XPS 8930, possible to install a front case fan?

I'm not a fan (no pun) of reading cfm figures, just a little rpm difference and bogus hype will throw all that out the window. You can just look at the fan blades and size and get the all info that means anything, it's not rocket science, big fans move more air...…….

Brilliant stuff there Insp. Keep on keeping on.

Is it meaningful to put a 120mm fan in the front top location when the grill through which it can pull air is only about 100mm x 60mm?

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@Anonymous wrote:

Is it meaningful to put a 120mm fan in the front top location when the grill through which it can pull air is only about 100mm x 60mm?

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I didn't put mine in the top and the bottom is nearly 120 x 120. Plus it cured my fan problems.

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@Anonymous wrote:

Is it meaningful to put a 120mm fan in the front top location when the grill through which it can pull air is only about 100mm x 60mm?

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Yes, there is enough airflow through the grill to cool a Corsair AIO CPU liquid cooler.  Would help with the airflow in the upper part of the case across the CPU and out the upper exhaust.   Would have to move the HDD to the lower compartment..  Can use full size 25mm wide fan inside the case or slim 15mm fan outside the case using some mounting tape.

https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8930-CPU-Liquid-Cooler-GTX-1080-Hybrid-GPU-Upgrades/m-p/6138006/highlight/true#M16392

With a typical full size dual fan GPU (10.5" length) the lower intake fan is more for airflow into the lower compartment and to help balance the case pressure..  The GPU blocks air from getting to the upper half of the case.  With a smaller GPU like the single fan GTX 1060 models (7" length) the lower fan would help with the upper compartment as well. 

I wouldn't put one in the top front, it's blocked off by the power supply and you would have to remove the HDD cage there also. Air from a bottom front one will make it's way up past the CPU and out the top rear. Just make sure all the air comes from the outside up front and you will be fine.

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@jimbob55 wrote:

I have an XPS 8920 which appears to have the same case as the 8930. If that is true then yes, you can install a front fan. HOWEVER, it will have to be installed in the top-front hard drive bay which has fan mount holes for a 92mm case fan.  The HD drive basket is easily removable by just unscrewing to screws. Then you can install a 92x92x25mm case fan. You will have to snake the fan power cord through the drive bay and use a PWM fan splitter cable to plug the fan into the Mobo connector labelled "Top Fan". It is best to choose a PWM fan because you will be plugging it into a PWM fan header that powers the top fan and allows the Mobo to control fan speed based on temperature. I installed a ARCTIC F9 PWM PST - 92 mm Case Fan which came with a splitter cable. It's very quiet and I can't tell it's even running. Noctua also makes very quiet and efficient PWM fans that usually come with a full compliment of cables and other doo dads.

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From the picture posted upthread (I'll try to include it here) by flbigdog, the 92mm fan that comes with the Aurora R5-7 will snap in to the lower front of the XPS 8930 case. I only have 2 TB SSD, no spinners, so I have cleaned out all of the HDD cages.

Aurora R5-7 Series front chassis fan in 8930.

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Yea but it's not a 120mm and your air is just circulating around inside, it's a bad setup. Did you see the front fan thread I made on it?

Ok, I see now. I have read your comments in a few threads. When you are referencing "two 120mm fans"; you mean one in the bottom front and the top exhaust fan. I need to check the size of my top exhaust fan, and perhaps upgrade there, if needed. I really appreciate the comments. This is all very new to me.

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@546insp wrote:

I wouldn't put one in the top front, it's blocked off by the power supply and you would have to remove the HDD cage there also. Air from a bottom front one will make it's way up past the CPU and out the top rear. Just make sure all the air comes from the outside up front and you will be fine.

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That is just nonsense. 

The idea is to create a path of airflow from the front of the case up to the exhaust fan and having a front intake fan in the upper position would accomplish that and also keep the hot air from the back of chassis to be recirculated by balancing the case pressure. The concept of airflow is to keep all the air moving to the desired exhaust location.   It’s not always the number of fans that is important, it is all about controlling the movement of air in and out of the case and across key components by balancing case pressure.

Look at how the XPS 8930 chassis is designed and how a full length GPU and the PSU bracket restricts the airflow to the the upper half of the machine from that front intake position.  The airflow from the front intake position to the upper exhaust fan is seriously obstructed. 

