What exactly is meant by "top down configuration" for CPU air coolers?

[TheBiggestOfBuschemis]

So I keep hearing this term and keep wondering what exactly it means.Is it the kind of configuration in which the cooler faces the right side of the PC? Similar to this?: 

[G27Racer_188]

Top down is when the air moves towards the motherboard, like with the intel and amd stock coolers. Configuration in your picture would be front to back.

[Guest]

Top down coolers have the fan blow directly on top of the motherboard. What you have is called a tower cooler.

 

[Man]

13 minutes ago, Medicate said:

Top down coolers have the fan blow directly on top of the motherboard. What you have is called a tower cooler.

 

Somehow, I totally missed these type of fancy coolers in my 15+ years of PC building.

 

I think these coolers will cause some serious air turbulence inside the chassis unless the said chassis has REALLY good airflow, correct?

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Man said:

Somehow, I totally missed these type of fancy coolers in my 15+ years of PC building.

 

I think these coolers will cause some serious air turbulence inside the chassis unless the said chassis has REALLY good airflow, correct?

15+ years ago top down was pretty much the norm....

[Man]

10 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

15+ years ago top down was pretty much the norm....

Norm?

 

Well, I haven't seen one personally and by the look of things, they aren't all that popular, either. 

 

As I said; totally missed them somehow, and that's coming from a fellow who's building since Pentium 2 days when CPUs used to look like old console game cartridges!

[Master Disaster]

15 minutes ago, Man said:

Norm?

 

Well, I haven't seen one personally and by the look of things, they aren't all that popular, either. 

 

As I said; totally missed them somehow, and that's coming from a fellow who's building since Pentium 2 days when CPUs used to look like old console game cartridges!

Literally every stock cooler ever made is a top down design, chipset fans are top down, technically GPU fans are top down. The fan on your board mounted P2 was technically top down as the CPU was also sideways. Its only in the last 10 or so years has sideways become popular and even then its mainly only on CPU tower coolers.

[Kc7vwc]

On 11/16/2019 at 3:17 AM, Man said:

Somehow, I totally missed these type of fancy coolers in my 15+ years of PC building.

 

I think these coolers will cause some serious air turbulence inside the chassis unless the said chassis has REALLY good airflow, correct?

Every component inside that's moving air will cause some turbulence, yes. However, the fin placement can (usually) be oriented to follow the airflow front to back. And as long as the air is actually moving somewhere inside the chassis and eventually leaves, it will do it's job. 

 

As for missing these, anymore they're usually only used for small form factor builds, HTPCs and the like as these coolers are much shorter. But, they're also smaller & so their thermal dissipation capability is less than a full sized tower. It's a niche cooler for the most part.