Looking For Input on Fan/Rad Layout in a Fractal R5

[Sorphius]

This is my current setup in my Fractal R5 case:

I'm planning a pretty substantial upgrade here in the next couple of weeks where I intend to do the following:

• Replace the SLI 780ti's with a single AIO liquid-cooled Titan X or 980ti
• Either mount the smaller SSD's on the back panel and continue using them, or dump them off on a friend
• Dump the 7-year old backup drive for real-time cloud backup of essential files
• Add a second 500gb SSD in RAID 0 with my current one

Ultimately I'm looking to prioritize Noise > Temps > Performance after OC. I'm hoping people here can give me some guidance about airflow inside the case top optimize those priorities after said upgrades. I've diagrammed four possible options, but I know there are others as well.

Option 1:

• Swap out HDD Bays
• Mount GPU Radiator as front intake

This option has the benefit of keeping all the sound-dampened "Moduvent" plates in place to minimize noise, but I worry about CPU temps with the radiator blowing hot air into the case.

Option 2:

• Swap out HDD Bays
• Mount GPU radiator as side-panel exhaust

With this option I'd have to remove one of the moduvent panels, which would more or less defeat the purpose of having the R5 in the first place. But I think temps would be okay, at least...

Option 3 (AKA **** it):

• Swap out HDD Bays
• Mount GPU radiator as front intake
• Replace NH-D15 with Corsair h100i vented through the top of the machine

This option has me sucking cool air in over the GPU radiator again, which is good, and I've mitigated the concern about cooling with heated air by replacing the air cooler with an h100i that I have sitting in a closet. But again, I'd lose the top moduvent panels, which again defeats the purpose of the sound-dampening case.

Option 4:

• Swap out HDD Bays
• Mount GPU radiator as rear exhaust

Honestly I have no idea if there's even room to do this, but may be worth a try. I'm just uneasy about potentially blocking my case's only exhaust with a radiator -- even if said radiator has a high static-pressure fan blowing over it 100% of the time.

Does anyone have experience with a similar setup in this or a similar case and can provide some feeback? Thanks!

[Deleted]

@option 1: You would have the space at cages in the middle not below. So you will remove the 5hdd cages and leave the bottom 3 one. In that case you will have best direct flow inthe case. You would mount the gpu aio in the top middle.

In your very first picture if you keep it like that, with a front bottom 140mm fan clear then you can have gpu aio exhausting bottom in front of psu. I think you have forgotten that you can have one there.

another option is if you end up going double aio instead of custom loop, you can get another 140mm aio and have the both at top. On from gpu and one from cpu.

[Evildeffy]

There's another option, will show you shortly which should drastically allow you to move about things depending upon your PSU's length.

I would configure it as this with the changes (note that this will require flexible cables for SATA and stuff, so do your research):

240/280mm rad in front with the fans associated with them.
Keep moduvents op top in place.
Keep vent on side closed.
Place 120/140mm rad on the back of the case for the GPU.
Move the HDD bay next to the PSU (R5 does this officially as the bottom HDD cage can be placed elsewhere!).

See screenshot to what I mean:


The smaller SSDs... get rid of em really, the bigger ones place behind the mobo tray and only use the HDDs in the cage.
The rest of how/why is up to yourself but I would keep the mechanicals etc.

Also I would take Push/Pull on the frontal rad not so much as to increase performance of the CPU temps but more to create airflow throughout the case.
This should assist in lowering temps by a nice chunk for the AIO cooler for the GPU.

This should work fine in that sense.. Just to confirm you understand what I mean you could make a drawing like you did above.
(I can't do it for a while as I'm attempting to beat the crap out of Blackhand)

[Remilia]

Option 1.
Place the SSD on the two slots on the back. No need to lose them. Have one as a boot drive and the other as a programs used often but not games. The others for games and such programs.

I'd keep the NH-D15. Corsair stock fan is a loud machine of doom.

[Sorphius]

There's another option, will show you shortly which should drastically allow you to move about things depending upon your PSU's length.<SNIP>

So basically you're thinking something like this:

[Evildeffy]

So basically you're thinking something like this:

Bingo, HDDs in the cage and the SSDs on the backside of the mobo tray.
Best of all worlds for what you want.

[Sorphius]

Hmm, that may be worth looking into but I was hoping to minimize the need to pick up extra cables for my RM750 PSU.

[Evildeffy]

Hmm, that may be worth looking into but I was hoping to minimize the need to pick up extra cables for my RM750 PSU.

Regardless of how many cables you need to attach to your PSU, it should be the cleanest build as the cage hides the PSU cables and SSDs go behind the tray.
This also allows you to maximise performance options.

So you gotta make the choice yourself (not saying the NH-D15 is bad, it's damned good!) but the combo allows for best performance along with ease to work with.
Clean internals, no bulky in the way stuff and still silent.
(This of course depends upon the settings used in your mobo/software for the cooling fans and the actual fans itself!)