HAF X PSU up or down

[csgohan4]

I have a HAF X and was wonderng which way you all out your PSU's and why? I have dust filters on all intake fans and all my fans are intake with only 1 exhaust fan from the back.

Scenario will be on carpetted floor with lots of dust

I would speculate it would be good to face the PSU fan upwards to aid in removing air inside the air and aid in air replacement. However of course this could be hot air potentially and damage the PSU.

However facing downwards would be good to draw in Cool and if you have a filter it would negate the dust. However It wouldn't remove all the dust and potentially be a dust magnet. In addition my PSU had to RMAed after 7 months of trying this, speculation but just saying.

[chuckskull]

Dust bunnies are a much bigger threat to your PSU than heat from the case, I'd wager it was that that killed your last one, filters do keep most of the dust out but can become an impediment to air flow very quickly if not cleaned regularly. Most cases have the PSU oriented to draw air out(equivalent of fan up on HAF) of the case. On the HAF X you also have that huge side fan there and it's at the bottom(heat rises), so your PSU will be getting far more cooling than could normally be expected in an ATX case.

[csgohan4]

Good points there. I suspect that might have been a contributing factor. Perhaps not an acute cause but
More chronic as I have not heard the fan spin really high before its finally days. I must admit I don't clean the filters very often, probably twice a month.

I ordered a Corsair 850ax instead to improve power efficiency, too much power for my needs and negate brand failure/ confidence. But this time I will face fan upward so it will suck air from inside the case. Might not look pretty but I don't like RMAing stuff.

[carvedeye]

The fan on your psu needs to be blown down on your psu so that it it does not overheat.

[csgohan4]

So the intake of the PSU is from the bottom?

[peterb]

The fan on your psu needs to be blown down on your psu so that it it does not overheat.

It is forced air cooling, so the orientation doesn't make a lot of difference.

With regard to the HAF X case, the mounting holes for the PSU (which are asymmetrical)_ will dictate the orientation, unless you intend modding it..

IIRC, the PSU fan usually draws air out of the case, blowing it out at the back, so iy acts as an extractor for the case. Obviously it can only do that if there are air intakes, which can also be fanned to improve airflow. Ideally you want air flow to be balanced, so there is neither positive nor negative pressure in the case, although the only way to determine that is with a manometer measuring the case pressure.

But unless you are running something generating a lot of heat, that is probably taking things a bit far!

[csgohan4]

Yeah since all my intakes bar 1 are blowing into the case, my case has some serious Positive pressure which theoretically help with dust as well, although I wont depend on that 100%.

I was just curious if it worked and had a sound reasoning to have the intake of the psu take air from inside the case rather from outside to help with extracting of air and improve the pressure balance.

It's quite cool inside the case, no more than 24degrees, with my CPU hitting max 60 degrees and GPU 66degrees where most of that is blown outside with their respective coolers.

In addition I have air filters on the bottom intake for the PSU which might imepde flow of available air which possible could have killed the last PSU. Which wasn't a cheap one, which surprised me how short it lasted

But your right Peterb, it might depend on if I can actually mount it facing upwards. I have yet to try as I am still awaiting a new PSU from Scan to test it. But the case is a moddable if I wanted to.

[Pob255]

It doesn't matter that much, keeping the fan facing down will help lower temperatures inside the psu as it draws in air mainly from below the case, the psu is lifted off the floor of the case so there is gaps for air to get in round the sides of it from within the case.
Having it facing upwards will mean it draws air out from inside the case, however it's at the bottom away from the two main sources of heat, cpu + gpu, so most of the air it gets isn't that hot anyway.

ps unless you've swapped the top fans over the standard layout of the HAF X is for the two large top fans to exhaust air out, actually I think there's only one pre-fitted in the top as standard, which would give you lots of air flow but still a slight positive pressure.
If you want to flip it over and haven't got a 2nd top fan then move it to the 2nd top fan vent closer to the front, this way the top vent at the back will become a route for hot air from the cpu to escape.

If you're going to stand it on the floor and you have carpet then I'd suggest getting a chunk of wood/mdf/chipboard to put under the case to stand it on, make it the same size or slightly larger or whatever you have handy that's at least as large as the foot print (the area of space something takes up is known as the foot print)
I've found that this has a great reduction in fluff and dust sucked in by the case. esp from the bottom, but also the front fan.

[kalniel]

With regard to the HAF X case, the mounting holes for the PSU (which are asymmetrical)_ will dictate the orientation, unless you intend modding it..

Is that specific to the HAF X? My HAF 912+ has mounting for both orientations.

[Pob255]

Is that specific to the HAF X? My HAF 912+ has mounting for both orientations.

The HAF X does have two sets of holes so the psu can be mounted ether way up.
I'm not sure what peterb's on about

[csgohan4]

ps unless you've swapped the top fans over the standard layout of the HAF X is for the two large top fans to exhaust air out, actually I think there's only one pre-fitted in the top as standard, which would give you lots of air flow but still a slight positive pressure.
If you want to flip it over and haven't got a 2nd top fan then move it to the 2nd top fan vent closer to the front, this way the top vent at the back will become a route for hot air from the cpu to escape.

.

I've replaced all the fans in the Haf X with Megaflow ones and have in total 4, all of them are intake. I have only 1 exhaust fan in the TY 140 in the back, not including the GPU exhaust slot. I did consider doing a push and pull system for the top fans, but I postulated this would be produce minimal performance and would have more practical problems.

