Mesh or Glass Side Panels for Better Airflow?

[lukeyk94]

I bought the Gamemax M60 dual mesh side panel mATX case and only spent $42 for an open box model on Newegg (budget pc). I've got 1 rear exhaust fan, and 2 exhaust fans on top. No front intake fans because the front of the case is a solid panel, which from what I understand, doesn't need intake because of the mesh side panels. I believe this is called negative pressure- sucking air in through the side mesh and out the top and back. I do not care about aesthetics this PC sits under my desk

 

I've been trying to do research by googling mesh vs glass side panels, and everything I read is conflicting information. Some say it's better, some say it's worse. I personally do like the look of mesh side panels, and if they do in fact have better airflow and lower temps overall I would keep buying mesh over glass, but this sounds like a test for the LTT team I'd love to see the results. Thoughts?

[Needfuldoer]

6 minutes ago, lukeyk94 said:

I personally do like the look of mesh side panels

I think this is more important than a couple theoretical degrees in cooling difference. If you like the mesh panels, and you already have them, just stick with them.

 

If you want to experiment, you could try blocking the mesh with paper and masking tape. Then you'd know if the mesh makes a difference. Sure it's ugly, just think of it as a temporary inconvenience for science.

[8tg]

17 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

I think this is more important than a couple theoretical degrees in cooling difference. If you like the mesh panels, and you already have them, just stick with them.

This

the key factor in a custom pc is unironically if it looks cool

as for the panels? This is one hell of a topic

Theres a lot that goes into case airflow if you really want to dig into it, and there’s a lot of ways to set up case airflow depending on the case, hardware, environment, etc

Directional airflow is objectively best for thermals, but sometimes that’s a small difference even if it is better. Directional airflow focused cases would be front intake, rear exhaust, nothing else. No top, bottom or side fans or even ventilation.

Its forced airflow kinda like how most servers work.

 

A blend of directional airflow and individual intake or exhaust is what most people do, where the overall airflow pattern is neutral or positive pressure, but the orientation can be all over the place. Intakes on the bottom and front, exhaust on top and rear. Or maybe they have a case with a side intake or rear side exhaust. Lots of options.

Whole mesh cases have to balance potential airflow with not letting air pressure and direction escape meaninglessly. It’s why you see mesh cases like that now which use small holes rather than an actual mesh material, or large holes.

An example of it gone poorly is the Cooler Master Q300L, a known decent budget matx case which is entirely made of holes with magnetic mesh panels. It’s the worst of both worlds, the large holes in every surface mean air easily escapes, making managing pressure and airflow direction impossible. And the mesh magnetic panels reduce the airflow generated by intake fans, since they’re also mounted right on it.

 

In comparison something like the Asus ap201 is a mesh design case done well, the holes are sized right to be able to maintain pressure and not lose directional airflow, and the fan mounts are moved away from the panel a bit to give the fans room to intake through the restrictive mesh. It still has some of the inherent flaws of full mesh designs but it works a lot better.

 

But all of it is entirely dependent on the hardware inside and how much airflow really matters to it. Down to cooler types on the hardware. If you’re running coolers that would be otherwise considered “directional”, like a cpu tower cooler, gpu blower cooler, you probably want directional airflow in your case to benefit that. You want air blowing over the gpu, getting into that intake better, rather than it drawing in more stationary air in the case and basically becoming an exhaust fan. The same applies to a tower cpu cooler, you want it to be fed air, not draw whatever air is around.

And that’s mostly because the overall build would benefit from airflow like that, constant intake and exhaust, it’s not inherently better than something which uses say, a downdraft cpu cooler and multi fan gpu. They’re going to intake air from orientations which aren’t supplemented by normal directional airflow, you just want air being fed into the case for those. How the air gets fed into the case is unimportant. And then they also exhaust kinda everywhere. Mesh cases benefit that type of hardware, where the air movement in the chassis is just kinda turbulent by nature of the coolers in use. Being able to intake and exhaust freely from anywhere is beneficial to those coolers.

 

There’s a lot you can dive into, it’s a matter of how much do you care to do so? For 99% of systems it’s not that important, if the system looks neat and isn’t overheating, it’s fine. And most hardware you’d see in a normal build wouldn’t even need case fans to function within spec anyway.