Case fan setup

RocketJump · October 26, 2019

Up until yesterday fan setup looked like this. I decided to take out both top fans and noticed that my temperatures were a fair amount better without them. Looking back at my old configuration, I'm thinking that the top fan closest to the front of the case was exhausting the cold air being sucked in from the front fans, does anyone else agree? One of the reasons I removed the fans in the first place was that they were a really tight fit and the one directly above the CPU cooler was flexing the CPU power socket a little bit. Ideally, would it make sense to buy 1 low profile fan and put it directly above the cooler and leave the front slot empty or should I just leave it as is? I'm just trying to figure out what would be optimal for my setup in this case (Corsair 460x).

dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd · October 26, 2019

35 minutes ago, RocketJump said:

I'm thinking that the top fan closest to the front of the case was exhausting the cold air being sucked in from the front fans, does anyone else agree?

Oh, absolutely. A top exhaust fan in front of the CPU cooler will indeed remove cold air that would otherwise have been able to help cool the CPU.

The one above the cooler will not help much either, it only disrupts the clean " front intake -> cooler -> rear exhaust " pathway that you'd otherwise have.

People keep telling me I'm crazy though, so I'm happy that someone else notices the exact same thing I did.

RocketJump · October 26, 2019

1 minute ago, Captain Chaos said:

Oh, absolutely. A top exhaust fan in front of the CPU cooler will indeed remove cold air that would otherwise have been able to help cool the CPU.

The one above the cooler will not help much either, it only disrupts the clean " front intake -> cooler -> rear exhaust " pathway that you'd otherwise have.

People keep telling me I'm crazy though, so I'm happy that someone else notices the exact same thing I did.

You're definitely not crazy, there's a pretty significant difference in temps without those fans. I guess I'll just keep it as is, hot air rises anyways.