How can I improve my current air cooling solution?

[LTG.]

Hello All,

 

Let's kick this off by telling you my specs:

CPU: i9-9900k

CPU Cooler: DeepCool Assassins III

GPU: EVGA 3080 Ultra FTW3
RAM: 32GB RAM
Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus Elite Z390

Case: Cooler Master CM 690 III White

3 Fat & 3 slim SSD
Case fans: 3x Noctua Industrial 3000rpm, 2x Corsair H80 3000rpms

 

I have currently configurated my pc in this manner where everything intakes air besides the Top fans. The top fans are pretty 'strong' as they're the noctua industrial 3000rpm fans.

 

PC Cooling Pic

 

I am open to any suggestions!

 

Thank you!

Alec

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SEAL62]

You could turn your CPU cooler 90 degrees so that it's outflow is towards the top (don't know if that is possible with your cooler and/or RAM config) that could help getting the hot air from your CPU out of the case quicker. Other than that it looks fine to me.

[jaslion]

Your fans are wrong. The cooler and back fan should be turned around and exhausting air not taking it in that completely destroys the airflow pattern as you now have to clash fighting currents.

[Bombastinator]

That rear fan is generally used as exaust and has no filter on it.  They make magnetic filter that can be slapped on the outside.

[Archer42]

What i'd honestly do is reverse cpu cooler and make rear fan exhaust and just remove top fans.

The air will go through the mesh on top naturally if there are more intake fans that exhaust ones, to me having those fans of top always felt like a way to generate some noise without any benefit.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

That rear fan is generally used as exaust and has no filter on it.  They make magnetic filter that can be slapped on the outside.

Also if those drive cages don’t have anything in them it might make sense to remove them if possible (might or might not be)

[MartinKweh]

Just flip the cpu cooler and the exhaust around, remove the top fans or just flip the top front fan since that fan literally take air out of the case from the front intake. It did basically nothing.

 

 

[Yoep]

This is the closest topic i've found that addresses my issue. The main issue, for me, with flipping the cooler and rear intake is that my desk setup has cleaner air at the back of the case than it has at the front (i'm terrible at keeping clean, currently dusting out my system).

 

My original question was if it's an issue if a rear intake and the cpu cooler (in my case a CM H411R) are merely 2,5cm apart, as shown in the photo (though with the rear fan flipped of course to create intake)

The heatsinks on the motherboard can take either position, but i'm worried the cpu block will kill the airflow too soon.

 

If anyone's willing to revive this topic for my sake, i'd be thankful.

 

 

Additional information: in this scenario i would have rear and top intake (2x140 at the top) and 2x120 (will upgrade to 140 in the future) exhaust at the front.

[alyen]

I'm not sure how fast you are running your fans compared to the other fans, but if you remove the top fan that is closest to the intake at the rear it could function alright as is without redoing the other fans. May need to tweak all of the fan RPM.

[Yoep]

5 hours ago, alyen said:

I'm not sure how fast you are running your fans compared to the other fans, but if you remove the top fan that is closest to the intake at the rear it could function alright as is without redoing the other fans. May need to tweak all of the fan RPM.

Most of the fans run around 1900rpm at idle, which is way higher than my cpu fan will go at idle. However, i've heard of a trick where you can put a casefan into a cpu_fan2 header to sync it up with the thermal sensors(?)

 

When you say "without redoing the other fans", do you mean i would keep the front as intake ánd the rear as intake? This would leave only 1 outlet fan at the top-middle. This would pretty much be what the OP meant, which was pretty much torn to shreds xD

[freeagent]

Nice setup, but if you want to improve cooling, that case has got to go. I am a big fan of industrial fans, and use them myself.

[Yoep]

37 minutes ago, freeagent said:

Nice setup, but if you want to improve cooling, that case has got to go. I am a big fan of industrial fans, and use them myself.

@freeagentSince you can't see what case it is, what do you mean with "that case has got to go"?

Like i've been playing with the thought of creating an open wall panel as a 'case', or using a testbench instead of a case, but that's not really part of the matter here, as i have an ATX setup in an e-ATX capable case, so there's plenty of room to play with airflow (given i use the correct components).

 

The only real questioni have is if the cpu cooler will see any difference in effectiveness if it's so close to the rear (in this case intake) fan, or if it'll still create a proper cooling solution throughout. 

