Where to find cooling fans in ARC Raiders: a practical scavenging guide
Cooling fans are a mid-tier crafting component in ARC Raiders, used for weapon repairs, gear upgrades, and a small set of workshop recipes that ask for electronic salvage. If you have spent a session returning to the surface with mostly scrap metal and polymer, but no fans, the problem is rarely bad luck. It is route planning, map knowledge, and knowing which POI types reliably spawn the item. This guide walks through the most consistent sources of cooling fans, how the loot tier system affects drop rates, and how to design a run that fills your inventory without bleeding timers, ammo, or extraction tokens.
You will not need a single trick or exploit. The fans are a normal component that drops from a small set of container and machine types. Once you understand which POIs match those types, the grind feels less random, and you can stack a few of them in a single raid if you route well.
What cooling fans actually are in the game economy
Cooling fans sit in the electronic salvage family of ARC Raiders materials, alongside items like wires, processors, capacitors, and damaged batteries. The economy treats them as a mid-rarity component: not as common as basic polymer, but not gated behind the hardest endgame encounters. They are consumed when you repair mid-tier weapons at a workbench, when you finish a few armor upgrade tracks, and in a couple of side recipes that traders occasionally request. Their value scales with how often you push into harder content, because high-tier gear breaks more often and asks for more of these parts per repair cycle.
From a design standpoint, the cooling fan is one of several components that signal to the player that an area once held functional machinery. The fan used to keep a server rack cool, the wiring used to carry current, the processor used to run logic. Because of that visual logic, the spawn tables are weighted toward industrial POIs rather than residential blocks or open fields.
The short answer: where to look first
If you only have time for a few minutes of guidance, the highest-yield locations for cooling fans in ARC Raiders are:
- Industrial complexes with intact or partially intact server rooms and HVAC equipment.
- Subterranean research and power facilities that contain server racks and cooling hardware.
- Large ARC structures with damaged human interiors, especially maintenance corridors behind a deployable cover fight.
- Specific named POIs that other players consistently list as fan sources, listed in the table below.
That is the headline. The rest of the guide explains why those areas work, how to read the spawn table, and how to plan a route that does not waste your raid window on dead ends.
How ARC Raiders decides what spawns where
Every lootable container in ARC Raiders has an internal archetype: residential, industrial, medical, office, military, ARC, or vehicle. The archetype decides which component families are eligible to drop, and within each family, a weighted table decides the rarity. Cooling fans belong to the industrial and machinery archetypes, which means a residential kitchen drawer will never contain a fan, while a rusted server rack in a basement can. The same is true for the larger pieces of ARC machinery that can be broken open with the right tool. They have a much higher chance of dropping electronic salvage than a wardrobe in a house.
The practical takeaway is that you do not need to clear every container in a raid. You want to clear the ones that match the spawn profile. Skipping a kitchen to sprint to a server room is the right instinct, even if the kitchen has the same number of drawers.
Container and machine types that drop cooling fans
The following table summarises the most consistent sources of cooling fans and how to spot them in a raid. It is not a list of every possible container, only the archetypes that the community has consistently reported as fan sources. Drop rates are described in qualitative tiers because exact percentages are not published, and the numbers change with patches.
| Source type | Where you find it | Typical fan yield | Notes for the player |
|---|---|---|---|
| Server racks and network cabinets | Server rooms, comms centers, underground data vaults | Low to medium, often 0 to 2 | High reliability. Worth a full clear if you find the room. |
| HVAC units and rooftop ventilation | Industrial rooftops, mechanical floors, large storage halls | Medium, around 1 to 3 | Often outside, so exposed to ARC patrols and snipers. |
| Workbenches and repair stations | Maintenance corridors, garage-style workshops | Low, often a side drop | Pair with ammo and wire farming in the same room. |
| Damaged ARC machinery | Large ARC structures, breached labs, power plants | Medium to high after combat | Bring a melee or explosive tool. Loot is gated by combat, not just access. |
| Lockers in staff areas | Maintenance hallways, break rooms behind secure doors | Low, occasional | Better for wires and processors than fans, but a small bonus when clearing. |
| Shipping containers with electronics | Industrial yards, loading bays | Low, contextual | Look for fans mounted to the container wall; if visible, loot is more likely. |
You will not pull a fan from every interaction, and you should not expect one. A run that targets two or three server rooms and one HVAC floor is more productive than a run that sprints through twenty residential cupboards.