Put an i7 8700 in your case  with a higher end GPU and let me know how effective just your front intake fan is in controlling CPU and case temps.  That is why the Alienware Aurora R7 with the i7 8700 with the same front intake fan installed at delivery needs liquid cooling to manage the CPU  temps at gaming loads. Going back to my early statement about controlling the movement of air, the lower intake fan helps move cool air to the GPU, but is not effective in this case in helping with CPU temps at load.   Having a fan there is necessary, but the obstructed case design reduces its effectiveness for overall case temps and balancing case pressure.

FYI, The idea of putting a front intake fan in this case isn’t new.  The XPS 8930 heat problems surfaced right away and  it was discovered by a few early XPS 8930 adopters that the SE version of the machine had a fan in the front intake position shown on ad videos.   The video also showed that there was a different CPU heatsink and fan available that cooled the CPU a little better. 

 It didn’t take long to figure out this machine used the same fan as the Alienware R5/R6/R7 in the front intake position and that was the easiest and cheapest way to add a front intake fan.   That’s why  I bought that R5/R6 fan and bracket when I bought this machine to see if it was possible to liquid cool the CPU and  be able to use the XPS 8930 for gaming.

For those with the XPS 8930 and the i7 8700(k), CPU liquid cooling can be done but it isn’t always viable.  Just the lower fan isn’t enough to mitigate the CPU temps at load. The i7 8700 chip is a beast. Add a high end card and the heat builds up in the case fairly quickly. The amount of heat coming out of the top of my case even with both a liquid cooled CPU and GPU while playing Gambit on Destiny 2 at 3440 x 1440 and just 60 fps is scary.

Not nonsense at all, a 120mm fan in the bottom front is quite efficient. The problem is nobody bothers to extract the air from the outside only (see my thread on it). They put little fans in the front that blow hot air around inside the case and wonder why they didn't do any good. Not a gamer but my blasting fan days are over.

@mr_archer wrote:

Yeah, I did find the correct 120mm bracket with the Top Fan, but it doesn't have the same fan itself pictured above.  So, I looked into the Noctura 120mm PWM offerings and when I reviewed the specs, most of them has CFM ratings of 55 to 70 CFM max - pretty much the same as the stock little one. Only the Industrial series went from 71 to 109 CFM.  So I'm going to swap out the Fan in the new bracket to the one pictured above that's 149 CFM rated and call it a day.  That with the matching front case fan, should be plenty to keep these 3 big spinners cool.

BTW Insp, I believe the 120's came with the SE's, and the 92's on the BLK for the 8930's. I think both in the 8920 series got the 120. Yes, definitely a down grade for the 8930 BLK's.  Easy enough to fix though.

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I got the 8930 SE and it also have a 92mm top fan.

XPS 8930 Tower Special Edition

• Motherboard Chipset Intel Kaby Point Z370, Intel Coffee Lake-S
• 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i9-9900K 8-Core Processor (16M Cache, up to 5.0 GHz)
• 64GB, DDR4, 2666MHz Samsung
• 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Toshiba
• nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X: 3x DisplayPort 1.3 (1.4 Ready), HDMI 2.0, Dual Link DVI-D
• 11ac + Bluetooth 4.2, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz, 1x1
• Windows 10 Pro 64bit English
• Microsoft® Office Professional 2019
• 2 x Dell UltraSharp U2717D 27” InfinityEdge Monitors

I am looking to add a 120mm intake fan to the front bottom (thanks 546insp) and a 120 intake fan to the front top (thanks HanoverB). Now I guess I also need a 120mm for the top exhaust. I already purchased the Aurora R5-7 snap-in fan from the big auction site for the lower front, but if it shows up 92mm, I will replace that with a 120mm.

For the 2 front fans: 3 pin or 4 pin?? where is the best place to plug them in for power??

This is my unit with all the spinner cages removed. I think you can also see the 92mm top fan. The cpu blower and heat sink do not match the Service Manual I downloaded.

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@mr_archer wrote:

Yeah, I did find the correct 120mm bracket with the Top Fan, but it doesn't have the same fan itself pictured above.  So, I looked into the Noctura 120mm PWM offerings and when I reviewed the specs, most of them has CFM ratings of 55 to 70 CFM max - pretty much the same as the stock little one. Only the Industrial series went from 71 to 109 CFM.  So I'm going to swap out the Fan in the new bracket to the one pictured above that's 149 CFM rated and call it a day.  That with the matching front case fan, should be plenty to keep these 3 big spinners cool.

