Best location for tower?

[nelska]

I usually try and keep mine as close to the right of the monitor as possible but with gaming mousepads and widescreen monitors its harder to do these days and the tower itself sometimes winds up on the floor just under everything... What's your best call?

[TempestCatto]

On the floor will accumulate more dust over time. I keep mine behind my main monitor on the table (so the components face me). Lot less dust and never any cooling issues.

[Fasauceome]

13 minutes ago, nelska said:

as close to the right of the monitor as possible

don't you want more space to move your mouse?

[Cyberspirit]

I have it on my table next to my monitors, except I have it rotated so the front is facing away from me so I can easily access the back ports and I have more space to move the mouse. Plus it looks better. 

[minibois]

My tower is on my desk, but I have an L shaped desks but just put it in the corner - which would otherwise go unused.

Personally I don't like having it on the ground, because dust and harder to get together the ports.

[nelska]

14 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

don't you want more space to move your mouse?

yeh, but I'm tired of having my tower like 4 feet to the right of the monitor everything feels stretched out.

[Stu_Bear]

Put mine on the floor where the air is coolest...that and the fact my desk is too small to put it anywhere else.

[nelska]

3 minutes ago, Stu_Bear said:

Put mine on the floor where the air is coolest...that and the fact my desk is too small to put it anywhere else.

was just gunna say.. pretty sure it ran like 2c cooler on the floor haha. I have wood floors so, but i figured since its above the desk it would vent better but I guess Im wrong hahaha

[VIVO-US]

If you place the computer on the floor, using a shelf of some sort to raise it a few inches should help to reduce dust accumulation.

[greenhorn]

I put my tower on the table and replaced its feet with some IKEA cabinet feet in order to raise it so that the PSU gets sufficient airflow  This also allows me to use the space under my tower.

[nelska]

I swapped my cpu cooler from horizontal to vertical and put the tower on the floor. but after a day or two it got uncomfortable so now its on the desk.. AAAND i gotta swap the cpu cooler back to horizontal.. again. lmao. This'll be the second time I've swapped it without replacing the thermal paste. I'm gamblin with my life. hahaha

[nelska]

what's in the copper piping of a cpu air cooler? Water? or is it just empty...

[Bombastinator]

I put mine on a rolling wire rack designed for kitchens and placed it to the right of my desk with a printer/scanner on top of the rack/end table thing.

 

in general the idea is to keep it out of the way, but off the floor proper as it can accumulate more dust that way.

[nelska]

I like how the test benches you see on YouTube are slanted and sideways for Max cooling outlet from the heat sinks...

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, nelska said:

I usually try and keep mine as close to the right of the monitor as possible but with gaming mousepads and widescreen monitors its harder to do these days and the tower itself sometimes winds up on the floor just under everything... What's your best call?

 

Depends on your use case.

 

If you have a bling'ed out RGB chassis you actually want to see, it should be on the desk, but then you're kinda stuck if you want two monitors on the desk too.

 

If you stick it on the ground, you should only stick it on the ground if the ground is a non-porus floor like a finished hardwood. If you have carpet, do not put it on carpet, as the carpet is a never-ending source of dust. Do not stick computers on cement floors either, as the cement will generate abrasive dust.

 

Like the ideal place for a small tower is on the desk, but a large tower is probably too heavy and loud to be on top of the desk, and if you want to record audio, you probably want to minimize the computer noise.

[sub68]

I keep mine on a shelf in my desk 

[nelska]

So my best guess on horizontal vs vertical cpu air cooler fans is based on the core count of your cpu. For example mine is a 4 core processor and the hyper212 cooler has 4 copper coils so I would install it horizontally one for each core.

 

If it were 8 core I would install vertically for maximum output to the double core per heatsink. Might not make much sense but to me it does.

[Bombastinator]

I personally don’t see how deciding which direction to install the Cooler in would make a difference.  A heat spreader is a heat spreader after all.

Is there any testing that implies it even makes a difference?

[nelska]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

I personally don’t see how deciding which direction to install the Cooler in would make a difference.  A heat spreader is a heat spreader after all.

Is there any testing that implies it even makes a difference?

Well heat rises and the sinks in order go 0  1 2 3 4. I'm not sure how they are arranged on the chip itself but if it's too to bottom that leaves it horizontally a heatsink for each core. Also 1 runs the most which would mean it's third from the top and would burn off quicker than if it were totally vertical and using all 4 heat sinks... But it's all just guesswork. Ya know. Nooot sure but I do think horizontally pulls the air through the case better imo in my build.

[VIVO-US]

It makes no difference with a top down cooler, but with a tower cooler, making sure the air is exhausted to the most efficient air path does help.  If you have the cooler blowing away from the case's exhaust, then the case airflow will fight it and the warm air will get pulled back to the heatsink.  If it's blowing sideways from the case airflow, then it will get exhausted, but maybe not as quickly.  If blowing towards the exhaust, the warm air will travel most quickly out from the case so the heatsink can get more cool air from the intake.

 

As for the cores in a CPU, the chip is placed in the center of the heat spreader, so the cores will rarely be anywhere near the sides of the whole piece.  The middle heatpipes will typically do the most work, and the outer ones essentially pickup the leftover heat.

[Blue4130]

3 hours ago, nelska said:

So my best guess on horizontal vs vertical cpu air cooler fans is based on the core count of your cpu. For example mine is a 4 core processor and the hyper212 cooler has 4 copper coils so I would install it horizontally one for each core.

 

If it were 8 core I would install vertically for maximum output to the double core per heatsink. Might not make much sense but to me it does.

This is the most nonsense I've read in a long while. That's not how cores are laid out. 

[nelska]

1 minute ago, Blue4130 said:

This is the most nonsense I've read in a long while. That's not how cores are laid out. 

How are they? I thought it was squares from left top 0 right top 1 left bottom 2 left bottom 3? They are all different. I think it goes top to bottom 0123. with the most used one second from the top. so youd want to arrange the cooler so each core gets its own heatsink. Horizontally.

[nelska]

where the heat sinks line up...

 

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

This is the most nonsense I've read in a long while. That's not how cores are laid out. 

5 minutes ago, nelska said:

How are they? I thought it was squares from left top 0 right top 1 left bottom 2 left bottom 3? They are all different. I think it goes top to bottom 0123. with the most used one second from the top. so youd want to arrange the cooler so each core gets its own heatsink. Horizontally.

I don’t know how a given chip is laid out either. I suspect it changes from chip model to chip model, but the heat from cpu traces has to travel through the silicon, then the tim, then the heatspreader, then more tim before it even gets TO the cooler.  It’s not like you can allocate heat from individual pipes.

[nelska]

which ways better..