Question about airflow

[Bob Jim]

If I theoretically had all my components liquid cooled (AIo on CPU, G10 and AIO on GPU), would I need any intake/exhaust fans? Concerns are the Mobo Heatsinks and RAM Heatsinks that may need a bit of air flowing over them.

[Firestorm]

Yes, because air is needed to remove heat from the radiators attached to the water cooling loop. With an external system (whole room water cooling) the radiators are outside but there still needed to be some airflow to cool the motherboard and ram etc.

[onVacation]

Well, you could mount the CPU AiO in the front and the GPU AiO in the back, both in push/pull configuration, which would create enough airflow to cool the RAM/chipset.

[brandishwar]

You've basically just answered your own question. Plus since the radiators are going to be mounted inside the case, and the radiators need fans to get the heat out of the coolant, you still need fans to move air for any remaining heatsinks (plus some components on the mainboard will still radiate heat and that needs to be cleared away) and for the radiators. It's always best to have some intake and exhaust fans that aren't going through radiators. I have one intake and one exhaust in my build that don't go through radiators.

[Curufinwe_wins]

I mean yes and no. If have 360+ mm of radiator exhaust you really don't need any other fans as the air they pull through comes fresh into the case and cools everything else.

 

It's always a good idea though to have separate fans as they push well over 2x the air of standard radiator fans. If using 240mm of radiators or less you DEFINITELY want additional fans, but you can just use whatever came with the case.

[tomas710]

If I theoretically had all my components liquid cooled (AIo on CPU, G10 and AIO on GPU), would I need any intake/exhaust fans? Concerns are the Mobo Heatsinks and RAM Heatsinks that may need a bit of air flowing over them.

The rads can be exhaust and intake, but the airflow gets restricted through a rad, and for good aiflow, particularly for the mobo chipset, better to have some extra fans, specially if you are using let's say a 240mm and a 120mm or similar, since that wouldn't provide enough airflow. If you have the dual on top and the single on the rear, adding a couple of fans on the front should be enough.