yea ur case should run cooler with the side panel ON if u set up your fans correctly...having an open side panel allows stagnant air which we all know is not good
I have found that the larger parts of the PC system will run a little cooler e.g. HDD and CPU heatsink but with the case off but the small parts of the motherboard will run a lot hotter due to the stagnant air as FatCat says.
The larger transistors that make up the voltage regulator/controller on an old ECS K7S5A get really hot without the air flow a good fan setup produces.
My case is a whole lot cooler with the side panel ON.
Here's how my fans are set up.
Two fans in the front bottom bringing air in.
Two fans in the top back removing air.
This doesn't including heatsink fan and other misc fans.
My theory is as follows.
Cool air is denser, thus it sinking to the floor. So the AC cooled air in the house sinks to the floor and is sucked in by the two bottom fans.
Hot air, on the other hand, rises. So when the air heats up inside the case it rises and is caught in the draft by the rear fans causing hot air to exit the system...
And plus it keeps my room a lot cooler to keep the side panel on.
In general cases are engineered with cooling in mind. If you take off your side panel it should only be if you are testing your stuff and need to get in often, or if you are going to have a huge fan shooting on it, a muscle over mind approach. XPC cases www.shuttle.com warn you against running them with the cases off because of the way they are setup. It's important to realize that air is extremely easy to heat up, whereas metal is less easy. This is why heatsinks are made out of metal and not air, because they can absorb alot of energy before actually getting hot, they just eat it up faster then the heat source can make the temperature rise. In the same way cases absorb heat and can hold more heat energy then air which is remaining in the same place. So yea, like i said before, unless you can keep the air cycling well to provide more air to soak up the heat energy you prolly should just leave the side panel.
Furthermore, experimentation beats out anything anyone can say theoretically. Try downloading MBM5(link below) and doing benchmarking to try and create heat.. Record the limits your temp-diodes reach under the single variable (side panel on or off) set-up.
Comments
You prolly need to invest in a better hsf for the cpu and some case fans.
My machine runs cooler with the case on but thats because of the way my fans are set out.
The larger transistors that make up the voltage regulator/controller on an old ECS K7S5A get really hot without the air flow a good fan setup produces.
Here's how my fans are set up.
Two fans in the front bottom bringing air in.
Two fans in the top back removing air.
This doesn't including heatsink fan and other misc fans.
My theory is as follows.
Cool air is denser, thus it sinking to the floor. So the AC cooled air in the house sinks to the floor and is sucked in by the two bottom fans.
Hot air, on the other hand, rises. So when the air heats up inside the case it rises and is caught in the draft by the rear fans causing hot air to exit the system...
And plus it keeps my room a lot cooler to keep the side panel on.
Furthermore, experimentation beats out anything anyone can say theoretically. Try downloading MBM5(link below) and doing benchmarking to try and create heat.. Record the limits your temp-diodes reach under the single variable (side panel on or off) set-up.
http://mbm.livewiredev.com/