Corsair 280x cooling layout

Chimer4 · February 27, 2022

Hi guys

I want to ask for some help/criticism with my fan setup in my 280x. I've set this up with very little in the way of proper airflow thought, I've just slammed fans in with what I thought was potentially a good place to put them, but with no real proof to what I'm doing. Am I actually cooling things efficiently or just causing problems for myself?

The basic setup is as follows ( I've attached a picture for visual guide of what I think the airflow is doing )

Front intake - 2x EK vadar 140mm

Rear exhaust - 2x Noctua 60mm

Bottom intake - 2x Noctua A12x25

Top exhaust ( 280mm AiO) - 2x Noctua NF-A14 (push) 2x Noctua NF-F12 (pull)

My main areas of concern are the AiO and the bottom fans. Are the extra 120mm pull fans doing anything or could they be negatively impacting performance? My train of thought was that surely more fans can only be better, but I'm not so sure if this is actually the case here. In Cinebench R23 with my 5800x I'm getting about 15,800 multi and maxing out at about 80°C and 4.7 GHz all cores (~17°C ambient).

My 3080 is hitting it's 85°C temperature target with about a 100MHz bump in the Nvidia automatic tuner. I mainly added the bottom intake fans because the fans on the founders edition are noisy and I wanted to try and get a bit of extra airflow over it to help out because of the limited clearance but really they don't seem to affect things all that much. Should I expect to see them make a difference?

Are these kind of figures to be expected with how I'm running things currently, or given what I've cooling AiO and GPU should I be seeing better, or worse, figures

A few things to note, the case is on carpet so I've extended the feet with the addition of the feet from the 580x adding about an extra 25mm. Also I've swapped the EK fans with the Noctuas because I can crank the Noctua fans harder on the radiator with less noise. I've lifted the top glass to give clearance for the extra fans and room for the hot air to get out. The front panel is an acrylic panel with a honeycomb cutout so the front fans actually have room to breathe. I'm using Noctua NT-H2 thermal compound on the CPU, GPU is as it was from the factory.

Thanks for any help, and any suggestions/criticism are welcome

Will

Ralfi · February 27, 2022

I know you mentioned you lifted the height, but being on carpet ain’t ideal & that top glass panel may still be restricting hot air.

Can you test things without the top glass panel? & is it possible to move it off the carpet?

If not for the latter, can the mounting screws for that glass panel be moved to the bottom at all & used for the feet?? They’d lift the case even more. & if you could place the PC on a solid surface (I guess that glass panel may be too weak?) instead of directly on carpet, it’d help reduce dust.

Also, have you tried removing the ‘pull’ fans on the AIO? I’ve no experience with AIOs myself, but from reading, ‘push/pull’ doesn’t bring huge benefits compared to just ‘pull’, & in your case, with the glass panel above, there’s less of a gap for air coming out of a ‘push/pull’ config to escape.

I’m not sure what the point of that glass panel is. If you’re not using it to rest things on, I’d get rid of it.

Chimer4 · February 27, 2022

Hi Ralfi

I've just a bit of experimentation with things based on some of your suggestions.

With the top glass removed it drops temps by about 0.5-1°C. Removing the 120mm pull fans and lowering the glass to original position increases temps by 2°C. Removing pull fans and top glass is the same as original.

Yeah I kind of use it as a shelf sometimes, and limits dust/foreign objects from dropping in.

Moving the case off the carpet unfortunately isn't an option for me. I could getting a wood panel to put it on to try and help though.

Ralfi · February 27, 2022

2 hours ago, Chimer4 said:

With the top glass removed it drops temps by about 0.5-1°C. Removing the 120mm pull fans and lowering the glass to original position increases temps by 2°C. Removing pull fans and top glass is the same as original.

2 hours ago, Chimer4 said:

Yeah I kind of use it as a shelf sometimes, and limits dust/foreign objects from dropping in.

Ok, now I see why you need it. If you didn't use it as a shelf, you could remove it & the pull fans & temps wouldn't be worse than where you are now then.

The pull fans aren't making much difference eh. Do they add noise? If so, i'd consider ditching them - maybe replace your two, brown bottom fans so everything's black (if you care for that sort of thing). Although, the A12x25 are the better fans for that role right, so I understand if you want to leave them be.

Hopefully others jump in with suggestions for you..