New Case Question - Airflow

I have brought a second hand Lian Li PC-S80 for a bargain, case review below

http://www.dansdata.com/llpcs80.htm

I plan to put "My System" into it this weekend, however the case does have a the old Lian Li Airflow design

The front and rear 120mm fans are all intake and the rear fan has a CPU cooler shroud, at the top of the case there is a 10-15cm gap above the PSU to catch the warm air and exhaust it with a 80mm fan, and according to the reviews it seems to work fine with rigs that don't generate loads of heat (like mine) and makes for a very quiet machine, so would like to stick to this setup; at first anyway.

Only glitch is my CPU cooler is a Zalman 9500AT, & I think the Lian Li shroud idea is more designed towards downward (towards motherboard) blowing CPU coolers

http://techgage.com/article/zalman_9...75_cpu_cooler/

With this cooler there would be no point directing the airflow to the back of the case as usual as this would counteract the intake fan, so what would people advise the best orientation of the CPU cooler?

1. Blowing air up into the PSU (Corsair VX450)

2. Oriented the same as the rear intake so blowing air towards the front of the case for it to rise to the top area to be expelled as per the design.

I don't fancy changing the CPU cooler for a downward blowing one as I've only had it a month or so and don't want to keep spending more money

There is a 3rd option and thats to reverse the rear 120mm fan, but thats not really how the case was designed.

I know I could also try all 3 but I don't have much spare time at the mo.

I still have Vista installed on the PC so what would be a couple of good (FREE) Temp monitoring programmes I could use to test the setup??

Anyone else with this case, how have you got it setup?

Thanks :)

Im an avid overclocker, and keeping hardware cool is in my list of top ten.

I will always advice with intake at front of case, exhaust at back and cpu fans directing into the exhaust fans at the back. This flow has been proven over and over to be the best.

Heatsinks that take air away and up are not as good as proven in benchmarks where the Noctua with is intake/exhaust (in one side out the other) idea creates the best air cooling solutions.

take what you want from this.

Ok to start with this is a positive pressure case design.
you have two front fans sucking air in and the one rear fan sucking air in, no air vents other than at the top rear of the case.
that positive pressure forces air out of the only hole it has, ie the top vent and through the PSU (I guess this was designed with a front back 80mm fan psu not a 120mm psu)

You are correct in thinking that the internal duct is there to guide air down onto the cooler which would work against the zalman9500 (although it looks more like a defelector than a duct)
The duct that attaches to the back of the case is designed to help block the noise and seperate the air comeing out from the air getting drawn in by the rear fan.

Now to set this up as it's originally intended
Mount the 9500 blowing air to the front of the case, remove the internal duct/deflector
Mount the VX450 upside down so the fan is at the top.
Fit the rear duct as normal.

However you could also turn this into a standard front to back layout.
Flip the rear fan over so it's sucking air out, remove the internal duct/deflector
Mount the 9500 blowing air toward the back of the case
mount the PSU ether way up.

PS the double walled side panels, which become air ducts, so that the front fans actually suck in air from the side.
This design is rare in the EU and US but is more commonly found in Japan for some reason.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pob255

Now to set this up as it's originally intended
Mount the 9500 blowing air to the front of the case, remove the internal duct/deflector
Mount the VX450 upside down so the fan is at the top.
Fit the rear duct as normal.

However you could also turn this into a standard front to back layout.
Flip the rear fan over so it's sucking air out, remove the internal duct/deflector
Mount the 9500 blowing air toward the back of the case
mount the PSU ether way up.

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Thanks for the great response, didn't think about mounting the PSU upside down, this could help to draw hot air to the top of the case as the design intended

Think I'll try your option 1, I'm not really adverse to reversing the rear 120mm fan direction, but I feel I should at least try out the +ve airflow design first, before ditching it for the conventional way.

So what about Temp monitor programmes, should I get Prime also to stress test this config?