 

Also it's worth saying this will be a temporary thing either way, since i'm eventually gonna replace the cpu cooler with a 280 water cooling solution (more for aestatics and silence than performance reasons; i think my 68°c on a stresstest is actually pretty acceptable)

 

For better reference (most fans and the hdd tray taken out for dusting) : 

[freeagent]

59 minutes ago, Yoep said:

@freeagentSince you can't see what case it is, what do you mean with "that case has got to go"?

Like i've been playing with the thought of creating an open wall panel as a 'case', or using a testbench instead of a case, but that's not really part of the matter here, as i have an ATX setup in an e-ATX capable case, so there's plenty of room to play with airflow (given i use the correct components).

 

The only real questioni have is if the cpu cooler will see any difference in effectiveness if it's so close to the rear (in this case intake) fan, or if it'll still create a proper cooling solution throughout. 

 

Also it's worth saying this will be a temporary thing either way, since i'm eventually gonna replace the cpu cooler with a 280 water cooling solution (more for aestatics and silence than performance reasons; i think my 68°c on a stresstest is actually pretty acceptable)

 

For better reference (most fans and the hdd tray taken out for dusting) : 

 

I was looking at the case in the first post, which is what I was basing my opinion from.

 

Yes you can use your rear exhaust as an intake, the only problem with that is the front of your case will get dusty if you have air flowing that way. 

 

You've got those 3 fans up front.. why not take one or two of them and stick them up top as intakes? Those little fans have such a large distance to cover, I doubt they are very useful outside of setting a direction for airflow.

 

 

[Yoep]

1 hour ago, freeagent said:

You've got those 3 fans up front.. why not take one or two of them and stick them up top as intakes? Those little fans have such a large distance to cover, I doubt they are very useful outside of setting a direction for airflow.

 

 

That's kinda the reason i'm asking. The air at the back of my case is much cleaner than the front, and if the cpu cooler is just as effective in the changed airflow setup... In that case i would get a top-rear fan as extra intake, maybe even put both 140 fans as top intake (which begs the question wether the warm air would be blowing against the graphics card too much/hot), and have the exhaust at the front with the 2 120s, later upgraded to pretty ánd productive 140s.

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, Yoep said:

That's kinda the reason i'm asking. The air at the back of my case is much cleaner than the front, and if the cpu cooler is just as effective in the changed airflow setup... In that case i would get a top-rear fan as extra intake, maybe even put both 140 fans as top intake (which begs the question wether the warm air would be blowing against the graphics card too much/hot), and have the exhaust at the front with the 2 120s, later upgraded to pretty ánd productive 140s.

140s have more cfm but less static pressure than 120s.  I don’t know how they would change the equation.  Sometimes they make things better.  Sometimes they make things worse.  It depends on how much static pressure is needed, and it’s just hard to predict.  Case airflow is fluid dynamics and fluid dynamics is famously funky and complex.  Very rough general guestimations can be made but they’re not always even right and this may be getting too fine grained even for those.

[Yoep]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

140s have more cfm but less static pressure than 120s.  I don’t know how they would change the equation.  Sometimes they make things better.  Sometimes they make things worse.  It depends on how much static pressure is needed, and it’s just hard to predict.  Case airflow is fluid dynamics and fluid dynamics is famously funky and complex.  Very rough general guestimations can be made but they’re not always even right and this may be getting too fine grained even for those.

Honestly, the way it changes the equation from my point of view is that i get new ideas to use while i'm tinkering with the rig anyway. I do realise that what works for you may not work for my situation, but it gives me new perspectives to look at my own rig. For example, the part you say about the 140s giving less static pressure makes me think that i may need to change my rear (then) intake out for a static pressure fan, while leaving the top as airflow fans, to increase the feeding of the cpu cooler.

 

Basically it just makes me find ways to not break my system.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Yoep said:

Honestly, the way it changes the equation from my point of view is that i get new ideas to use while i'm tinkering with the rig anyway. I do realise that what works for you may not work for my situation, but it gives me new perspectives to look at my own rig. For example, the part you say about the 140s giving less static pressure makes me think that i may need to change my rear (then) intake out for a static pressure fan, while leaving the top as airflow fans, to increase the feeding of the cpu cooler.

 

Basically it just makes me find ways to not break my system.

