Caseflow Experiements + Thermal Imaging

[TeraSeraph]

I recently got a Topdon TC001 thermal imaging camera to use as a trouble shooting tool and it's been awesome for testing PC thermals. I had to make a wooden frame side panel with a cling wrap window to allow IR band light to pass through as the regular glass is thermally opaque and highly reflective. The cling wrap emits weak thermal radiation which is nice as it shows the heat pattern that would be spread across the glass while still being transparent for the most part. I plan to test several different flow regimes as it is useful to understand how stagnation and local pressure effects heat in the case. 

This is the first experiment I ran while playing Diablo 4, trying to see if my old idea of back to front case flow was working how I imagined it. Turns out yes, it's working as planned with most of the hot air exiting into the dead space at the top front of the case. I know this will cause higher dust ingestion but the goal is to provide the best possible cooling potential to the CPU and GPU. No air gets used twice when setup this way and the motherboard stays cooler over all.

 

The idea behind the bottom fans is to push cool air under the GPU cooler preventing recirculation of the hot exhaust air back down between it and the case panel. The F9 mounted on the empty case slots is crucial in this role as the back corner of a case is historically bad for stagnation and recirculation. There's a divider between the bottom front fan and the top two which prevents mixing of the flows inside the case from which has space for a full rad and fans, without this the case rapidly heats up due to the same hot air being passed through the GPU over and over. 

I've had a lot of push back about running opposed flow top fans and feel vindicated now that I can see the air flow across the ram from the top rear 140mm to the top front 140mm. I will try flipping the top front fan later today and see what kind of difference it makes. 

 

 

 

 

 

[TeraSeraph]

5 minutes ago, oofki said:

I think back to front makes a lot of sense. Did you monitor temps on the CPU and GPU to see if it makes an improvement?

It makes slight improvements the CPU and GPU but the biggest thing is VRM heat sink is much much cooler because there's no hot GPU and CPU exhaust washing over it. 26 C vs 32 C at idle as I run my line levels fairly high to stabilize the undervolted CPU. There's also the SSD that's between the CPU and GPU which normally gets cooked, but it's doing okay given there's cool air flowing over it rather than more hot air. 

[TeraSeraph]

19 minutes ago, micha_vulpes said:

Don't SFF people do this pretty much by default on the Ncase- Sliger - NR200, and other machines that have PSU in the front using the rear 92 as the intake for their CPU? Top Exhaust, and everything else being intakes? Pretty sure they have all tested this pretty extensively and found it to be better for CPU thermals across the board.

I don't really know much about the SFF world, to me conventional case flow has always been kinda dumb and an after thought which is now a legacy issue.

 

19 minutes ago, micha_vulpes said:

I do not seem to recall this being an issue Before the tempered glass days. A lot of beige box machines had the entire bottom ISA/PCI slot area perforated, other than the absolute cheapest offerings and people used to hot glue fans here. A few years later and side panel fans over the expansion car slot area was pretty much normal, even on 50 dollar cases.

Even in my DeepCool Matrexx 55 mesh case the flow at the back corner as stock was getting a lot of recirculation into the GPU.  Even with perforated case slots or no covers at all, and plenty of positive pressure, it still was heating up under the GPU. I do agree that transparent side panels have severely limited cooling options and some late 2000s/early 2010s cases were awesome for flow. 

 

19 minutes ago, micha_vulpes said:

 

I am curious about your ram thermals though : the VRM is going to be stable to 80c or more. But conventional ram starts encountering errors in the low to mid 50c range even if its "safe" to push up into the 80C range. I would be concerned about this affecting total system stability for long term loads?  Your ram looks pretty hot in the flir

It's not as hot as you think. The temperature gradient is exaggerated for easier visualization. The hotter parts of the GPU are only 36-38C and the middle sticks of ram are sitting at ~33. There's a clear difference between the RAM heatsinks and the other hot spots, so they are doing their job, the cooling at the top should be pulling heat from the bottom of the sticks. Keep in mind that there's also a lot of reflection from the hot mobo off of the aluminum heatsinks which exaggerates the appearance of how hot it is.  

