Intake or Exhaust? What would be the best orientation for my setup? Please help me decide!

[JaxterBaxter]

Hi Everyone! So I built my first PC a month ago and I've been enjoying it so far and haven't had any issues with it other than PSU coil wine when I play or do anything on the system that demands a lot of power I guess? Or at least that's what I've been able to diagnose (Corsair HX850 PSU btw, and yes I made sure it was my PSU and not GPU). Just wanted to ask questions about my exhaust fans (3 and 5 - See the Diagram for reference), and more specifically my top mounted 140mm exhaust fans. I've realized that the one near the rear of the case is the one that usually exhausts the hot air out more than the one in front of it, because when I put my hand over both of them the one towards the rear is usually exhausting hotter air. The other one is usually exhausting colder air which tells me that it's not really doing anything, so I've been thinking should just reverse both and have them be intake fans as the GPU hotspot temp usually hits 80 degrees-ish when I'm gaming on maxed everything (with RTX if its stable enough, although its not too much of a concern for me). This would mean the only exhaust fan would be the rear stock fan that came with the Lian Li Lancool 3. 

YES I AM AWARE that the extra PCIE cables are hanging onto the 24 pin motherboard connector but I don't really feel like cutting them off and you know, it works lol.

Thoughts, comments, recommendations would be nice as I'm kind of learning how to optimize my system as I go; this is all a new experience to me, I've also added 4 pics for you guy to look at.

Thanks :)

[ChrisLoudon]

2 minutes ago, JaxterBaxter said:

Thoughts, comments, recommendations would be nice as I'm kind of learning how to optimize my system as I go; this is all a new experience to me, I've also added 4 pics for you guy to look at.

Hi buddy,

 

Try not to go too far down the rabbit hole - lol.

 

I would go for 1 & 2 as intake then have 4 push / pulling air towards 3 which should be set to exhaust then have 5 set to exhaust as well.

[goatedpenguin]

It is always good to have cold air blowing at the gpu from the bottom but having an intake on the top fans are not always the best since hot air is always on top of the pc your front panels fans are fine just make sure to have a positive or equal air pressure which basically means that you either have the same number of intake fans and the same number of exhaust fans or for positive air pressure you would have more intake fans. Just to be clear though nothings bad would happen if you had a negative air pressure which is more exhaust fans like my pc does but just be prepared to clean and maintain your pc more often.

[JaxterBaxter]

4 minutes ago, ChrisLoudon said:

Hi buddy,

 

Try not to go too far down the rabbit hole - lol.

 

I would go for 1 & 2 as intake then have 4 push / pulling air towards 3 which should be set to exhaust then have 5 set to exhaust as well.

Got it I'll just keep it as it is in that case lol. Just wanted to make sure and get some tips from people who probably know more than me. Thanks dude

[JaxterBaxter]

Ye I gotchu, I intentionally configured it for positive pressure so that cleaning is easier. Thanks!

[Agall]

24 minutes ago, JaxterBaxter said:

Hi Everyone! So I built my first PC a month ago and I've been enjoying it so far and haven't had any issues with it other than PSU coil wine when I play or do anything on the system that demands a lot of power I guess? Or at least that's what I've been able to diagnose (Corsair HX850 PSU btw, and yes I made sure it was my PSU and not GPU). Just wanted to ask questions about my exhaust fans (3 and 5 - See the Diagram for reference), and more specifically my top mounted 140mm exhaust fans. I've realized that the one near the rear of the case is the one that usually exhausts the hot air out more than the one in front of it, because when I put my hand over both of them the one towards the rear is usually exhausting hotter air. The other one is usually exhausting colder air which tells me that it's not really doing anything, so I've been thinking should just reverse both and have them be intake fans as the GPU hotspot temp usually hits 80 degrees-ish when I'm gaming on maxed everything (with RTX if its stable enough, although its not too much of a concern for me). This would mean the only exhaust fan would be the rear stock fan that came with the Lian Li Lancool 3. 

YES I AM AWARE that the extra PCIE cables are hanging onto the 24 pin motherboard connector but I don't really feel like cutting them off and you know, it works lol.

Thoughts, comments, recommendations would be nice as I'm kind of learning how to optimize my system as I go; this is all a new experience to me, I've also added 4 pics for you guy to look at.

Thanks

 

 

 

 

PSU and GPU coil whine are an unfortunate reality sometimes, most prominent during high framerate and high wattage scenarios in my experience.

 

Regarding fans, your current configuration is optimal given the parts. Its overkill, but that'll let you just run the fans at an even lower RPM. If it puts it into perspective, my system runs 4x140mm case fans and 2x140mm on the CPU cooler, so having 6x120mm intake and 3x120mm exhaust is more than plenty, especially with the higher internal volume.

