Is the Rear fan exhaust necessary with top mounted AIO?

ken30030 · January 21, 2021

I have a 360mm AIO mounted on top of my case and a rear fan as exhaust. I want to know if it's necessary to have rear fan as an exhaust as well or should i move it to the front for additional intake?

Case: Fractal Design Define 7.

Wh0_Am_1 · January 21, 2021

Welcome to the LTT forums! The rear fan is never necessary, many computers never have one. But is it beneficial? Very much so, unless in your case you have create a bottom to top airflow path. Otherwise not as much air will pass over your VRMs and you could lose performance and MOBO life without it. At this point if you are going to put more fans on the front of the case I would recommend that they would be new fans.

ken30030 · January 21, 2021

3 minutes ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

Welcome to the LTT forums! The rear fan is never necessary, many computers never have one. But is it beneficial? Very much so, unless in your case you have create a bottom to top airflow path. Otherwise not as much air will pass over your VRMs and you could lose performance and MOBO life without it. At this point if you are going to put more fans on the front of the case I would recommend that they would be new fans.

Thanks for the tip! I'm planning to replace my front case fans with 3 Noctua NF-A14