One consideration while buying a case is to decide as to what type of fans will come installed, how many and just in the case has no fans pre-installed by default, or we want to replace the default ones or provision for extension then what fans should one put and what would be the orientation.
I own a HAF-X (HAF stands for High Air Flow or something like that) which is probably one of the best air cooled cases that one can get on the market. It is big in itself, Has provision of 5 fans, air vents, dust filters and even a VGA bracket with optional fan (which I have added). Sounds an overkill. Maybe.
IMO, what is needed is minimally in a case is
(1) One Fan which will pull cool air into the case
(2) One Fan which will exhaust hot air away from the case (the air becomes out because the electronic components conduct heat to the flowing air which regulates their temperature)
This is simple theory, and IMO most users need just these two fans. Nothing more, nothing less. And I say this even though I own the HAF-X ( I am sure the others are not so effective)
The fans must exhibit some qualitative characteristics.
(a) They must be sized to fit the provision in the case
(b) They must be able to move lots of air
(c) They must do (b) while not making too much noise that it disturbs users. Its like a Motorbike/car silencer, the absence of which is either hated or loved.
(d) They must not overload the current drain capacity of the motherboard
Unfortunately what most vendors and retailers propagandize *prominently* is size (which is right), LED color, type of bearings, lifetime, blade structure, fan speed, wattage in their feature list and bury the air pressure and capacity (CFM, H2O pressure level), Noise level (dB), current drain in their specification sheet.
The voltage in the motherboard rail is fixed at 12V. And each fan connector on the motherboard has current drain capacity, which must not be exceeded. Before connecting any chassis (or CPU fan) to the motherboard, care should be taken that the current drain does not exceed this limit, otherwise you can burn the motherboard.
If the airflow capacity (expressed in cubic feet per minute or CFM) is low, the cooling will be less, irrespective of what RPM the fan spins at. And by the way bigger fans have to spin slower & make less noise to move more air which is a strong case for their installation. Big is beautiful.
If the chassis fan (which has 3-pin motherboard connector or a 4-pin Molex connector to connect to PSU/Fan-Controller, and spins at constant speed) makes a lot of noise, it will create some disturbance for users (the level varies with tolerance). If total noise of all fans is above 50 dB its quite audible to me and anything about 70 dB bothers me for instance. IMO fan controllers which control their speed by reducing voltage, solve the noise issue, but MAY impact the cooling ability of the case, which is the primary purpose of the chassis fans in the first place.
Usually High CFM/RPM and Noise/Size are opposing factors and a tradeoff is made in each fan to my observation. You may not be able to get the best of everything like (highest CFM + lowest Noise + smallest size + lowest rpm) in one fan.
And finally if you want to add a dice of color and lighting to your case, you can add LED fans instead of plane jane ones. But only after you got the other basics right.
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