I've been looking at ATX cases recently and noticed some have either a top mounting part for a PSU or a bottom part.
I'd like to know if one or the other is better for airflow or if it makes little or no difference.
Thanks.
I've been looking at ATX cases recently and noticed some have either a top mounting part for a PSU or a bottom part.
I'd like to know if one or the other is better for airflow or if it makes little or no difference.
Thanks.
I don't know if either is "better" for airflow, but I can think of a couple of advantages of having your PSU at the bottom of the case: 1) it tends to draw cool sir from under the case directly into the PSU, rather than warm air from around the CPU socket, so theoretically your PSU should run a bit cooler (which is good for a PSU), and 2) PSUs tend to be one of the heavier components in a decent build, so it makes a lot of sense having it at the bottom where it will provide stability.
Neither of those reasons is sufficiently important to turn down a top-PSU case if it meets all your other requirements though - it's basically a case of seing which case has the most features you particularly want, and picking that one...
As scaryjim said.
Also on the issue of air flow, a case with a top mounted PSU has rather limited places that exhaust fans can be fitted (often just a single fan at the rear) and have multiple locations for intake fans, this means that a top mounted PSU case is often a positive pressure design.
Where as moving the psu to the bottom of the case opens up the top of the case for additional exhaust fans, which generally leads to a negative pressure design.
Which is best is an old debate with no one answer
It depends on the system, generally speaking a bottom mounted PSU, negative pressure design is slightly better for cooling mainly because the cpu is often the biggest source of heat so having multiple exhaust fans around it reduces the amount of time that warm air stays within the case and getting warm air out of the case is one of the main goals of case air flow.
It's a desgin that also work with the natural convection currents (hot air rises) using natural convection to improve the air flow within a positive pressure design is what lead silverstone to rotate the motherboard 90 degrees in their raven line (and some other) cases
A big downside to bottom mounted PSU cases is that you need longer psu leads to reach, although this is much less of a problem now as most new psu's come with longer leads.
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The top mounted one is cheaper so i might stick with that one if there isn't a great difference.
Thanks.
going to divulge what these two cases were?![]()
VodkaOriginally Posted by Ephesians
Oops sorry,
The cases are the Lian-Li PC-8NB and the Lian Li PC-7FNB. I'm wondering now what the advantages of Aluminium over steel is apart from one being lighter than the other and more expensive lol.
1. sexyness
2. heat transfer
dunno where your buying from but the difference on Scan (when they actaully have em in stock) is only a tenner. bottom PSU everytime
if you arent bothered about it being ALU then you could be looking at cooler masters for half the pricea "wat do you want" list, stat.
VodkaOriginally Posted by Ephesians
Thanks for all your replies btw.
Yeah, i have to think about it, maybe get a cheaper case and add the extra to something else like a monitor or decent motherboard.
Heat transfer stuff is bollox it was marketing bollox by a couple of case manufactures a while back.
for a case to act as a heat sink then it would have to be in direct contact over as large an area as possible, that or trap hot air inside it for long enough to get heat transfer and you don't want hot air trapped inside.
The only one that did was the zalman fanless case, and that came with loads of heatpipes which you connected to your hardware and the sides of the case.
On thing of aluminium is anodised not painted, the other is more lian-li but higher build quality.
Cases are a very personal thing, if your heart is set on a lian-li then you get some cheaper one you don't like as much then every time you look at it you'll wish you had got the other one and never be really happy with it.
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