Wow...

[Mobius]

I've been messing around with my computer a bit today, and I flipped the fan on the side of my case around, so now it's blowing air from outside in, and it dropped the ambient temperature down 10 C and the GPU temp down 7 C.  So, now I'm wondering, if I've got four slots for a HDD, and I've got two HDD's, would it be better if they were seperated, but one of the drives partially blocks a fan, or would it be better to put the two drives right next to each other, so the air blowing in from the fan is unimpeded?  I really don't know if that's a huge change, but I must say I'm happy about it, and I might have to put some more thought into how I've got my cooling arranged here.

[Viper22]

The way I have cooling set up in my case is there is one 12cm fan that takes in air, and another 12cm that exhausts it, as well as my power supply fans.  It keeps the case temperature stable, and I'm happy with it.

[Mobius]

I've got a total of 6 fans on mine, and I hope to bump that up to 7 tomorrow.  I've got one that draws air in from the front (with space for a second, which is where I'm going to put the new one), one that draws air in from the side (the one I just flipped), one that exhausts air out the back, a PCI slot blower that exhausts out the back, an Arctic Cooling GPU cooling unit (heatsink and fan), and a PSU fan, and that keeps me at 35 C ambient unless I'm playing a game, when it jumps up to ~45 C.  I don't really know if that's good or bad, but nothing's broke yet.

[congo]

Whatever works is good.

Lots of fans mean noise usually.

I've seen a guy blow an Asus board using all the fan risers at once with lots of case modding. The tracks on the mobo were fried from what I can remember.

[beaky]

All that really seems to matter for air-cooling is to keep as much air as possible moving through the case at all times, I've found.

Blowing air in from the rear helps in the sense that the faster the flow of any fluid, the lower the temp, but without exhaust, the overall ambient temp of the case will continue to rise. This is why CPU and GPU coolers always blow away from the unit- best thing is to get that warm air out of there.
I never understood why ATX cases don't have a fan on top, in front of the PSU... warm air wants to go up, anyway, so that would be more efficient, right?

But keeping components separated helps, too- I keep my two HDDs separated by one slot space, and a good thing, too, as they will get pretty warm. I had a stick of RAM come loose in there the other day (I have no idea how), and when I first opened her up, I touched my master drive and was surprised at how warm it was. Ought to be a heat sink on that puppy.


I've got two 80s in front (intake) and one 120 in back (exhaust) and despite other problems, my first rig does not have temp issues.

I used to have a rear-slot GPU shroud/blower thingy on that machine, but it was a piece of crap. Noisy and prone to hanging up.
A good idea, though- it'd be smart to make all of the new cards double-slot units, with a shell that directs hot air right out the back, instead of down onto whatever's in the next PCI slot.


The new machine will have a 120 in front and one in back, a big Zalman heatsink/fan on the CPU, and the side vent on the case should draw in a little more room-temp air... we'll see.

[NicksFXHouse]

All I can say is God bless Sony fluid dynamic bearings in Synth tower fans, Zalman and a power supply manufacture which incorporates thermal fan speed control...

[Woodlouse2002]

One of these days I will finish my liquid project which uses an electronic system with no fans to chill the coolant.

Just have not had time to play lately.

Tell me how you get on. I've been toying with the idea of liquid cooling my pc for a while now. Would be a fun little project.