Case Airflow Option

[ilia_bro]

 

This is my Cooling setup for the NZXT Phantom 410

 

I have: - 120mm fan at the front (red)

            - 140mm fan inside pointed at the GPU (red)

            - 2 x 120 mm fans on the top of the case that cool the radiator, pushing the air (red)

            - H100i radiator inside the case (yellow)

             -120mm fan at the back of the case as the exhaust (red)

 

My Question: I plan on getting a 140mm fan to mount on the side of the case, and I'm wondering if it should be pumping air into the case, or acting as an exhaust and pushing the air out the side.

                      Also, Is it necessary to get an additional fan at the front of the case, since there is already a fan not to far away, but its between drive racks (the 140 mm one)

 

Bonus Question: I saw the Build that Linus made for his $1500 PC and he configured his Water cooling system (h100i I think it was) a bit differently. Is my setup ok? I'm not getting super high temps on the cpu (around 60 degrees Celsius running the 3570K at %100 at stock clock speed )

 

Thanks for your time!

 

~ilia_bro 

 

[TheIceCage]

You won't need another fan in the front, but what you can do is, if you can of course, get some drive cages out, for better airflow. If you can't it's no problem, the airflow is good enough.

 

Also I would consider it to be better if you take the two radiator fans an configure them in pull, so they exhaust air out of the case. If you do this, you do not have to get an additional fan on the sidepannel.

[KaareKanin]

Would do intake on the front and sides and exhaust on the top and back. Just make sure you have more intake than exhaust. A fan inside the case which doesn't really pull anything in or push anything out doesn't seem all that useful to me, but I've never done any tests on the subject

 

Edit: Also: it doesn't seem that wise to me to push in warmer air that has just been used to cool the cpu

[ilia_bro]

Would do intake on the front and sides and exhaust on the top and back. Just make sure you have more intake than exhaust. A fan inside the case which doesn't really pull anything in or push anything out doesn't seem all that useful to me, but I've never done any tests on the subject

 

Edit: Also: it doesn't seem that wise to me to push in warmer air that has just been used to cool the cpu

 

Use the H100i fans as exhaust? But thats using the warm air from inside the case to cool the radiatior which doesn't make sence. I thought it would be better to use the cold air from outside the case to cool the rad then just get the side fan to take it out (but maybe the one exhaust fan is enough?) wacha think

[TheIceCage]

It sounds like it doesn't make sense, but the temps won't go up high and there is a better overall airflow  ;)

[KaareKanin]

Normally, the air temperature inside a case doesn't get that much above ambient (mine is only about 3-5 over), especially if you exhaust all the cpu heat out right away! That way you'll get better passive cooling on motherboards etc. What kind of GPU cooler you have is also a factor. If it's the rear exhausting kind, you'll have very little that contributes to the inside temp of your case...

Exhaust at the top is also fairly normal due in part to the fact that heat rises. But that's just what I would do. You can always play around with the configuration to see what works best ;)

[That Norwegian Guy]

You'd be better off dropping the rad, current gen CPUs don't need watercooling anyway unless they are bottom of the binning process, as they will hit their dielectric barrier before their thermal barrier on good air cooling too. This will give you a lot better airflow in your case.

 

Either watercool the GPU or watercool nothing is my philosophy, unless you're using a 2011 socket CPU.