PC airflow and heat - a cooling guide

MediaMan

PC airflow and heat - a cooling guide

Ivan

Silva

Excelent review, guys, much appreciated

Winfrey

Wow for a second i almost thought MM had come back to do an article O_O

Tushon

An epic necro

midga

An epic necro

Truth. Glad for it, though, cause now I've read it.

Hashim Elhadi

I took it as areference each time I assemble a pc very good article

Xaevryn

I guess great minds think alike. My setup is similar (though not exactly the same) on my PC. I set it up under the guidelines of what would be the most efficient way to cool it and maintain airflow. I think I'll use what's in the link to modify my setup a little bit.

fatcat

this.




end game

Ryder

That is the most ridiculous cooler ever.

fatcat

That is the most ridiculous cooler ever.

it's an Noctua NH-D14 with a 3rd fan, that's all



yanno, the best air cooling heatsink to date...

Ryder

Best and most ridiculous at the same time... Ok.

doabarrellroll

You mean to tell me, I could be the first person to install an intercooler on a PC?

That picture reminds me of the 3.2L flat six on the Carrera 3.2.

qwerty

would love to see a test with bottom + top

Curtis

I'm no expert on cooling but wouldn't having top and rear only result in a negatively pressurized case and excessive dust accumulation in the case cracks? If you left all the unused ports open then that would probably not be an issue.

Also, did you cover the not in use ports? There becomes a much greater number of variations if you leave some uncovered without a fan vs covering all not in use. If you left them uncovered then it wouldn't be suprising that the two exhaust fan option at top and rear would be best, air would be flowing more quickly through the case due to lack of back pressure due to the large number of inlet ports. Since your top fan is so far forward (as compared to a bottom mount PSU) it's not suprising it took longer to stabilize temperature. Any flow from the front or bottom intakes would get distributed along a path between them and the top port, which pretty much doesn't intersect any of the components your trying to cool but pulls accumulated hot air from the top of the case.

Also on a bottom mount PSU I bet you'd get much better flow across the components since both the back and top would be closer to the corner opposite the front and bottom intakes.