Side panel fan for Windforce graphics card?

[Makariel]

I haven't really considered side panel fans, before someone pointed me towards this article here:

https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/the-big-cooling-investigation/1/

 

... which makes a strong case for side panel fans. But then I read on various places conflicting ideas if a side panel fan should push or pull air from a Windforce-type graphics card:

 

 

the two different arguments I saw in various places can be summed up as:

1. that the side panel fan should push the air in, to ensure the fans get enough cool air to work with, and pulling the air out would interfere with the cards' fans trying to pull in the air from the bottom

2. that the side panel fan should pull the air out, to ensure the hot air gets removed quickly, and pushing in air would disturb the flow and essentially push hot air back into the heat sink.

 

Both ideas sound reasonable at first glance, so I was wondering if anyone has a windforce type card and tried the two configurations to see which one works better? I have a windforce with 3 fans in a R5 define, which currently does not have any extra case fans.

[Max_Settings]

It may help, but most of the time you get enough airflow from your front intakes. There's a reason they don't make many cases with side panel fans anymore, they look terrible and are a pain if you want to take the side panel off

[Cyracus]

Depends of multiple factors, if below/on level with the graphics card it will pull air away from it depriving it of air or feed it cool air so the fans should be able to work effectively, above it it would suck out the heat, no good reason to do an intake there unless you're exhausting out the front I don't recommend that for normally mounted mobos as the gpu struggles for air... anyway did a bit of testing with fans and gpu cooling a while back, I have a large case so the effects are marginalized, in more compact cases it's a larger impact. I'm also seeing I should've done more back then...oh well

 

[Makariel]

Thanks for the replies!

 

Yeah, the main reason I haven't hooked it up so far was that getting the fan cable across was promising to be a nightmare ;-) so didn't feel like doing it unless I would get convincing numbers showing a drastic increase in cooling efficiency. The article I linked above was in an older case, and in my R5 I removed the central HD-cage to enable better air flow from the front.

 

The way the side fan would be located, if placed there, is also a bit odd atm anyway: about the bottom half of the fan would be below the graphics card, while the top half would cover it. In theory I could place the graphics card in the other slot (don't use SLI) to get the side-fan above it, but apart from that being quite a hassle, it would get really close to the PSU, and that would then effectively cover 1 1/2 fans. That would probably make things worse.