Should I Switch These Fans?

Mr. Fishward · March 5, 2022

I have attached two images. One is the diagram of my PC and it's airflow, the other is the system itself. I am running a liquid cooled, Ryzen 3700X, and an RTX 3070. The intake fans at the top are 140 mm, the three are a part of the AIO, and are 120 mm I believe. The rear exhaust is somewhere around 80-90mm. The bottom intake is from the PSU. This is my first system build, and this setup has been working for me for a while, but I was curious if there was any optimization to airflow I can make here, or if my current configuration is good? I was mainly thinking about switching the top two fans to exhaust instead. If other details are needed from me, I will be happy to reply with them!

RONOTHAN## · March 5, 2022

14 minutes ago, ZAttack05 said:

was mainly thinking about switching the top two fans to exhaust instead.

The good thing about PC building is you can try it and see how the temps would change. I'd suspect if you did that, your CPU would go up in temperature a couple degrees, but your GPU and the rest of your system would likely go down a couple degrees. If your GPU and rest of your system are very cool already, I wouldn't change it, but if they're a bit warmer and you've got thermal headroom on your CPU it's probably a good idea to try.

Of course, I've been wrong before so you might find something even weirder will happen if you try doing that. I'd like to hear what happens either way though.

NorKris · March 5, 2022

top fans should be intake if they are "Rad'ed up". if not they should be kicking the hot air out

Mr. Fishward · March 5, 2022

13 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The good thing about PC building is you can try it and see how the temps would change. I'd suspect if you did that, your CPU would go up in temperature a couple degrees, but your GPU and the rest of your system would likely go down a couple degrees. If your GPU and rest of your system are very cool already, I wouldn't change it, but if they're a bit warmer and you've got thermal headroom on your CPU it's probably a good idea to try.

Of course, I've been wrong before so you might find something even weirder will happen if you try doing that. I'd like to hear what happens either way though.

Gotcha, I will take that into consideration! I was just concerned that my felt a lot hotter (externally) than pre-built systems I have had in the past.