Case Fan Guide for Better Temperatures

i have the reverse airflow with my case. when i installed the corsair H50, i had to rethink how that would work but the corsair 800D really thinks outside the box when it comes to cooling your case. the best i seen

 

Positive Air Pressure Design in PC chassis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLOg9yI3rjs

 

^ I would have liked to see some temps on that.

A little positive pressure is good, but too much makes the fans fight and reduces their efficiency...this really is rocket science, but is easy to imagine and see in real life.

Put 2 fans in a closed system with 1 outlet and draw smoke or fog through it - you'll see that the smoke/fog gets chopped up and becomes really turbulent between the 2 fans, where it doesn't get so turbulent if you remove one of the fans.

Anyway, good video - again, I'd really like to see some before/after temps rather than a "pinwheel test".

Psychlone

 

Has the reversed jpg been moved? The previous jpg comes up fine but even it I try to just insert the url for the second, I get a 404. I guess one picture really is worth a thousand words.

 

fans

I fined that i get best temps when i have all my fans eahausting the air out. This creats a nagitive air flow; this pulls more hot air out!

 

Lol... are you sure thats the best?

 

This is my first post here so hello all! :grin2:

I reckon the problem is broader than that - many genuinely don't seem to understand that cooling is in essence about heat transference (i.e. that heat isn't "magicked away" by heatsinks and fans, it's simply shuffled elsewhere) and because of that continue to think only in terms of 'gains' (something got cooler) rather than 'trade-offs' (somewhere else must have got hotter). Unfortunately even those who understand the basic principles involved often treat system cooling as little more than an afterthought (most evident with case selection, where even aesthetics is given a far higher priority than ventilation by many these days) and it's not until the issue is forced upon them, when they hit that point where throwing more money at bigger heatsinks and fancier fans gets them nowhere (generally when they overload their cases capacity to exhaust hot air quick enough,) that they scramble for fixes. That's not to say that many people get things wildly wrong in the end, just that too many seem to get things right more by serendipity than design, which is a pity really as heat management doesn't get all that complicated at the level most of us play at, and we all know there's only one Golden Rule - '"Out from the rear" with Golden Rules!' :rpg:

I know it's a pedantic point but I think it's worth clarifying: the only imperative for any fan in a given case is that it does it's part reliably and effectively - it doesn't necessarily have to push lots of air to do that, and, as ascl points out, in certain situations shouldn't. Fans should be selected for a purpose, purpose usually dictates the specific type and size of a fan, and cost usually decides the exact specs (RPM, CFM, dB) you end up with (and the fans potential efficiency at a given voltage). It's actual effectiveness of course depends what you do with it - as you and others rightly stress, aim it badly and it's "on paper" efficiency means nothing.

I'm glad you said usually! I was desperate enough flame2: uninsulated house during a scorching Perth heatwave) to make the following changes to my old system (a Centurian 5 ATX case, AM2 mobo/95W X2 w/ Mugen2, HD4850, Zalman wrapped HDD, drive bays removed from the case):

Code:

  ------------------	------------------	--------------
  =                =	=    HDD HDD >PSU>	=        >PSU>
  =           =PCIe=	|D.V.D.      >PSU>	=        >PSU>
  >                =	=                =	=            =
  >    =GFX==COOLER=	>           =PCIe=	=       =PCIe=
  =    VREG/GPU/RAM=	>                =	>            =
  =         NB     =	>    =GFX==COOLER=	>=GFX==COOLER=
  =     R  <CPU<   <	=    VREG/GPU/RAM=	=VREG/GPU/RAM=
  =     A  <CPU< P <	=         NB     =	=     NB
  =     M  <CPU< C <	=     R  <CPU<   <	= R  <CPU<   <
  |D.V.D.      >PSU>	=     A  <CPU< P <	= A  <CPU< P <
  =    HDD HDD >PSU>	=     M  <CPU< C <	= M  <CPU< C <
  ------------------	------------------	---------------

By flipping the case upside down and reversing both the rear case fan and CPU HSF I got better than expected improvement to all temps in the entire lower section of the motherboard (NB only marginally), and the increase in flow seemed to offset the extra heat convecting into the expansion bay section of the case (enough to help stabilize gfx temps; still +5*C at load but temps had been at melting point before I reversed the lower fans so I took it as a win). After experimenting with extra high-front fans I realised I only needed extra (i.e. quicker) venting high in the case, not extra airflow, and opted to drill out the mobo tray/back panel and made a proper "reverse-ATX" case out of it. That returned the PSU to venting duties (instead of feeding the intake :bugeye which made all the difference: the result was a further drop in lower case temps and a remarkable drop in upper case temps (gfx card temps were only slightly better than ATX at that stage but, more importantly, the fan on the cooler was a whole lot less chatty, one of the issues that prompted the exercise in the first place).