High-yield POIs by environment
The exact map rotates with each seasonal update, but the environment categories stay stable. Treat the named locations below as a pattern rather than a static list, and you will still benefit when the map changes. If a previous favorite disappears, look for a new POI in the same category. The spawn archetype usually travels with the building type, not the name.
| Environment | Example POI category | Why fans spawn there | Risk profile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subterranean power facility | Hydroelectric plant, underground relay | Dense server rooms and HVAC infrastructure | High ARC density, low player density |
| Above-ground research campus | Tech institute, satellite control building | Mix of server racks and staff maintenance areas | Medium ARC, medium player traffic |
| Industrial sector | Factory complex, refinery, warehouse cluster | Large ventilation and process cooling hardware | Open ground, sniper risk |
| Military outpost | Bunker, comms tower base, motor pool | Some server rooms, more workbenches and lockers | High PvP, mixed ARC presence |
| Residential or commercial blocks | Apartment towers, shopping streets | Almost no fan spawns | Skip if fans are your goal |
The pattern is straightforward. Fans live where machines live, and machines live where heavy infrastructure once ran. Walking past a fast-food outlet to reach a generator room is the right call, even if the outlet has more visible loot on the counters.
A reliable three-stop fan route
If you are new to the map, build your first fan farming route around three stops in a single biome. This keeps travel time low and gives you a fallback if the first two POIs are already looted or contested. A practical skeleton looks like this:
- Drop into a mid-map industrial POI with a server room. The landing should keep you near cover for the first thirty seconds.
- Clear the server room first, then any HVAC units on the same floor. Tag doors so you can retrace your steps if another squad pushes in.
- Move to a second POI of the same archetype within sprinting range, ideally one with rooftop HVAC equipment, and repeat the same priorities.
- Save the third stop for extraction time. Pick a POI close to the exfil so you do not have to cross open ground with a full bag.
Three POIs is enough to fill an inventory slot with two to five fans on a good run, which is typically what you need for a single round of mid-tier repairs. More than three POIs in one raid starts to compete with extraction timers and contested loot.
Reading a room for fan spawns
You can save time by learning what a fan-spawning room actually looks like. The visual language is consistent, and once you tune into it, you stop opening every drawer and start opening the right ones.
- Floor-mounted server racks in a row usually mean the drawers on each rack can drop a fan.
- A wall-mounted air handler with a square grille is a strong hint that the unit itself is lootable.
- Workbenches with a calibration screen and a small parts tray often carry electronic salvage alongside the bench tools.
- Industrial control panels with a hinged face sometimes drop a fan as a side reward, especially if the panel is half open already.
- Anything that visually hums, vibrates, or has a fan blade visible through a vent should be your first interaction in the room.
The opposite is also useful. A clean residential bedroom with a wardrobe and a bed will almost never have a fan, and you can skip it without thinking. This is where a lot of players lose time, because the residential blocks often have more loot containers per square meter than an industrial hall. Density is not the same as relevance.
How enemy density affects your fan farming
Industrial POIs have a few traits in common. They are large, they are dark, and they tend to attract ARC patrols because the machines inside count as objectives for the enemy AI. That changes how you clear a room. You should not sprint into a server hall the way you would sprint into a bedroom. A short, deliberate approach keeps the loot intact and the timers under control.
When you enter a suspected fan-spawning room, listen first. Many of the machines that drop fans make a soft mechanical sound even when idle. Once you confirm no ARC patrol is in line of sight, move to the highest-density cluster of containers. Open the loudest, most visually obvious containers first, because those are usually the ones with the best electronic drops. If you hear or see an ARC patrol, withdraw to cover and let the patrol walk past before continuing. Burning your raid timer on a bad fight over a server rack is rarely worth it for a single fan.
PvP considerations when chasing fans
Fans are not the most valuable component in the game, but they are common enough that other players will also be hunting them. That creates predictable traffic. Industrial POIs attract a steady stream of geared players, while residential blocks attract more casual looters. If you are farming fans on a populated server, expect to contest the same server rooms that other players are also clearing.
A few habits help. Approach server rooms from the least obvious entrance, not the main door. Pull one container at a time and listen for footsteps before committing to the next. If you spot another player, do not immediately assume they will fight. Many fan runs are about speed, not kills, and an opponent may simply rotate to the next POI when they hear you arrive. If they do push, you have the advantage of cover and the high ground if the server racks are stacked.
Workshop recipes and trader requests that ask for cooling fans
Knowing what the fan is for helps you decide how many to keep. A short list of common sinks keeps your inventory decisions honest. The values below are typical rather than exact, and they shift with patches.
| Recipe or request | Fans required | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-tier weapon repair | 1 to 2 per repair | Most reliable sink. Higher tier weapons ask for more. |
| Armor upgrade track | 2 to 4 per stage | Spikes at mid and high upgrade levels. |
| Trader electronics request | 3 to 5 per turn-in | Good reputation source. Check the rotating board. |
| Workbench utility item | 1 per craft | Cheap utility, usually not worth stockpiling. |
| Barters with other players | Variable | Useful when you need a specific rare item. |
The mid-tier weapon repair is the reason most players notice fans in the first place. A weapon that asks for two fans to repair will eat your stockpile quickly if you push into harder raids without a farming plan. The armor upgrade sink is the second reason. Each upgrade stage typically asks for a few fans, and the stages stack, so a single full armor set can consume more fans than a week of casual play generates.
