Radiator placement

[Brasdos]

Should I put a radiator in the top or in front. Will the top increase CPU temps drastically, and will front blow hot air into GPUs?

[Marfe]

2 minutes ago, Brasdos said:

Should I put a radiator in the top or in front. Will the top increase CPU temps drastically, and will front blow hot air into GPUs?

 

[DrMacintosh]

Doesn't really matter. If they have airflow they will cool. 

 

LTT has found that these style of questions don't have answers that are not, "It doesn't matter."

 

 

[tzxazrael]

@DrMacintoshactually, if you watch the video in the post above you, it shows that the radiator position -can- matter. a top exhaust radiator appears to suck all the graphics card heat (from open fans) across the CPU, raising CPU heat significantly. blower style gfx cards (eg founders' edition) didn't have the same problem, and a front rad didn't appear to significantly affect heat.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, tzxazrael said:

@DrMacintoshactually, if you watch the video in the post above you, it shows that the radiator position -can- matter. a top exhaust radiator appears to suck all the graphics card heat (from open fans) across the CPU, raising CPU heat significantly. blower style gfx cards (eg founders' edition) didn't have the same problem, and a front rad didn't appear to significantly affect heat.

So the loop might run a few degrees cooler.....Big deal. In the end it doesn’t matter in any significant way. 

[tzxazrael]

literally +10 degrees on CPU temps is the big deal.

 

 

[NMS]

It depends on the case. Always does.

What is your case?

[wildgg]

6 hours ago, Brasdos said:

Should I put a radiator in the top or in front. Will the top increase CPU temps drastically, and will front blow hot air into GPUs?

depends on the case and GPU/GPU cooler design.

a front mounted radiator can result in a 10C drop on the cpu temps.

 

with that said if your cpu temps are great already it won't effect the performance of the cpu if it runs 10c warmer or cooler.

if you have a pascal card that boosts higher of lower temps than radiator placement 100% matters.

 

in general i would use a top mounted radiator as your GPU can boost higher.

 

again depends on your situation.

 

[tzxazrael]

Another option is just to experiment. Do like Bitwit's video, and just try out both options. run some benchmarking for like an hour to see how how each option gets, and choose what's better for you. (remember, liquid cooling retains heat throughout the system longer than air, so give it time to cool down after, between each test.)

[Mick Naughty]

Mad a large difference in every setup I’ve done minus 2. One having a 60mm 360 with very low fpi. The other being a 80mm 280 with low fpi and both using good fans. 

 

Aside form that I will never do it again. Air slows down too much and too much pressure needed to over come the rad. Which means more noise. Hot air for the res lt of the components to include more rads normally. 

 

Ill always prefer the unimpeded airflow, I like having the numbers on my screen low. No reason to have components baking when it can be avoided.