Current consensus re mounting AiO? (Top or front, basically).

[1sascha]

Just got back from the local HW-store with a Fractal Pop Air XL in my bag and now I'll have to bring myself to rip my components out of my "old" bequiet! case and put them into the new one. Not that the bequiet is a bad case, but it can't handle my AiO at the top (mobo-heatsinks get in the way) and the front panel is super restrictive and I can only mount the rad with the hoses at the top (PureBase 600). Really not looking forward to all the routing (damn RGB stuff!), but tomorrow's a national holiday here, so.. why not?

 

Before I start any of this:

 

I have:

1x 240mm Lian Li Galahad AiO

2x 140mm bequiet! Light Wings

1x 120mm Iceberg Thermal High Speed RGB fan

 

... and I was initially planning on putting the AiO up top blowing out and the 140s in the front, blowing in. But some folks (including Fractal Design themselves it seems) seem to think mounting the rad in the front (with the hoses at the bottom) seems to be the way to go. Which kinda makes sense to me, since with the rad at the front you'd be sucking outside air directly through the radiator. Top mount/exhaust would mean the fans would be pushing warm/hot air from within the case through the radiator and out the case. So... possibly higher CPU temps.

 

After re-watching one of GN's videos on air-pockets and all that, I was then thinking front mount with the hoses at the bottom ... like Fractal recommend for their non XL Pop:

 

 

Weirdly enough, for the XL they show it flipped... but unless my hoses prove too short, I think I'll ignore that bit and put the hoses at the bottom.

 

 

Anyway: Is this the preferred way to go? With all the cable management/routing and general work involved in changing things like that around, I really only want to have to do this once now..

 

Also: I could go push/pull on the radiator (pretty sure I have another two high pressure 120s lying around) - is this actually worth the effort?

 

Suggestions?

 

S.

[Zando_]

Put the AIO where it fits aesthetically, practically, or for the airflow you want. I've mounted my CLC 280 every which way in different builds and it hasn't magically exploded or stopped cooling my CPU yet in the... like 4-5 years I've had it (I forget if I got it in 2018 or 19). It currently manages to hold an i9 7980XE at 4.0GHz allcore. When I had an X99 rig (i7 6950X) in an mATX case I had the AIO mounted with the tubes at the top, no noise or performance issues. 

 

Unless your GPU is on the limit of its cooler already, having the AIO as your intake is a non-issue (I've only had issues with my ARC A770 LE getting slightly toasting when using a 280mm, 60mm thick custom loop radiator with low RPM fans as the intake, and most GPUs are far more overbuilt). 

17 minutes ago, 1sascha said:

Also: I could go push/pull on the radiator (pretty sure I have another two high pressure 120s lying around) - is this actually worth the effort?

Not really, AIO radiators are usually very low fpi so they don't need much static pressure. If you don't mind the extra slight hum from more fans and just want to for aesthetic, or simply to use the fans you have lying around, then go ahead. I plan to do that when I rebuild my custom loop (tis also low fpi radiators), simply because I want all these damn fans out of my storage bins. 

[1sascha]

6 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Unless your GPU is on the limit of its cooler already, having the AIO as your intake is a non-issue (I've only had issues with my ARC A770 LE getting slightly toasting when using a 280mm, 60mm thick custom loop radiator with low RPM fans as the intake, and most GPUs are far more overbuilt). 

I'm probably least worried about my GPU... it's a Gigabyte 4070 Gaming OC and the cooler seems insanely over-built for that card. Although... with a PSU shroud, airflow to the GPU from the bottom without any additional fans might be a bit of an issue (my current case doesn't have a shroud).

 

Hmm... I guess I'll just go with what "feels right"/looks best. Although... since this case itself will probably be future-proof for a while, I *think* a front mount might make more sense in case I decide to do a CPU upgrade. Pretty sure that would be to something more toasty than my 12600K and then I'd probably want a 280 or 360 rad instead of the 240. Putting it in the front now seems like a more convenient place if I'm going to replace the AiO for a bigger one. Plenty of space between the front-panel and the ATX mounting points on the Pop XL and no mainboard components/heatsink sitting in the way. 

 

 

Thanks for the pointers... much appreciated!

 

 

 

S.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, 1sascha said:

airflow to the GPU from the bottom without any additional fans might be a bit of an issue (my current case doesn't have a shroud).