If we could see air it could make things perhaps a lot easier.  I think that’s why GN spent all that money on lenses and mirrors for that wild photography setup (I don’t know how to spell the name for it. I heard Schliemann or something) and then used it maybe twice.

[Yoep]

19 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

If we could see air it could make things perhaps a lot easier.  I think that’s why GN spent all that money on lenses and mirrors for that wild photography setup (I don’t know how to spell the name for it. I heard Schliemann or something) and then used it maybe twice.

I'm crazy enough to buy it one day, but considering i 'settled' for an rx580, i don't think that's in the budget xD

But the second best thing to seeing air might give me something to work on. But that's not for another couple weeks.

For now, since nobody said it's gonna be less productive per sé, i'm gonna try it and do a couple tests to see if it alters the baseline i did before taking it apart.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, Yoep said:

I'm crazy enough to buy it one day, but considering i 'settled' for an rx580, i don't think that's in the budget xD

But the second best thing to seeing air might give me something to work on. But that's not for another couple weeks.

For now, since nobody said it's gonna be less productive per sé, i'm gonna try it and do a couple tests to see if it alters the baseline i did before taking it apart.

The whole looking for dust thing is looking for the deposits moving air makes.  That whole setup is too much work for a single system anyway.  Hundreds of dollars, an entire room, and an entire day to do one photo.  And it might not be useful.

[Yoep]

Well i tried it, and ran both a 15-minute and a single-pass Cinebench. 

 

Long run: 12 point decrease, 0,2°c decrease

Single-pass: 10 point increase, 0,1°c decrease

 

So.... i'm gonna call it a success*, considering the difference is marginal, but somehow the fans make a nicer sound. Also i find seeing the fan bracket in front of the rgb quite... old-school appealing.

 

*obviously this was a single test run under non-controlled circumstances. The ambient temperature during these tests was not measured and definitely feeling colder than when i took the baseline. Not to mention there is a lot less dust buildup on the fans right now to disrupt intended aerodynamics.

[Yoep]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

The whole looking for dust thing is looking for the deposits moving air makes.  That whole setup is too much work for a single system anyway.  Hundreds of dollars, an entire room, and an entire day to do one photo.  And it might not be useful.

Yeah it's more of a project idea than an actual "i need to do it now". Like i'm sure that at some point i could find the answers i'm looking for by just blowing vape smoke around it in a controlled way (no worries, i'm not gonna do that, i would first research substances that won't affect anything)

Also it would be more for the experience than anything. 

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Yoep said:

Yeah it's more of a project idea than an actual "i need to do it now". Like i'm sure that at some point i could find the answers i'm looking for by just blowing vape smoke around it in a controlled way (no worries, i'm not gonna do that, i would first research substances that won't affect anything)

Also it would be more for the experience than anything. 

That could actually work.  A vape would be a pita though. Got to use your face as the device.  Fog machines are basically the same thing.  They actually use VG as base material.  The thing is just a heater and a fan.  You could rent one to try it.  VG will do more good than pg even if you do use a vape. More visible vapor. If you don’t mix your own juice (it’s waaay cheaper or higher quality but generally not both at once) you might have a gallon of the stuff sitting around (it doesn’t go bad) but if you just need a little a lot of Heath food stores sell pure food grade unscented VG in little bottles as hand moisturizer.

Edited April 14, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Yoep]

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

That could actually work.  A vape would be a pita though. Got to use your face as the device.  Fog machines are basically the same thing.  They actually use VG as base material.  The thing is just a heater and a fan.  You could rent one to try it.  VG will do more good than pg even if you do use a vape. More visible vapor. If you don’t mix your own juice (it’s waaay cheaper or higher quality but generally not both at once) you might have a gallon of the stuff sitting around (it doesn’t go bad) but if you just need a little a lot of Heath food stores sell pure food grade unscented VG in little bottles as hand moisturizer.

Like said, i'm not gonna do it right away, but this is pretty good info for me to set it up still. Considering the investment of renting a fog machine, getting a reasonably small amount of VG, renting out a workplace to do it under controlled circumstances, and renting a high-speed camera, i may do this when i have multiple systems to test with. Maybe ask around if anyone i know has a system they're willing to loan for the project. I'm sure there's plenty people who'd be interested to know if they could do better