 

[TeraSeraph]

7 hours ago, micha_vulpes said:

For the most part, I think stack effect cases would work better and allow most systems to be semi passive, but they are always so niche and expensive. They always performed exceptionally well back in the blower GPU days. Like the Silver stone fortress and Raven chassis. I think modern GPU's heatpipes are too long, and not grooved + sintered so they don't like this orientation much but for blower cards or custom cooling solutions not having to fit ATX card limits it could work really well.

DIY perks on youtube built a case using massive coolers without fans on both the CPU and GPU for a system that can basically just run with some case fans in the top and bottom toodling along at maybe 600rpm or so

 

7 hours ago, micha_vulpes said:

I think my language was not clear here. I meant on the side panel itself. All but the cheapest cases or noise suppressed cases in the beige tower times had large vents on the side panel near the expansion slots that usually pulled in cool air passively due to the rest of the case configuration. Once 3d accelerator cards became cheap then they started putting fan mounts on the side panel. I did not mean the actual PCIE slot covers themselves. My bad. I loaded a few case photos, the two enlight branded ones were only like 80 dollars with a decent for the time 300 watt PSU when they were new. Power targets a lot different now, but the design would still work if modernized a bit.

No, you were clear. This is exactly what I meant. I've used computers since the 1998, my first computer ran on windows 95. I know exactly what it was like to build in those cases and some were terrible, while some were great. The general trend since the mid 2010's has been to glass panels everywhere with no ventilation area. With modern cases, slot fans are starting to become more viable to utilize all the available airflow space possible. 

7 hours ago, micha_vulpes said:

I also admittedly do not run axial fan cards though, as pro cards are always blower style so I do not have circulation or stagnation problems in normal case flow designs. I have also found in the last maybe 4 generations the pro cards honestly are not any louder than the axial consumer cards that they perform similarly to. The breeze rustling leaves outside my house is louder than my A4000 under fully load- and a lot quieter than the Sapphire Nitro 6600XT in my partners PC. Of course I also prioritize noise over thermals

I've always seen blower style fans to be a big advantage over the traditional card that spews hot air out into the case. The blower actively helps exhaust the case and is situated in the coldest air for intake. 

7 hours ago, micha_vulpes said:

Ah, I am used to most flirs having a thermal scale in the footage or photo so I just assumed it was a lot hotter than it was.  Your ram does not have any thermal reporting you can check through software?

 

 

My bad, the software is limited but I can place spot temperature readings where I want. I'll double check but it might not have temp probes.
 

[TeraSeraph]

Here's a Cinebench R23 Run with both a webcam and the thermal camera

https://imgur.com/gallery/0lY2zK4

[NorKris]

would be so cool if u had a dual tower cooler and could see the temps in the towers

[RevGAM]

5 hours ago, TeraSeraph said:

Here's a Cinebench R23 Run with both a webcam and the thermal camera

https://imgur.com/gallery/0lY2zK4

That is interesting how the flow is so obvious,  and how dark the heatsink is. Is there a plastic plate on the end?

[TeraSeraph]

3 hours ago, RevGAM said:

That is interesting how the flow is so obvious,  and how dark the heatsink is. Is there a plastic plate on the end?

I have a Noctua Chromax Heatsink cover, it tends to stay pretty cool, if I take it off you can see the 14 glowing heat pipes ends pretty clearly. 

[TeraSeraph]

4 hours ago, NorKris said:

would be so cool if u had a dual tower cooler and could see the temps in the towers

Eventually I will get a Thermal Right Peerless Assassin to test out. There's a lot of different configurations that it can be run in. 

[RevGAM]

34 minutes ago, TeraSeraph said:

I have a Noctua Chromax Heatsink cover, it tends to stay pretty cool, if I take it off you can see the 14 glowing heat pipes ends pretty clearly. 