By the time I added a Silenx IXG-80HA2 gfx cooler (sexy in every way; still pimpin on my 6850 I'll add), swapped out the front 80mm intake for a 120mm and tweaked fan speeds a little I admit I was rather impressed with two initially unintentional aspects of my design. First, with the 120mm rear intake being constant speed and the matching (and very close) HSF being variable I lucked onto an arrangement where at idle both NB and MOSFET were pushed air yet at load it seemed heat was instead being pulled from their heatsinks! However it worked the big upshot was that there was very little variance in temps at that end of the board - regardless of load. I also noticed that the heat load making its way up the case made little difference to expansion bay/gfx temps; at idle the convected heat definitely improved airflow around the gfx cooler, at load, while hotter, less of it made it up the case, because as load increased so too did the volume of air pushed out of the front case vents.

The third illustration shows what I was left with after I attacked the case with a junior hacksaw (offing the entire drive bay section of the case - all in the name of science of course!) and sectioned off the case with a stiff bit of card between the NB and gfx card. For the curious gfx temps rose again by a sizable amount, with the smaller case volume equating to higher expansion bay temps, and moving the front fan much closer to the back of the graphics cooler wasn't anywhere near as effective as I'd imagined it would be. I did manage to claim some of that back (by swapping the 80mm fan back in) but at least now I know the value/effect of the volume of a/that case.

That's where my experiments with that particular case stalled. My next step is to proof air ducting to a gfx card (the IXG-80HA2 cooler being an ideal test subject due to the orientation of the fins) and I've decided that my trusty Centurian 3 wasn't the best platform to use so am looking at other options. I'll probably create a custom case rather than customise an off the shelf model because I'm also dead keen on testing laminar flow (turbulance is EVIL!!!! ) but I admit I'm still pipe-dreaming that part atm - I'll be looking forward to help and feedback with that project later down the track.

Enjoy yourselves, Nick.

[Edit] These pics are barely better than my crappy ascii art but the combination should better illustrate why reversed airflow was much more efficient than front to back airflow (in the "motherboard" half of the case at least) with the parts I had, and why that held true regardless of case size or motherboard orientation.

The following shows the system in a state similar to the one described by Psychlone - reversed rear chassis and CPU fans in an ATX case:



The next shows two comparable reverse-ATX variants; the one on the left while still in planning mode, the rightmost dummied up for inspiration just before the system was stripped to onboard w/stock HSF and retired as an regular ATX system (so it's the tray, not the front case fans, that's misaligned in that image):

 

nice thread master i wll do it thanks!!!

 

Nice little read!

 

Is it ok to boost my graphics card fan speed to 70% all the time??

I have a gtx 770

 

nice guide

 

case with back exhaust dont work too well, when using 2 evga ACX cards in sli.


with my HAF X case

the back exhaust fan blows out hot air and the gpu coolers suck it right back in, causing the temps to skyrocket.



I switched rear exhaust to intake and one of my modded front bay fans to exhaust and also turned the fan around on the cpu cooler.


and gpu is now around 5-10c cooler when gaming

and the difference does matter when the top gpu was hitting almost 90c before when playing stressful games.

 

yea.. but it will make noise and wear out the fan in a few years

 

great read

 

Can you please re-upload the pictures ? I'm curious in the placement and tests but I can't see the pictures anymore .... Thanks !

 

Does anyone know whether or not the SYS_FAN headers have standardized electrical specifications? I want to know what the maximum amperage is per header. I have an Antec 900, which uses 4 case fans, with one large 200mm fan at the top. After specing the 200mm fans (not sure the actual spec of the Antec case fan) but most appear to be about 200mA with 120mm case fans around 150mA. I would assume 1A or so on each header as the motherboard spec says that the water pump header can support 2A.

Basically, I would like all of my fans to be set within the fan curve in the motherboard BIOS, so that they stay off below a certain temperature--keeping the case completely silent. Resting GPU temp is about 28c with the fan at 1000rpm (inaudible).

 

Hi there

Depends on motherboard but usually is in range of 1.00-1.5A

Not sure what motherboard do you have but most of fans have lower amperage, there are few fans which have higher amperage mostly Nidec, San Ace, Delta etc, check yours fan specs and mainly check their starting amperage

Hope this helps

Thanks, Jura