Trying to figure out airflow on elite 130

[Trips]

Wondering if anyone's got an idea on how to properly get good airflow with this case. Originally had to so the front was intake, but the GPU side is also an intake from the GPU, and the other side is a small intake for the tiny CPU fan on the side that came with the case and top is mostly covered by the PSU. So with no exhaust I decided to change the front to exhaust but am now thinking of maybe switching the front to intake, putting a water cooler on it, radiator on the front, and turning my PSU around to become an exhoust. 

 

My question is would this be a good idea. Would the PSU overheat as the CPU regularly in the current setup goes up to 80c under load.

 

Thank you. 

 

Also

Ryzen 5600x

Rtx 2060

2400mhz oc'd to 2933

 

Also I know the wiring ain't great. Trying to find a better way to wire manage. 

[narrdarr]

7 minutes ago, Trips said:

Wondering if anyone's got an idea on how to properly get good airflow with this case. Originally had to so the front was intake, but the GPU side is also an intake from the GPU, and the other side is a small intake for the tiny CPU fan on the side that came with the case and top is mostly covered by the PSU. So with no exhaust I decided to change the front to exhaust but am now thinking of maybe switching the front to intake, putting a water cooler on it, radiator on the front, and turning my PSU around to become an exhoust. 

 

My question is would this be a good idea. Would the PSU overheat as the CPU regularly in the current setup goes up to 80c under load.

 

Thank you. 

 

Also

Ryzen 5600x

Rtx 2060

2400mhz oc'd to 2933

 

Also I know the wiring ain't great. Trying to find a better way to wire manage. 

by default the config is

front intake

the little side one intake

psu fan facing down exhaust 

GPU pulls in its own air.

 

what CPU cooler are you using ?

 

 

you'll  get the cables worked out over time.

[Bitter]

I have this case! I run exhaust out the front, 80mm slim blowing on my board/VRM area, PSU upside down to get it's own cool air from outside, GPU get it's own cool air from the side. My front exhaust is because I'm running a 120mm AIO. Prior to that I was doing front intake but it wasn't great that way, I think with an air cooler front exhaust would still be beneficial but maybe block off part of the non gpu side venting to force intake air to enter nearer to the CPU cooler.

 

If you want I can snap a photo tomorrow.

[Trips]

5 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

by default the config is

front intake

the little side one intake

psu fan facing down exhaust 

GPU pulls in its own air.

 

what CPU cooler are you using ?

 

 

you'll  get the cables worked out over time.

I'm using a noctua NH l9a but am thinking of switching to a masterliquid lite 120 since I got an extra one of those. And that will prob be what I do then. Flip the PSU around and put in the AIO. 

 

Also the default config kinda confuses me as it sound like it would be horrible for air cooling a cpu as if it acts as exhaust it would mean the fan for the CPU and PSU are right on top of each other with barely a fists length between which I feel would cause a mess up with the airflow since they'll be pull in opposite directions

[Trips]

4 minutes ago, Bitter said:

I have this case! I run exhaust out the front, 80mm slim blowing on my board/VRM area, PSU upside down to get it's own cool air from outside, GPU get it's own cool air from the side. My front exhaust is because I'm running a 120mm AIO. Prior to that I was doing front intake but it wasn't great that way, I think with an air cooler front exhaust would still be beneficial but maybe block off part of the non gpu side venting to force intake air to enter nearer to the CPU cooler.

 

If you want I can snap a photo tomorrow.

How do you find running exhaust on the aio. Kinda apprehensive about it as that would mean pulling hot air through the radiator fins. 

 

Also ya that'd awesome to see how someone else has set it up. 

[narrdarr]

4 minutes ago, Trips said:

I'm using a noctua NH l9a but am thinking of switching to a masterliquid lite 120 since I got an extra one of those. And that will prob be what I do then. Flip the PSU around and put in the AIO. 