Axial GPU coolers really just need airflow through the whole case. They suck air in from the case and exhaust it right back out into the case again, so long as you have something pulling fresh air into the case "box" itself, and something pulling hot air out, you should be fine. I usually do front intake, rear exhaust, in your case you could also do top exhaust, that'll work with heat rising on its own and should be pretty effective. Or heck, if you have a 3D printer you can make an air channel directly to your GPU . It's a bit of a side tangent but it's a pretty neat concept:

 

4 minutes ago, 1sascha said:

Pretty sure that would be to something more toasty than my 12600K and then I'd probably want a 280 or 360 rad instead of the 240.

Definitely get a 360 if you're front mounting. It'll pull in a bit more air from outside due to the extra fan, and there's no reason to not maximize your radiator surface area. 360s aren't much more expensive than a 280 IIRC. And certainly cheaper than getting a 280, deciding you wanted a little more rad space, and then getting a 360 anyways. Look at the arctic ones if you don't mind the aesthetic of em, they use a 38mm thick radiator (most other AIOs are 25mm or 30mm) so they'll cool a bit better than the competition. I believe the EK ones are competitive due to better CPU block design, but I believe they are more expensive. 

[RevGAM]

Yes, on the front as intake gets the best results in most situations. 

[1sascha]

This is... interesting.

 

Just spent way longer than anticipated transferring my stuff to the new case and ran a couple of benchmarks just to check that everything's working (it is ).

 

In any case.. without having changed any of my hardware components besides the case, my temps are ... and there's no other way to put this ... significantly lower.

 

 

Here's how my temp maximums looked like after two runs of Time Spy (first one with the GPU undervolted, second one with my GPU balls-to-the-wall OC profile:

 

CPU

 

GPU

 

 

4070 with manual OC in Afterburner ... +175 MHz  and +1000 MHz on VRAM.

 

 

Just for comparison, here's a shot from the same benchmarks while everything was sitting in the old case:

 

 

^ Didn't take pics of my CPU temps with Time Spy in the old case, so here's one from 3D Mark's CPU benchmark. The CPU-temps here were typical of what I'd get in other benchmark or in games. PCH of around 60°C were totally common. I'm guessing that bequiet-case was even more restrictive WRT air-flow than I thought. Add to that the fact that the older shot was taken with the CPU running at stock speed and the current one with an OC on the CPU. I did a full run in Cinebench after all this to check how everything performs now and the cores were boosting to 4.9 and 5.0 GHz and stayed there constantly throughout the run. Meaning the CPU (and system) now seem to run cooler slightly OCed than they did in the old case at stock speeds. Both Cinebench and a three to four hour session in Baldur's Gate 3 never pushed PCH higher than 54°C - when it was more like 60 or slightly above before.

 

Probably also helps that the Fractal is a tad larger and lets me hide away more cables thanks to its PSU-shroud.

 

 

I should probably add that I did of course take off my CPU cooler to do the move, cleaned the chip and applied new paste. However: I'm still using the same (probably 5 year old) CoolerMaster Mastergel Maker stuff I had applied when I first built the PC in April 2022. I doubt that the paste (that was on the CPU before) had gone *that* bad in just over 1.5 years, so I do give full credit to the Fractal case.

 

Also, also: The case comes with 4 120mm RGB fans - and as planned, I immediately threw out all four and put them into..err.. storage. They might be RGB, but they're not PWM for one thing and they only spin up to 1200 rpm and are rated at ~55 m³/h. So I simply re-used my existing fans which are a lot more capable. I was thinking of going push/pull and buying two more 120s for that, but seeing these temps, I don't think I need to buy more fans.

 

A day and €100 well spent, I reckon..

 

Now you'll have to excuse me because I *really* need a Red Bull and a Marlboro after all this ...

 

 

 

S.

 

[1sascha]

 

I *really* need to re-position that LED strip, but I'm too lazy to do it now... and perhaps get rid of Rainbow Puke which looks a lot more intrusive now. I think the bequiet-case's glass-panel had a bit more tint to it than the Fractal.

 

Also not 100% happy about the fan and RGB cables and the AiO's pump and RGB cables at the top right of the board... but I don't see how I could route things differently up there to make that area look cleaner.

 

 

S.