market. I hope I can snag one before they sell out.
 

JustinDulay

Caliper Novice
May 3, 2019
29
23
Anyone tried 2x 92x14mm in the bottom as exhaust? Should help exhausting the hot air out of the GPUs, as well as CPU coolers that intake from the sides.
 
Last edited:
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Dazr87

Average Stuffer
May 11, 2019
66
14
Unless you flip the case upside down, the hot air out of the bottom will be sucked in again from the sides.
So they should be intake fans on the bottom?

What about using a Blower style card too? Apart from fan noise, is there a down side to using them?

I was going to get the Radeon VII, but really thinking about getting the RX 5700 XT instead. I love the reference model look
 

UnknownBehemoth

Trash Compacter
Mar 27, 2019
49
19
Yeah, the recommendation is that they should be intake fans.
The downside of blowers is just the noise. If you're not used to blower cards you could get pretty annoyed.

In my opinion, if I were in your position, it's more bang-for-the-buck to get the 2070/5700XT and play 1440p for now.
Then I'll save up for the flagship GPU next year for 4K gaming, around the time the nextgen consoles are released.
 
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Dazr87

Average Stuffer
May 11, 2019
66
14
Yeah, the recommendation is that they should be intake fans.
The downside of blowers is just the noise. If you're not used to blower cards you could get pretty annoyed.

In my opinion, if I were in your position, it's more bang-for-the-buck to get the 2070/5700XT and play 1440p for now.
Then I'll save up for the flagship GPU next year for 4K gaming, around the time the nextgen consoles are released.
Yeah I think I'm gonna go for the 5700XT. I'm currently using an Alienware laptop, so I'm used to the fans on that going nuts whenever I play a game, but I don't notice it, it's background noise and I play with my speakers fairly loud.

I currently have a 32" 144hz 1440 curved Agon display with freesync 2 and HDR, so that will suit fine for now ? cheers for the help in deciding. Now to wait for 7/7 ?
 

BennyBait

Caliper Novice
Jun 12, 2019
33
10
I was planning on doing that myself. But I'm waiting until 7/7 for new parts ?

I first thought it would be best for intake to cool the motherboard. But after watching this video, it makes absolute sense to have the bottom fan as exhaust.



Not the Dan Case but a very similar design and layout case.
 
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PatMasterD

Case Bender
Jun 12, 2019
2
5
Unless you flip the case upside down, the hot air out of the bottom will be sucked in again from the sides.

What you say is true, but the need to exhaust hot air from the case is much greater than the risk of sucking warm air in from the sides, especially when the GPU card is under load and dumping hot air from the sides of the heatsink in the case, and at a fast rate.

If the bottom fans are intake, they will push back that GPU hot air and even worse, recirculate it and even increase risk of self-heating.

I tried it in my Dan A4 with 2 bottom 90mm fans, and it's confirmed, my CPU and GPU temps were slightly worse by about 2C on CPU and about 4C on GPU when then bottom fans were intake than when exhaust.

So I would recommend exhaust instead of intake, especially if you put your GPU under load often like when gaming.
If not, I don't think it makes much difference, intake or exhaust.
 

deadline

Cable-Tie Ninja
Aug 9, 2018
161
67
What you say is true, but the need to exhaust hot air from the case is much greater than the risk of sucking warm air in from the sides, especially when the GPU card is under load and dumping hot air from the sides of the heatsink in the case, and at a fast rate.

If the bottom fans are intake, they will push back that GPU hot air and even worse, recirculate it and even increase risk of self-heating.

I tried it in my Dan A4 with 2 bottom 90mm fans, and it's confirmed, my CPU and GPU temps were slightly worse by about 2C on CPU and about 4C on GPU when then bottom fans were intake than when exhaust.

So I would recommend exhaust instead of intake, especially if you put your GPU under load often like when gaming.
If not, I don't think it makes much difference, intake or exhaust.

But what if you have a bottom AIO, like the Astek 645?
 

Hellow

Cable-Tie Ninja
Mar 7, 2019
158
27
Ok you'll exhaust hot air by the botom, but what hot air will do then except stagnate on your desk ? It'll go back up close your sides and your psu, your gpu and your cpu will recycle it again and again, hotter and hotter. In this condition it'll be better with no fan at all.

It really depends of your gfx card imo, you won't have this problem at all with a blower gfx card.

Imo you should try to do a small cardbox fan duct to not let the hot air of the gfx card staying at the botom of the case.
 

PatMasterD

Case Bender
Jun 12, 2019
2
5
Ok you'll exhaust hot air by the botom, but what hot air will do then except stagnate on your desk ? It'll go back up close your sides and your psu, your gpu and your cpu will recycle it again and again, hotter and hotter. In this condition it'll be better with no fan at all.

It really depends of your gfx card imo, you won't have this problem at all with a blower gfx card.

Imo you should try to do a small cardbox fan duct to not let the hot air of the gfx card staying at the botom of the case.

Right, not saying this particular setup with 2 bottom exhaust fans in the A4 case is the best cooling effect for every configuration. Quite agree it might be likely not beneficial or even detrimental with a blower gfx card.
Airflow dynamics in and out of the case depends on too many factors to generalize.

However, both my use case with my A4 and the case from Optimum Tech with the very similar Ghost S1 case referenced above by BennyBait (non-blower gfx cards) demonstrate clear (but small, granted) improvements by using exhaust instead of intake.

In my case, using no bottom fans as reference, adding 2 fans intake didn't change much my temps under gfx load (slight 1C improvement, both CPU and GPU), but exhaust improved GPU by 4C and CPU by 2C.
 
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BennyBait

Caliper Novice
Jun 12, 2019
33
10
Right, not saying this particular setup with 2 bottom exhaust fans in the A4 case is the best cooling effect for every configuration. Quite agree it might be likely not beneficial or even detrimental with a blower gfx card.
Airflow dynamics in and out of the case depends on too many factors to generalize.

However, both my use case with my A4 and the case from Optimum Tech with the very similar Ghost S1 case referenced above by BennyBait (non-blower gfx cards) demonstrate clear (but small, granted) improvements by using exhaust instead of intake.

In my case, using no bottom fans as reference, adding 2 fans intake didn't change much my temps under gfx load (slight 1C improvement, both CPU and GPU), but exhaust improved GPU by 4C and CPU by 2C.


Would you say it’s worth getting a fan for under the motherboard? Doing a build soon and will be using the 92mm AIO as intake and considering getting the extra fan for an exhaust next to it.
 

friendscatdied

Trash Compacter
Jan 4, 2017
36
15
I brought this whole intake/exhaust debate up a few pages ago: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/dan-a4-sfx.252/page-103#post-148943 (and I'm sure there are more before this)

I have yet to see any objective comparative data for the A4-SFX supporting intake vs. exhaust for the bottom fans -- everything seems to be just conjecture. The small amount of evidence for other cases like the Ghost S1 and SM550/560 suggest exhaust is better.
 
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