At a certain point, the sheer amount of fan housing mass is blocking air flow more than anything else.
It's a question of what you need and want. I have no rgb and no side window in my pc and generally do not care about the color of something if it works and does so how I want it to. I am a practicality centered person. For some people aesthetics are the most important part of anything they do. Those people are willing to sacrifice performance/practicality for something nicer looking. Both approaches are valid, but some companies specialize to cater to one of them. I do not have a noctua fan in my pc, but I plan to put one on my 3d printer to make it even quieter than it already is. It is always a matter of perspective.
Real queation: would putting fans in series like this perform (significantly) better?
They would likely perform worse. If ("if", ha) those fans are not in perfect sync, they're going to obstruct airflow. Also, consider that each fan introduces both audible noise and perturbations in the airflow which in turn, also will cause noise.
Incidentally, I have (almost) that very same case, an Antec P182. Mine has a super-quiet PSU fan, and a ginormous heat pipe cpu cooler (HR-1 if you're curious) with one fan ... and that is plenty.
But keep in mind that the sound of the cooling will be irrelevant once that user starts typing, as their mechanical keyboard will produce enough sound to not only drown out the fans, but also to shatter their eardrums
Putting a fan after another will up pressure (doubling in theory), but not displace more air. Except if the air has to go through something slowing it down where more pressure will help to push more air through it.
There are obviously lots of variables at play (the extra fan takes up space too, reducing airflow for example) so you are surely right that it's probably useless or worse to have a "double fan" for a PC cooling system, but the fans being in perfect sync is just a noise problem (on small fans like this).
I know it's done in servers with high rpm 40mm fans. To create extra static pressure. But it didn't work with 2x 120mm fan on a aio in my testing.
Probably would only be slightly better, but it would be significantly louder since multiple fans creates significant turbulence.
No
The same amount of airflow is being pulled through, and your static pressure would go up meaning the fans actually need to work harder for the same effect.
This is incorrect. Two fans in series doubles the amount of pressure generated by the fan, while leaving the max flow rate the same. Two fans in parallel doubles the flow rate but leaves the pressure unchanged. This is why some radiators have two fans as it increases the airflow when needing to overcome something with high static pressure.
Fans in series should not be so close as it would cause turbulence, however, some gap will prevent this (or something that naturally fixes turbulent flow, like a radiator).
....you literally said the same thing as me.
"Two fans in series doubles the amount of pressure generated by the fan, while leaving the max flow rate the same"
Static pressure increases, airflow remains the same.
If there is a static load, the air flow increases compared to a single fan. At no static loading they are the same.
Forget about jet engines. This thing probably sounds more like a helicopter at close range! The ironic part of this is that it could actually lead to power supply issues, which can be just as bad...
For shits amd giggles, I put a couple of industrial 10W fans in my PC once. That probably still made more noise than this. It also created so much overpressure that I could feel air escaping the tower from every little hole or crack. You could hold a piece of paper to the side of the pc, and see it moving because of the air escaping between the side panel and the main hull.
But if these are normal fans (max maybe 1,5W), then the amount of power drawn will be the same as a couple of hardrives.
Luckily you can get this fractal case with sound damping side panels! It probably sounds like a helicopter in a subway tunnel below you with the panels on.
i genuinely have a pc with a 30 cm fan from a welder bolted to a hole in the side of the case, it runs at 240v and it's one of the loudest things i own, but at least i passed from being continuously thermal throttling to running at a reasonable temperature...