Firstly the Noctua D14 will extract most of the heat to the back exhaust fan with the remaining hot air from the heatsinks being quite minimal. However if I used two fans pushing air into the CPU, hopefully it will aid in cooling the heatsinks by directing any residual hot air back to the exhaust fan and prodvide an indirect benefit in providing cooler air for the D14 intake.

Secondly I would have to do away with dust filters for the exhaust fan on top which would be another entry point for dust enter my system passively when my system is not in use.

In terms of raising the case, I already use the wheels, but it's a good idea to use a plank of wood to raise it further. Although the carpets really are a dust magnet despite repeated Dyson ownage. The dust filters on the psu intake clog up quite quickly which is annoying and also impede airflow with or without dist .

Which is one of the reasons I wanted to face the intake PSU upwards as there isn't much dust inside and the airflow is better despitet he filters. The side fan of the HAF X would be blowing air directly into the PSU and GPU which is one way to go. The filters do help in a way as there is very minimal dust inside the case and on the Noctua D14 after 7 months of heavy use. My old case with no filters was like a furball inside.

I also Zip tied a Noctua NF 12 to the Hard drive cage to help move air from the front intake to the middle/posterior part of the case. This case imo is very versatile and the best I've worked with, although not pretty, but that could be changed with some neon lights and modding.

[Pob255]

Well a couple of things
The fans that come with the haf x are the coolermaster megaflow fans AFAIK they are just non-led versions, so the ones replaced with the led versions hasn't changed the air flow.
Having the top fan above the cpu area blowing down doesn't tend to do much as something like the D14 is all focused on pushing air through the cooler front to back, it'll help reduce dust in that you're sucking air in from above away from any dust on the ground, granted you'll be sucking in air born particles, but that's what filters are for

Remember that heat doesn't just travel in one direction, cooler dissipate the majority of the heat due to their proximity, but heat is also feed into the pcb that any chip is attached to, and it's not just the chips the VRM circuits can get quite toasty as can chipsets.
The back of a graphics card esp can get rather hot and that heat will rise straight into the cpu area, that's part of what has made negative pressure psu at the bottom case designs so prevalent, the addition of top fans means you can get the hot air around the cpu socket area out of the case as quickly as possible and get lower temperatures.
However we're generally only talking a couple of degrees, it should be fine to run them as intakes for a positive pressure.
The other part of the positive vs negative debate is that the older design of psu above the motherboard doesn't actually leave you with places to put extraction fans other than a single rear fan.

Side note, this is why I'll not just stress test the gpu or cpu but both together, tests I did before back when I had my i5 750 and two 9800gtx in sli, if I stressed the gpu's with furmark at the same time as stressing the cpu with orthos or prime95, my cpu results could could go up by as much as 5c (if I remember correctly) and that was just heat radiated off the backs of the graphics cards raising into the cpu area.

Another thing to note is that big fans tend to have bad static pressure, by that I mean their ability to push air into an enclosure against a pressure build up.
On the simple test of timing how long a fan takes to inflate a bag most large fans do no better than most 120mm fans, this is the effect of high levers of positive pressure inside the bag as it fills, now the inside of a case will not get to the same levels of high pressure but it will have an effect and reduce the efficiency of the fans, how much? you'd have to test it to find out.

As it stands you've got it setup to minimise dust while it should still provide good cooling, unless you want to take the time to actually test different fan setup to find out which is best for cooling, I'd say stick with it, and don't worry about the frankly minor effect the psu facing will have.

If you're really worried about dust then I'd consider replacing the filters with some demciflex filters http://www.demcifilter.com/ not going to be cheap but they are very good, a very fine mesh to catch everything and they do a set esp for the HAF X http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpEqA4e5_BU

ps have you got the early HAF X or the later one? the early one didn't have a filter on the bottom air vent, the later ones did.

[csgohan4]

some good points Pob255,

Firstly I already have Demciflex filters and I have the later HAF X V2 model. I remember when I had 9800GTX Sli, my goodness what good radiators they were, great for winter, not good for summer.

I did consider heat from Convection/radiation but felt the cons of having intake fans above to be too costly in terms of performance and practical application. So I went all out in creating a wind tunnel inside. Problem could be air turbulance which could create static air or pockets of warm air not able to escape which could hinder the cooling ability.

From the replies and what I've read, I am gearing towards placing the PSU intake to take air from inside the case so it has more air to cool should it need since it's a hybrid AX 850. In comparison to placing them downwards with Filters in the way albeit sucking cooler air in. However the airflow won't be as good as facing inside the case due to no resistance. However the air will be warmer than the bottom intake.

[Pob255]

But it'll not be warm enough to cause that psu any problems.
The biggest issues for heat come from older case where the psu is directly above the cpu area so end up sucking in heat from both the gpu and cpu, because all the heat would get bottled up there and get pulled straight into the psu.

Restricted air flow isn't a major issue for psu's as they don't draw in that much air normally, if your psu is running at 80%+ load then it might be because it'll be speeding up the fan to cope, it's very unlikely your system is going over 50% load under full load.
if the filter becomes clogged then the psu will still pull in air from the gap at the sides.

If you're this worried about thermals then take the time to test some different fan layouts and get an infrared thermometer http://www.maplin.co.uk/infrared-the...rgeting-223005

[csgohan4]

Thanks again Pob255, will coonsider everything you said.... Once I RMA my MB back to SCAN +MSI, now Computerless

[Fyter]

It does not really matter which side you put it up in the HAF X. The HAF X is a beast when it comes to air flow. I have the case myself and the PSU's fan currently mounted facing the bottom of the case.