BTW Insp, I believe the 120's came with the SE's, and the 92's on the BLK for the 8930's. I think both in the 8920 series got the 120. Yes, definitely a down grade for the 8930 BLK's.  Easy enough to fix though.

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I got the 8930 SE and it also have a 92mm top fan.

XPS 8930 Tower Special Edition

• Motherboard Chipset Intel Kaby Point Z370, Intel Coffee Lake-S
• 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i9-9900K 8-Core Processor (16M Cache, up to 5.0 GHz)
• 64GB, DDR4, 2666MHz Samsung
• 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Toshiba
• nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X: 3x DisplayPort 1.3 (1.4 Ready), HDMI 2.0, Dual Link DVI-D
• 11ac + Bluetooth 4.2, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz, 1x1
• Windows 10 Pro 64bit English
• Microsoft® Office Professional 2019
• 2 x Dell UltraSharp U2717D 27” InfinityEdge Monitors

I am looking to add a 120mm intake fan to the front bottom (thanks 546insp) and a 120 intake fan to the front top (thanks HanoverB). Now I guess I also need a 120mm for the top exhaust. I already purchased the Aurora R5-7 snap-in fan from the big auction site for the lower front, but if it shows up 92mm, I will replace that with a 120mm.

For the 2 front fans: 3 pin or 4 pin?? where is the best place to plug them in for power??

This is my unit with all the spinner cages removed. I think you can also see the 92mm top fan. The cpu blower and heat sink do not match the Service Manual I downloaded.

 

 

 

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Block off any air around the fans that isn't coming from the outside. My arctic 120mm pwm fan came with a splitter so I could connect it at the mobo where is says top fan so my top 120mm OEM fan runs parallel with the bottom front one. If you don't direct all the air from the front side vents you will be just spinning your wheels. I think it had 4 pins. My PC is dead quiet. I assume you saw my thread on the installation.

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@Anonymous wrote:

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I got the 8930 SE and it also have a 92mm top fan.

XPS 8930 Tower Special Edition

• Motherboard Chipset Intel Kaby Point Z370, Intel Coffee Lake-S
• 9th Generation Intel® Core™ i9-9900K 8-Core Processor (16M Cache, up to 5.0 GHz)
• 64GB, DDR4, 2666MHz Samsung
• 2TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Toshiba
• nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X: 3x DisplayPort 1.3 (1.4 Ready), HDMI 2.0, Dual Link DVI-D
• 11ac + Bluetooth 4.2, Dual Band 2.4&5 GHz, 1x1
• Windows 10 Pro 64bit English
• Microsoft® Office Professional 2019
• 2 x Dell UltraSharp U2717D 27” InfinityEdge Monitors

I am looking to add a 120mm intake fan to the front bottom (thanks 546insp) and a 120 intake fan to the front top (thanks HanoverB). Now I guess I also need a 120mm for the top exhaust. I already purchased the Aurora R5-7 snap-in fan from the big auction site for the lower front, but if it shows up 92mm, I will replace that with a 120mm.

For the 2 front fans: 3 pin or 4 pin?? where is the best place to plug them in for power??

This is my unit with all the spinner cages removed. I think you can also see the 92mm top fan. The cpu blower and heat sink do not match the Service Manual I downloaded.

 

 

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Solid machine. Nice to see the  i9-9900K can be used on the same motherboard as the i7-8700.  I also have the IPCFL-VM motherboard designation on my machine.  

The cooler is a Dell variant that comes with the SE models, will cool the CPU little better than the stock cooler.  Why they would install a 92mm top fan with that CPU and GPU is beyond me....what are they thinking? 

The issue with that cooler might be access to the fan headers,  hope they are easy to get to.  I know the CPU power supply header is under the CPU cooler and might have to remove the fan/cooler to ever get to that.  I am assuming you have the 460W PSU version even with the GTX 1080.  Why they do that I don't understand either.

The CPU cooler isn't that hard to remove from what I remember if you need to.  There is a youtube video of someone who installed that cooler on their machine.

 4 pin PWM fans in both front locations. Y-adapter to TOP FAN.  Fixed speed fans to PSU. 

Hope that CPU cooler is sufficient enough to control temps and noise is acceptable.  Other option would be to liquid cool.  Wait and see how it performs.