Maximizing Air cooling

[EduarDoc]

Hello all,

 

As mentioned before I am a newbie at building and customizing my own system. My approach to it is to maximize performance with the least amount of money possible (as many of us are). So following this, I installed a V5 air cooler by Vetroo (the black edition). I was skeptical but it drop my CPU's IDLE temperature a sweet 7-10 degrees compared to the stock cooler (I am running a Ryzen 5 5600X). The case that I have comes with 4 fans (3 at the front and 1 in the back) and the cooler comes with 1 fan. The problem that I am trying to solve now is: would I get >3 degrees difference if I install an extra fan? and If so, what is the best location to put it? I have all the top of the case available (I would place it as exhaust) and of course a pull fan on the other side of the cooler (arrows). I think that putting both might be beneficial but it would not improve much cooling compared to only 1 fan. What are people's thoughts? 

Note: I will not put RGB on those fans (I know it will decrease performance....jk)

 

Thank you all!

[Aaron_T]

I strongly doubt putting a 5th case fan, or a second CPU fan into the machine will make a noticeable difference to thermals or performance. If you already have the spare fan, then I'd suggest top of the case exhausting up assuming the top of the case is not blocked by a table or other things that live on top of your PC case. If the top ventilation is blocked or impaired, then add to CPU cooler tower.

 

If you don't already have the spare fan, I wouldn't spend money on one.

[Chris Pratt]

If I'm understanding the diagram, you should not place fans like that. The exhaust will mostly suck out the fresh air from the intake immediately before it even reaches your components. You want a smooth direct route from intake to exhaust that washes over all your components. Adding more fans just to have more fans doesn't do anything.

 

As for dropping 3C, not sure how achievable that is just from adding a case fan, anyways. To knock 3C off the CPU or something, the ambient temp in the case would have to drop much more than that.

 

You might be tilting at windmills here anyways. You just need to be below the point of throttling. Cooler is better, but if you're already at 70C under load, for example, it's hardly worth the time, money, and effort to drop it more. What are your temps now?

[EduarDoc]

6 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

If I'm understanding the diagram, you should not place fans like that. The exhaust will mostly suck out the fresh air from the intake immediately before it even reaches your components. You want a smooth direct route from intake to exhaust that washes over all your components. Adding more fans just to have more fans doesn't do anything.

 

As for dropping 3C, not sure how achievable that is just from adding a case fan, anyways. To knock 3C off the CPU or something, the ambient temp in the case would have to drop much more than that.

 

You might be tilting at windmills here anyways. You just need to be below the point of throttling. Cooler is better, but if you're already at 70C under load, for example, it's hardly worth the time, money, and effort to drop it more. What are your temps now?

Thanks for your reply. You are right about sucking in air before it reaches the tower if the fans are misplaced. This is why I want to install only 1 more fan either ON the cooling tower pushing air towards the exhaust fan in the back of the case (following the current airflow) or at the top of the case, similarly, as exhaust but as suggested by @AaronThomas.  My IDLE temps right now are low 30s and under full load mid 60s (tested on Cinebench only). I think they are pretty good, but I want to see what is the maximum drop I can gain before the curve plateaus. For overclocking my CPU I am using the software by 1usmus and I found that is more sensitive to temperature than to voltage and other variables (which makes sense) so even 2 C would help. Of note, this is not essential (i.e. I am not having issues with my temps) I am just thinkering

[EduarDoc]

6 hours ago, AaronThomas said:

I strongly doubt putting a 5th case fan, or a second CPU fan into the machine will make a noticeable difference to thermals or performance. If you already have the spare fan, then I'd suggest top of the case exhausting up assuming the top of the case is not blocked by a table or other things that live on top of your PC case. If the top ventilation is blocked or impaired, then add to CPU cooler tower.

 

If you don't already have the spare fan, I wouldn't spend money on one.

That makes sense! Thank you for the advice

[LogicalDrm]

Adding fan will not change things. You are already low with temps. You can improve CPU cooling with bigger heatsink, or faster fan speeds. For GPU, hard to say for sure from that pic. But unless you can get fan directly under it, nothing will change.

[EduarDoc]

Thank you all for your responses, it sounds like is a consensus that the only way to increase performance/temps is implementing a different solution: double tower, IO cooling or custom water cooling. Which honestly, for my specs and usage it would be overkill. 

 

However, I would like to keep thinkering with my rig. Now, I would like to ask you all about improving the cooling on the GPU. I have read and watch solutions that include air cooling tower and water cooling solutions. By what I have watched online it is really not worth it mainly because these are difficult to implement and the gain in performance is not noticeable. 

 

What are your experiences? what are your opinions? What do you suggest?

 

Thank you!

[LogicalDrm]

On 4/6/2021 at 9:02 PM, EduarDoc said:

Thank you all for your responses, it sounds like is a consensus that the only way to increase performance/temps is implementing a different solution: double tower, IO cooling or custom water cooling. Which honestly, for my specs and usage it would be overkill. 

 

However, I would like to keep thinkering with my rig. Now, I would like to ask you all about improving the cooling on the GPU. I have read and watch solutions that include air cooling tower and water cooling solutions. By what I have watched online it is really not worth it mainly because these are difficult to implement and the gain in performance is not noticeable. 

 

What are your experiences? what are your opinions? What do you suggest?

 

Thank you!

What kind of temps you get on load? Without changing cooler itself, your options are to have fan directly below it like I already said, or change paste on current cooler.