Ah, I was wondering about that Chromax plate! Would you be able to remove it and do another video?

[thrasher_565]

the bast case for air flowe would be 2 chambers. one for gpu one for mb cpu.

gpu mounted in the front or bottom with intake and exhaust out the sides.

for mb side ether front to back or bottom to top but since most cpu coolers go from front to back that be best but for aio bottom top.

 

i pan to do this in my antec lanboy. gpu mounted in the 5.25 bay. and most likey bottom to top intake but it also has side fans so maybe in from side and out bottom and top? w/e the case should be super cool.

 

why we dont have case like this i dont no...

 

then to further more you could ducked the fans together and attach it to the cpu/gpu. 

 

with out a cpu/gpu heat sink redesign thats about the best that can probably be done. how much better i dont no

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by thrasher_565

[TeraSeraph]

30 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

the bast case for air flowe would be 2 chambers. one for gpu one for mb cpu.

gpu mounted in the front or bottom with intake and exhaust out the sides.

for mb side ether front to back or bottom to top but since most cpu coolers go from front to back that be best but for aio bottom top.

 

i pan to do this in my antec lanboy. gpu mounted in the 5.25 bay. and most likey bottom to top intake but it also has side fans so maybe in from side and out bottom and top? w/e the case should be super cool.

 

why we dont have case like this i dont no...

 

then to further more you could ducked the fans together and attach it to the cpu/gpu. 

 

with out a cpu/gpu heat sink redesign thats about the best that can probably be done. how much better i dont no

 

I've done some pretty extreme ducting in my case before and it works. Not the prettiest but there's no better way to cool things. 

[RevGAM]

1 hour ago, thrasher_565 said:

the bast case for air flowe would be 2 chambers. one for gpu one for mb cpu.

gpu mounted in the front or bottom with intake and exhaust out the sides.

for mb side ether front to back or bottom to top but since most cpu coolers go from front to back that be best but for aio bottom top.

 

i pan to do this in my antec lanboy. gpu mounted in the 5.25 bay. and most likey bottom to top intake but it also has side fans so maybe in from side and out bottom and top? w/e the case should be super cool.

 

why we dont have case like this i dont no...

 

then to further more you could ducked the fans together and attach it to the cpu/gpu. 

 

with out a cpu/gpu heat sink redesign thats about the best that can probably be done. how much better i dont no

 

But will that one duct provide enough cool air for 280W TDP?

[thrasher_565]

4 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

But will that one duct provide enough cool air for 280W TDP?

a fan can only move so much air. if you wanted more air you would have to duct more then one fan. (or the cpu fan would have to be faster then the front fan to need more air)

just having more fans in front dose not mean more air go to the cpu. and they can cause turlance so the air flow is not strait any way.

but i guess has to be tested to really know.

[RevGAM]

8 minutes ago, thrasher_565 said:

a fan can only move so much air. if you wanted more air you would have to duct more then one fan. (or the cpu fan would have to be faster then the front fan to need more air)

just having more fans in front dose not mean more air go to the cpu. and they can cause turlance so the air flow is not strait any way.

but i guess has to be tested to really know.

Would cardboard be a terrible idea? Temps don't reach 451 F anyways. 

[thrasher_565]

3 minutes ago, RevGAM said:

Would cardboard be a terrible idea? Temps don't reach 451 F anyways. 

should be fine short time for testing thow a round tube would be better air flow.

[TeraSeraph]

1 hour ago, RevGAM said:

But will that one duct provide enough cool air for 280W TDP?

Yes, with a big enough heatsink it should be possible. Though the airflow will have to be like 3-4 m/s through the duct. 
 

 

1 hour ago, RevGAM said:

Would cardboard be a terrible idea? Temps don't reach 451 F anyways. 

hot glue and cardboard is great for prototyping and semi permanent setups.