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Intake or Exhaust on extremely compact mITX case?

lCornholio
By lCornholio
in Cooling
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I wonder if I should put my rads as intake or exhaust, at the moment my GPU is throttling without even reaching 100% GPU load on both cores, so I wonder what would be the best.
I have an 4770k and XFX R9 295x2 (295x2 has it's own 120mm rad) and a Corsair H80i GT and my Fractal Design Core 500 case has one 140mm fan at the back.
This is a very compact build to fit all this and I had trouble squeezing it all in but it managed.
At the moment I have both rads as intake and the back fan as exhaust, but I'm wondering if might be bad because the case gets pretty hot and maybe there is a lot of hot air trapped inside from the rads that is causing the 295x2 to throttle?
Should I reverse it and use back fan as intake and rads as exhausts?

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I would go with exhaust. Then back as intake. This "defies" the "heat rises" rule and some people might disagree. But if it is not better, just swap it back around.

 

@lCornholio If it is what I think it is (eg, dual rad on top from 295). I would put 1 as exhaust (one closest to hot liquid coming in) then the other one intake. Then back one as exhaust as well.

CPU: i5 4670k @ 3.4GHz + Corsair H100i      GPU: Gigabyte GTX 680 SOC (+215 Core|+162 Mem)     SSD: Kingston V300 240GB (OS)      Headset: Logitech G930 

Case: Cosair Vengance C70 (white)                RAM: 16GB TeamGroup Elite Black DDR3 1600MHz       HDD: 1TB WD Blue                              Mouse: Logitech G602

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium                       PSU: XFX Core Edition 750w                                                Motherboard: MSI Z97-G45               Keyboard: Logitech G510

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I would go for an intake, simply to prevent dust buildup, temp differences should be minimal between intake and exhaust

AMD Ryzen R7 1700 (3.8ghz) w/ NH-D14, EVGA RTX 2080 XC (stock), 4*4GB DDR4 3000MT/s RAM, Gigabyte AB350-Gaming-3 MB, CX750M PSU, 1.5TB SDD + 7TB HDD, Phanteks enthoo pro case

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temp differences should be minimal between intake and exhaust

In most cases (pun not intended). There are some times where it can make a lot of difference. 

CPU: i5 4670k @ 3.4GHz + Corsair H100i      GPU: Gigabyte GTX 680 SOC (+215 Core|+162 Mem)     SSD: Kingston V300 240GB (OS)      Headset: Logitech G930 

Case: Cosair Vengance C70 (white)                RAM: 16GB TeamGroup Elite Black DDR3 1600MHz       HDD: 1TB WD Blue                              Mouse: Logitech G602

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium                       PSU: XFX Core Edition 750w                                                Motherboard: MSI Z97-G45               Keyboard: Logitech G510

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In most cases (pun not intended). There are some times where it can make a lot of difference.

Yeah, it really depends on his current fan setup. I would set the cpu and gpu aio coolers as exhausts and set the 140mm fan as an intake in this case though.

AMD Ryzen R7 1700 (3.8ghz) w/ NH-D14, EVGA RTX 2080 XC (stock), 4*4GB DDR4 3000MT/s RAM, Gigabyte AB350-Gaming-3 MB, CX750M PSU, 1.5TB SDD + 7TB HDD, Phanteks enthoo pro case

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In most cases (pun not intended). There are some times where it can make a lot of difference. 

Agreed Linus shows it happen in this video

...

 

 

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Try everything as exhaust and add another fan if possible - putting the rad in the top front position (again, assuming it will fit.)  Hopefully the rad will be mainly pulling cooler air straight in from the vents while the other two fans pump out the heat from the GPU.

 

Edit: missed the part about the GPU rad - put that in the rear and move the 140 fan to the top as an exhaust.

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