Extraction and bag management around fan farming
Cooling fans are not the heaviest item in the game, but they stack in a way that fills inventory space if you ignore the rest of your loot. The smartest runs pair fans with a few low-weight, high-value items like ammo and a single medkit. You want to leave room for one or two unexpected drops, because the best fan spawns often sit next to a rare component that you do not want to leave on the ground.
Decide your extraction point before you clear your second POI. If the closest exfil is on the other side of the map, plan a third stop that drifts toward it. If the closest exfil is already near your second stop, push for a third POI in the same direction rather than crossing the map for a marginal container. Most lost fans come from lost extraction timers, not from bad spawns.
How patch cycles change fan availability
ARC Raiders has historically adjusted component drop tables when players started skipping entire POI categories, and cooling fans are not immune. The broader update cadence is described in a recent piece on ARC Raiders’ major update roadmap and community reaction, which is useful context for why a familiar fan route may need a small retune after a big patch. The direction of change is usually toward more options, not fewer, but a small drop table tweak can shift a POI from a two-fan run to a one-fan run overnight.
The fix is to keep a list of two or three fallback POIs that match the same archetype. When a patch lands, run the same route once. If the yield drops, rotate to the fallback POI. If the yield holds, keep the route and check again after the next patch.
Common mistakes when hunting cooling fans
Most players who complain about fan drop rates are making one of a small set of mistakes. The list below is ordered by impact, and each mistake is easy to fix once you notice it.
- Clearing residential POIs that have the wrong archetype. Drop rate is effectively zero, no matter how many drawers you open.
- Sprinting through a server room and missing the quieter containers on the back wall. The front rack is often looted, but the rear rack still has fans.
- Fighting every ARC patrol in the room. The patrol does not gate the loot, so skipping it saves ammo and timer.
- Ignoring HVAC units on the roof. The roof is the second-best room in most industrial POIs after the server room.
- Extracting too early because the bag feels full. Fans are light, and a half-empty slot is often the difference between a two-fan run and a four-fan run.
- Skipping the room because another player is already in it. Server rooms are big enough to split, and a second pair of hands makes the patrol easier.
The single biggest improvement is to stop treating every container as equal. A drawer in a kitchen is not the same as a drawer in a server rack. The drop table is different, and so is the value of your time.
Solo versus squad fan farming
Fans are an unusually squad-friendly component. The reasons are practical rather than mechanical. A squad can split a server room between two entrances, clear the room in a fraction of the time, and watch each other’s backs against an ARC patrol or a third-party player team. The loot is rarely contested because the room is large, and the extraction is more forgiving because one squadmate can carry the fans if another is over-encumbered.
Solo players can still farm fans effectively, but the route should be tighter and the POIs should be closer together. A solo run also benefits from quieter, less popular POIs, where the room is more likely to be untouched. Squads can take the popular POIs and out-trade the contesting team with speed.
Reading patch notes for fan-related changes
When a new patch lands, search the notes for the words component, salvage, electronic, and any specific POI names you rely on. The notes rarely mention fans by name, but they often mention broader changes to the salvage table that include fans. Treat any change to server rooms, HVAC, and industrial POIs as a fan-relevant change until proven otherwise. The fastest way to test a change is to run your favorite route once and compare the count to your last few runs. If the count is meaningfully different, update your route and your notes.
Where to find cooling fans in ARC Raiders when the map rotates
The map rotates between seasonal updates, and the POI names change. The archetype does not. A new industrial complex on a new map still contains server rooms and HVAC units, and those rooms still drop fans. The trick is to identify the new POI’s category before you start clearing, not after. A short landing approach with a quick scan of the first floor usually tells you whether the POI is residential, industrial, or mixed. A mixed POI is still useful, but the server room is where you should commit your time, not the residential wing.
Fans as a bartering resource
Once you have more fans than your own repair and upgrade pipeline can absorb, fans become a trading chip. The component is light, common enough to be liquid, and useful to almost every loadout, which makes it a strong bartering item when you want a specific rare drop. The price varies with server activity. On a busy server with many players, fans are cheaper because supply is high. On a quiet server, they are more expensive because fewer people are farming. Use that cycle to your advantage by stocking up on busy weekends and trading on quiet weekday evenings.
Putting it all together: a one-page checklist
Before you drop into the next raid, run through this short list. It is the same checklist experienced players use, and it compresses the guide into a single screen.
- Pick a landing POI with a known server room and HVAC infrastructure.
- Skip residential and commercial blocks unless the route passes through them.
- Clear the server room first, then any HVAC units on the same floor.
- Listen for ARC patrols and withdraw to cover rather than fighting over a single container.
