Side panel fans - Intake or Exhaust

[deejayburnout]

Peeps

i have modded my Sharkoon case and added a 200mm fan to blow air into the case next to my Asus Direct CU II GPU. As the cooler of the GPU blows air into the case, would it be better to have the 200mm fan blowing air out of the case????
My case has 2 x 120mm fans at the front blowing air in and 1 x 120mm at the back blowing out. Not sure if its better to have more air blowing in or out??????

[KeyboardDemon]

Try running two stress tests on it with the fan blowing in and out to see which yields the best results. I'd suggest running Furmark for the stress test.

[deejayburnout]

true.

[scaryjim]

My personal opinion is that it's probably better to have the fans sucking the heat (well, hot air) out of the case, than hoping you'll blow enough cool air in to make a difference.

Not sure how it'll work for a larger case, but I modded a rack project box to take my audio PC recently, and discovered that the best cooling I got was from having a single, large exhaust fan on the top of the case (which is equivalent to a side fan on a tower case). That keeps the system temps in the mid twenties and the CPU in the fifties, even with the fan on its lowest speed setting.

[KeyboardDemon]

My personal opinion is that it's probably better to have the fans sucking the heat (well, hot air) out of the case, than hoping you'll blow enough cool air in to make a difference.

Not sure how it'll work for a larger case, but I modded a rack project box to take my audio PC recently, and discovered that the best cooling I got was from having a single, large exhaust fan on the top of the case (which is equivalent to a side fan on a tower case). That keeps the system temps in the mid twenties and the CPU in the fifties, even with the fan on its lowest speed setting.

I thought there wasn't really a one size fits all solution to this scenario and with some GPUs the side fan, if placed incorrectly, can lead to turbulence which inhibits cooling rather than enhances it. In this case it might work better to have cool air being blown over the heat pipes or it might be better to have the heat being generated by the GPU and CPU being pulled out of the side. While I'd be more inclined to think the latter is true if it were my PC I would experiment to find out what works best.

[MrRockliffe]

Generally speaking, open air coolers will spread the air throughout the side of the card. As the side panel is perpendicular to the card (assuming RPM isn't too high) it shouldn't create bad turbulence if having it as exhaust (which is how I'd have it in your position).

[Murph02]

I have my two side fans blowing in to try and supply cool air for the gpu and because i have them filtered so as to try and keep positive air pressure in the case and minimise dust intake.

[KeyboardDemon]

Generally speaking, open air coolers will spread the air throughout the side of the card. As the side panel is perpendicular to the card (assuming RPM isn't too high) it shouldn't create bad turbulence if having it as exhaust (which is how I'd have it in your position).

So exhaust then.

I have my two side fans blowing in to try and supply cool air for the gpu and because i have them filtered so as to try and keep positive air pressure in the case and minimise dust intake.

Or Intake?

Still sounds like you need to try it one way, test, record results and then compare to the alternative, however intake would need filters and if the fan can't be filtered then simply go for the exhaust option.

[pastymuncher]

I have a 200mm on mine set up as a intake. As I am using a core only block on my gpu it keeps the heatsink on the vrm's nice and cool. It keeps the motherboard and ram cool as well. If using air powered cooling though I would be worried that it was taking air that the gpu fan would normally have. I guess it would be best to test both ways as others have said.

[Joshyy]

I personally used them as an intake, blowing cool air over the cards which will then be sucked out the top. But depending on your configuration exhaust would also be adequate.

[Ttaskmaster]

Yup, testing is the best way to find the best config.
I personally play several different games for about an hour each and then reconfig the fans, rinse & repeat.
With my rig having 9 fans though, it's a right pain in the bum sometimes!!

Remember to record the room's ambient temperature each time and subtract that from your temperature readings, as this will give you more accurate results!

[deejayburnout]

I swapped the direction of the fan about 2 days ago and so far it looks to be the same with temp on idle bit slightly lower when under load. Going to give it a few more days and see how it pans out.

[Biscuit]

As mentioned above, every case will behave slightly differently but as a general rule of thumb, you get less dust when there is a positive air pressure (more active intake than exhaust).
IMO, Its usually best to think about the flow of the air, rather than just the quantity of it. Sometimes by adding airflow from multiple directions, you can create pockets of hot air in certain parts of the case where the flow is blocked by the turbulence.

Im curious, did you have issues with heat before you added the 200mm fan?

I only ask because a single GPU, even if it is dumping heat into the case, should be fine when there is 2 x 120 intakes and 1 x 120 exhaust.

I only added more intake onto the side of my case because im running SLI and the top card was overheating, causing throttling. I didn't even test it running the other direction as I was previously pretty much negative on airflow balance.

[MrRockliffe]

Less dust assuming the intakes are filtered - most on my Z11 aren't, which causes a lot of dust to settle in the case no matter what.

[Ttaskmaster]

Less dust assuming the intakes are filtered - most on my Z11 aren't, which causes a lot of dust to settle in the case no matter what.

Nope, less dust in general.
I switched out from negative to positive pressure and while I still get dust (particularly as none of my fans are especially filtered), it's far less than before and I only need to dust out once every few months... but I still do it almost every week, because I'm fussy and use a BIG air compressor.

If you're getting a lot of dust despite positive pressure, you may want to jig your fan count a bit.

[deejayburnout]

I didn't have any issues with my temp. I am a bit anal with my system temp. My mobo doesn't have any VRM cooling as it's not a high end board. It does allow overclocking and I have pushed my phenom 965 to 3.8ghz with air cooling. I could probably get more out my chip but I don't want to blown my VRMs. I want to keep the temp of these as low as possible.

Idle it's about 30deg. And load around 42 deg.

My computer is in the dining room at it is around 20 deg as the radiator is off in there.

I am really looking for the best out of what I have got. Really want to keep my case temps as low as possible.