Gpu cooling: Doing it right?

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tazer101

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Apr 13, 2012
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Hi there everyone, i have a question involving the airflow of my graphics card cooling setup. I have a Gigabyte Radeon 7870 Graphics card in my pc right now and because of the way the fans on it are positioned the heat generated seems to be blowing downwards (i belive). Because of this i installed a 120mm case fan on the side of my pc in hopes that it would take the hot air from the gpu and blow it out the side of the case. Im looking for some pure opinions of if this is alright or if i should have the fan drawing air in to the case, and maybe some suggestions and better solutions for gpu cooling. Thanks for any help! :D (it seems to work fine i just wanna make sure this is the right way to do it)
 
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coozie7
If it works, you're doing it right! ;)
All graphic card fans are intakes, drawing cool air in.
General advice for future builds-or if the temperatures climb during summer:
Front and side IN, rear and top OUT.
Try to have more in than out and use filters on the intakes, these measures keep dust at bay and encourage the natural movement of the air-cold in at the bottom, hot out at the top.
Most cases have a dead zone in the lower rear where the air can stagnate but as Laviniu Campean says, if the PSU is bottom mounted you can invert it but it's important to ensure the case has strong front fans to feed plenty of cool air in, or you risk overheating the power supply if the system is run at high loads for extended periods. (I'm running my...
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bucknutty

bucknutty

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Jul 22, 2010
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Different card partners design their coolers to work in different ways. Normally the GPU cooler draws fresh air in from below pushing across the cooler then out the I/O panel or back into the case. In these examples a fan blowing on the card from the front or the side of the case works well. I find the best air flow for cases and cards is to have an intake in the front and an exhaust in the back. Keeping them more or less balanced. If you have 2 fans in the front you should have 2 in the back. Of course every case is different with the vent placement and fan months. In my opinion the simple method is the best.

Use a program like afterburner to check the temps with your fan blowing on the card while doing a benchmark or playing a game, then flip the fan to exhaust and do it again. See if there is an obvious change.
 
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coozie7

coozie7

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Jun 2, 2007
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If it works, you're doing it right! ;)
All graphic card fans are intakes, drawing cool air in.
General advice for future builds-or if the temperatures climb during summer:
Front and side IN, rear and top OUT.
Try to have more in than out and use filters on the intakes, these measures keep dust at bay and encourage the natural movement of the air-cold in at the bottom, hot out at the top.
Most cases have a dead zone in the lower rear where the air can stagnate but as Laviniu Campean says, if the PSU is bottom mounted you can invert it but it's important to ensure the case has strong front fans to feed plenty of cool air in, or you risk overheating the power supply if the system is run at high loads for extended periods. (I'm running my PSU this way, no probs so far).
Motherboards have several 3 pin 'headers' to power case fans, by installing variable speed fans and connecting them to these headers it's usually possible to control their speed through the BIOS, it's easy to spot a variable speed fan; it has 3 wires on its connector, fixed speed fans use the same connector, but only 2 wires.
 
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