Titan Fenrir FT01

I love my new rig and I'm happy, but I've been pondering fan layouts.

The FT01 as we all know has a top 180mm intake and a 120mm exhaust. Right now I have my Fenrir mounted the right way round with the fan at the front blowing air across the fins with the 180mm blowing air down behind the CPU fan onto the fins. Now I was thinking if I were to take the Fenrir and flip it round and reverse the fan so the CPU fan was position close to the 120mm exhaust chucking air out the back would this be beneficial.

My reasoning is at the moment the fan is sucking air from the front of the chassis with the 180mm blowing down onto the stream of airflow from the front of the CPU heatsink to the 120mm exhaust. If I flipped the fan and heatsink it would be sucking air in from the 180mm intake and chucking it straight out the back.

This isn't my build and it isn't a Fenrir but I feel it helps to illustrate the idea. It's just from google images.
http://www.slsing.com/evan/ft01/IMG_0138.jpg

As you can see with the fan flipped the other way and the heatsink reversed it would be sucking air from the 180mm over the fins. Having said this I imagine CPU manufacters sell their fans in a blow configuration for a reason.

How are the temps atm?

In theory, probably.

as it stands the fan on the front of the cooler and the top fan are blowing into each other at 90 degrees.
So in theory having the fan at the back pulling the air through the cooler should be better for it.
However how much gap would that leave between the rear case fan and cpu fan? and how well would they line up?

The simplest thing to do is test it out
get some temps for the current set up
then try the cooler fan at the back and get some more temp readings to see what effect that had.

The other thing you can try is flipping the top fan over so it's pulling air out, this will turn your setup from positive pressure to a negative pressure layout.
Again test and see what happens to your temps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pob255

In theory, probably.

as it stands the fan on the front of the cooler and the top fan are blowing into each other at 90 degrees.
So in theory having the fan at the back pulling the air through the cooler should be better for it.
However how much gap would that leave between the rear case fan and cpu fan? and how well would they line up?

The simplest thing to do is test it out
get some temps for the current set up
then try the cooler fan at the back and get some more temp readings to see what effect that had.

The other thing you can try is flipping the top fan over so it's pulling air out, this will turn your setup from positive pressure to a negative pressure layout.
Again test and see what happens to your temps.

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The gap would be maybe 40mm give or take 10mm or so, though seeing as how I'm quite happy with performance now and the idea of rebuilding the thing again after today isn't too appealing I may just leave it. The disadvantage of the newer layout idea would be some parts of the fins furthest from the 180mm wouldn't be getting much love which may hinder performance.

If it were flipped they wouldn't line up perfectly but close to it, the CPU fan would maybe 10mm lower than the 120mm case fan, if that.

A different question: why is the top fan an intake? All sense would point it to be an exhaust (heat rises). That way the configuration may be even more efficient, no?

Top fan as intake is how it's designed, for positive pressure, to reduce dust build up inside it.
Silverstone did a video to show off the effect http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe-2ZqmSGug
As you can see the structure of the air flow (and the shelf formed by the graphics card) actually form a sort of two seperate air cells within the case, the air flow down from the top fan pushes against the air flow from the front fan, keeping the air from the lower fan moving through the case.

From what I remember user reports show reduced cpu temps if you flip the top fan but slightly higher gpu temps.

@fuzzed out
Try it and see that's the only real way to actually know the effects the different layouts will have.
Ok moving the fan about in that confined a space may be a bit tricky however it should be possible to do without having to take it all apart.

Yes the bottom half will not get quite as much air flow as the top half, however a fan pulling air through the cooler should mitigate most of that and as heat pipes are U shaped it shouldn't have too much effect overall.