YouTuber builds PC side panel out of 15 Noctua fans and names it the 'Superdome', cuts temps by 20 °C

Last month, YouTuber Major Hardware, otherwise known as James, created "The Fanjattan Project", a single fan made up of many tiny fans. Now, they're back with the same basic idea but much, much larger, with a huge fan named the Superdome. And fan maker Noctua even agreed to help out.

The idea was to make a side panel out of 15 Noctua 120 mm fans, but after mocking it up, they realised it would cost over $500, which is "pretty high for just a bunch of fans for a weird little project."

Major Hardware reached out to Noctua to ask if it would send the necessary fans out, and "they said yes without any questions." Notably, Noctua also provided materials for 3D printing, which means Major Hardware could more accurately mimic Noctua's aesthetic.

Taking a 3D model of the Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL side case, they made a large dome on top of a huge fan, which would then house all of the Noctua tech. They then 3D printed their design, and stuck the fans in. Once in their housing, the fans were glued down and ready to start spinning.

The cable management of adding 15 fans together proved to be a struggle, with Major Hardware urging people not to "really pay that much attention" to all those wires. "It's a little bit of a disaster," they say. "I used a lot of Y connectors, and that was pretty much it."

Though two fans didn't work to begin with, Major Hardware discovered they had merely forgotten to plug them in.

They state that the mega fan is "Honestly, pretty quiet… It's not loud at all. My computer that's running right now just on the desktop is louder than these".

They also note that the standard A12X25 fan pulls in 6.1 watts of energy, where the Fanhattan Project pulls in 8.1 watts, and the Superdome needs 27.6 watts. The good news is that Major Hardware reports it's actually a strong cooling solution. "It started as a meme, but I think I might actually leave this on my PC because of how well the thermals were."

James does, however, caveat this somewhat. They say that the top and bottom radiators are both exhaust in their rig, to show off the RGB in their fans, and the PC tends to get pretty hot in games. James says their rig isn't as efficient as it could be, which goes some way to explain the difference the Superdome makes.

Without the Superdome, in a handful of games of Battlefield 6, Major Hardware reported temps around 86.3 °C. With the Superdome side panel in place, those figures came all the way down to 66.9 °C.

Major Hardware notes that there's no dust shielding, so dust in the room will naturally find its way into the rig, but "given I exhaust from both fans anyway, and I just let normal air just passively come in the back, I get a lot of dust anyhow".

Given how well it works, James has put the blueprints of the Superdome online for you to download. All you will need to build your own is a Lian Li case, a 3D printer, and 15 Noctua fans. Simple, ey?