- Plan a second POI of the same archetype within sprinting range.
- Plan a third POI near extraction to avoid crossing open ground with a full bag.
- Reserve one inventory slot for unexpected rare drops next to the fan spawns.
- After each raid, log the POIs you cleared and the fan count, so you can compare across patches.
If you follow this checklist on a regular basis, you will stop treating cooling fans as a random drop. They are a routable component with consistent spawn rules, and the right POI category will hand you two to five fans per raid without grinding the entire map.
How this fits into the broader game design
ARC Raiders leans on a system where each component family maps to a small set of POI categories. The design encourages players to specialize their runs, and cooling fans are the cleanest example of that design. Once you learn the categories, the same logic applies to other electronic salvage. Wires, processors, and capacitors all live in similar rooms, with slightly different spawn weights. If you can reliably farm fans, you can reliably farm most of the electronic family with the same route, which makes the rest of your upgrade pipeline easier as well.
The game does not publish a full spawn table, and any guide that claims a precise drop percentage is guessing. The qualitative pattern is real, though, and it has been consistent across multiple patches. Treat the table and the checklist above as a starting point, and adjust the route as the map rotates. The principle is the same: machines drop fans, and machines live in industrial POIs.
When to skip the fan run entirely
There are a few situations where chasing cooling fans is the wrong call. If you need a specific rare component for a trader turn-in, prioritize the matching POI category and pick up fans as a side drop. If you are low on ammo or meds, the next raid should be a survival run rather than a fan run. If the server population is very high and the popular industrial POIs are likely to be hot, spend the session on quieter, mixed POIs where you can grab a fan as a bonus rather than a goal. And if a major patch just dropped, spend one raid relearning the map before you commit to a long fan route.
Final notes for the next patch
Cooling fans are a stable, mid-tier component, and the locations described in this guide are the most consistent sources in the current version of the game. The spawn archetype is what matters, not the exact POI name, and that pattern tends to outlast a single patch. Keep a short list of your two or three best fan POIs, revisit the list whenever a major update lands, and rotate to a fallback POI if the yield drops. The grind becomes predictable once you stop treating fans as random and start treating them as a routable resource.
Frequently asked questions
Are cooling fans a rare drop in ARC Raiders?
Cooling fans sit in the mid-tier salvage band. They are rarer than polymer and common metals, but more common than the high-tier electronic components. You can usually find one or two per well-planned industrial raid, and a strong run can yield four or more.
Do cooling fans only drop from server rooms?
No. Server rooms are the most reliable source, but fans also drop from HVAC units, certain workbenches, and damaged ARC machinery. The common thread is the industrial and machinery archetype rather than any single container type.
Can I find cooling fans in residential POIs?
Rarely. Residential POIs lean toward household loot, fabric, and basic salvage. A residential building can drop a fan as a long-shot side drop, but the rate is low enough that you should not route through them on a fan run.
Do I need a specific tool to open fan-spawning containers?
Most server racks, HVAC units, and workbenches do not require a special tool. Damaged ARC machinery may require a melee weapon or an explosive charge to break open, which is the main tool gate on fan farming. Plan a small explosive or a sturdy melee weapon when you intend to break down ARC machines.
Do higher difficulty raids drop more cooling fans?
Harder raids tend to increase the quality of loot across the board, and that usually includes more components per container rather than a single, dramatic jackpot. Expect a small bump in fan count when you move to a harder biome, and pair the run with a competent squad or a strong loadout to avoid losing the loot to a third party.
How many cooling fans do I need to fully repair a mid-tier weapon?
A typical mid-tier weapon asks for one to two fans per repair, depending on the weapon and the damage state. A full repair cycle on a favorite weapon over a few sessions can easily consume ten or more fans, which is why a consistent farm is more efficient than chasing single drops.
Do traders ever request cooling fans directly?
Yes. The rotating trader board occasionally lists a turn-in that asks for three to five fans in exchange for a useful reward. Check the board when you arrive at a hub, and stock a few fans in your stash specifically for these requests, because the rotation can be time-limited.
Does co-op change the drop rate of cooling fans?
Drop rates are not published, and the community reports that co-op runs feel more productive mainly because two players can clear more containers in the same window. The per-container rate is similar, but the total yield per raid is higher because you cover more ground.
Will a future patch break my favorite fan route?
It is possible. The spawn tables for individual POIs can shift with patches, which is why experienced players keep a list of two or three fallback POIs in the same category. If your main route dries up, run the fallback POI once and compare the yield before adjusting your schedule.
Should I extract early if my bag is mostly cooling fans?
Cooling fans are light, and a bag of fans is a good reason to extract as soon as your route is complete. The value is solid, the weight is low, and the risk of losing the bag to a third party is the main reason to leave the raid on time rather than chasing one more POI.