 

Also the default config kinda confuses me as it sound like it would be horrible for air cooling a cpu as if it acts as exhaust it would mean the fan for the CPU and PSU are right on top of each other with barely a fists length between which I feel would cause a mess up with the airflow since they'll be pull in opposite directions

flip thr CPU cooler fan over to a pull config. 

but any of the configs discussed will work.

 

4 minutes ago, Trips said:

How do you find running exhaust on the aio. Kinda apprehensive about it as that would mean pulling hot air through the radiator fins. 

it would be fine. could also run the psu as an exhaust too

[Trips]

4 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

flip thr CPU cooler fan over to a pull config. 

but any of the configs discussed will work.

Wasn't aware a cpu fan would work well with a pull config. I'll remember that but I think the best option is to switch the front to an intake with the AIO and flipping the PSU, that way the AIO makes it so I don't have to worry about the psu pulling air away from the CPU. Still kinda dicey about having the PSU pull in hot air from the case but we'll see how that goes. 

 

Thanks allot both of you for the help.

[Bitter]

In my system the CPU is the lesser of the heat loads, it's a re-socketed Crystal Well i7 in an Asus Z87 with a modest overclock and stays under 90W at full power, the GTX 960 does 120-130W of exhaust into the case but really never gets fully used it's just there to run some upscaling and post processing. Whole thing runs pretty cool normally. If I prime95 torture the CPU I'll get up into the low 80's and high 70's depending on ambient temps but the AIO I'm running is pretty old and I'm using a very quiet fan probably not best suited to this. I'll abuse it tomorrow with both GPU and CPU on full power to see how it goes but I doubt I'll throttle either of them. I have the front behind the radiator inside the case I think but I'll confirm in the morning, the thicker high performance fan included with the AIO just would not fit no matter what I did. It's an older fan, a Cougar PWM and does OK for static pressure and airflow while being very quiet at full speed. Quiet was more important to me since it's my HTPC box. I do need to dust it out anyway and my new air compressor is supposed to be in tomorrow so when I open it for cleaning I'll make sure my details are correct and get some photos. My PSU is full size and non modular so it's a bit of a cable mess inside and I've got some unique drive mounting going on since I do run an optical for DVD's that I can't say I've ever used but I like to have one in there just in case.

[Bitter]

Alright, being lazy about pictures but.

 

Front fan is Cougar PWM with the HDB bearing in PULL on the radiator, both around mounted INSIDE of the front fan mounting location to keep the fan off the front grill to minimize fan noise from air turbulence. Running the graphics card hard and the CPU on full power with a very old Asetek 120mm AIO the CPU is expelling just under 70W  of CPU heat load and with an ambient temp of about 18.5 C I'm seeing a temp of around 78C for a roughly 60C over ambient temp. EVGA GTX 960 4GB FTW ACX etc etc is heating to about 78-82C up and down for some reason, it's on auto fan speeds on the silent bios. This is pre-cleaning. I'll clean it and let it cool off and edit my post cleaning temps back in but they'll probably be about the same.

I'm not using a compatible AIO which is also some of the reason it's mounted inboard but I really thought I had the fan in push. Might be in pull because of tube clearance issues with length. I don't need more cooling, temps are perfectly acceptable for 3.8Ghz all core.

 

Edit, ran longer hit 87C and 78W power draw. Warm but not throttling and certainly not the kind of load this computer sees on a daily basis.

 

If you choose lower power components carefully you'll be able to build a whisper quiet machine that'll do what you need it to do. The whole system is extremely quiet and efficient which is the key to building in an airflow constrained case like this. You need to be able to move the heat  outside of the case, and an AIO is ideal for this. Sure the GPU warms the case air a little bit but there's enough cooling capacity that warm case air doesn't make a big impact. I think temps are only a few C lower without the GPU running.

 

Forgot to check temps after cleaning but it wasn't as dirty as I thought it was so I don't think temps will have changed. Most of the dirt was on the side 80mm slim fan that cools the VRM card on the side of the board.