 

Example of my rig with the 7950x3D and OC'd 4090 that's neigh silent under full load, impressively so. The CPU cooler is setup as such because I have a mesh side panel, which I found to be better than the traditional layout.

 

The only thing That may be worth investigating is removing the forward top fan, since its otherwise just exhausting relatively fresh air from the front and/or creating turbulence infront of the CPU cooler. I have it on mine simply because it creates negative pressure from the mesh side panel, but also operate at a very well tuned low RPM.

 

Things overall are far more complicated when you get this compact with +700W of cooling, so the quite spacious setup in your case makes things a lot easier, where as long as you're not dead-heading any fans or creating suboptimal turbulence, then you're probably fine. I'd just dial in the fan curve to optimize the report of the system.

 

[JaxterBaxter]

11 minutes ago, Agall said:

PSU and GPU coil whine are an unfortunate reality sometimes, most prominent during high framerate and high wattage scenarios in my experience.

 

Regarding fans, your current configuration is optimal given the parts. Its overkill, but that'll let you just run the fans at an even lower RPM. If it puts it into perspective, my system runs 4x140mm case fans and 2x140mm on the CPU cooler, so having 6x120mm intake and 3x120mm exhaust is more than plenty, especially with the higher internal volume.

 

Example of my rig with the 7950x3D and OC'd 4090 that's neigh silent under full load, impressively so. The CPU cooler is setup as such because I have a mesh side panel, which I found to be better than the traditional layout.

 

The only thing That may be worth investigating is removing the forward top fan, since its otherwise just exhausting relatively fresh air from the front and/or creating turbulence infront of the CPU cooler. I have it on mine simply because it creates negative pressure from the mesh side panel, but also operate at a very well tuned low RPM.

 

Things overall are far more complicated when you get this compact with +700W of cooling, so the quite spacious setup in your case makes things a lot easier, where as long as you're not dead-heading any fans or creating suboptimal turbulence, then you're probably fine. I'd just dial in the fan curve to optimize the report of the system.

 

thanks for the detailed feedback, also your build is actually sick. I wanna try overclocking my 7900XTX but I don't know what I'm doing so I just kinda left it lol. However, I wanted to ask you this since you brought it up... How do you tune your fans because I kind of just put them all to "smart fan mode" and left it cause I didn't; really wanna poke around with stuff I didn't really understand, and to be fair, the system is very quite even when Im at ultra settings (including RTX). Its jsut the unfortunate coil wine on the PSU.

[goatedpenguin]

If you want to fix psu/gpu coil whine usually you would just undervolt the gpu a bit which would not affect performance but in the case of a psu consider drawing less power from it and usually after some months of use the coil whine disappears(at least in my case, your mileage may vary). another thing you can try is making sure all cables are connected properly to the psu and to draw less power from the psu undervolt the gpu and/or cpu which should fix the issue but not too much.

[Agall]

1 hour ago, JaxterBaxter said:

thanks for the detailed feedback, also your build is actually sick. I wanna try overclocking my 7900XTX but I don't know what I'm doing so I just kinda left it lol. However, I wanted to ask you this since you brought it up... How do you tune your fans because I kind of just put them all to "smart fan mode" and left it cause I didn't; really wanna poke around with stuff I didn't really understand, and to be fair, the system is very quite even when Im at ultra settings (including RTX). Its jsut the unfortunate coil wine on the PSU.

I custom dial the fan curve, they're all quite aggressively low and I believe won't hit higher than 80% at 100C even. You can also set them to gauge off the temperature of PCIE_1, like the bottom fans for the GPU. Its a bit of trial and error, usually best to start out high then dial down till you get the sound report you find comfortable.

[JaxterBaxter]

1 hour ago, goatedpenguin said:

If you want to fix psu/gpu coil whine usually you would just undervolt the gpu a bit which would not affect performance but in the case of a psu consider drawing less power from it and usually after some months of use the coil whine disappears(at least in my case, your mileage may vary). another thing you can try is making sure all cables are connected properly to the psu and to draw less power from the psu undervolt the gpu and/or cpu which should fix the issue but not too much.

Ya i checked, i guess ill just wate it out and undervolt the components like u said

[JaxterBaxter]

20 minutes ago, Agall said:

I custom dial the fan curve, they're all quite aggressively low and I believe won't hit higher than 80% at 100C even. You can also set them to gauge off the temperature of PCIE_1, like the bottom fans for the GPU. Its a bit of trial and error, usually best to start out high then dial down till you get the sound report you find comfortable.

sounds like a fun headache, ill do that lol. thanks broski