Airflow help. Top fan(s) alignment

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ChazzerB314

ChazzerB314

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I understand the concept of airflow through your computer coming in from the front and bottom and exiting out the top and rear. However, I have a midsize case and my gpu seems to be creating two chambers inside my case. I recently acquired 4 nice fans and have added them into my computer. In total, I have 2 front fans and 1 bottom fan bringing cool air in. I have 1 fan on the top back of the case pulling hot air out and I have 1 fan on the side pulling air out as well. Now on the top of the case I have two fans the one closest to the front I have bringing air in and the one directly above my cpu I have pulling air out. My thinking was that my cpu isn't getting much cool air because the air that gets to it first passes through my gpu. Should/Can I keep this arrangement or should I have them both facing outwards to create a larger negative pressure?
 
Solution
geofelt
At idle, your temps should be 10-15c over ambient.
The intel stock pushpin mount can be tricky; most likely all 4 pins were not through and locked.

Your case and the stock fans are adequate with two 120mm intakes and a single 120mm exhaust.

The evo will be quieter with a 120mm fan and will cool adequately for a decent overclock.

I have become a bit jaded on the subject of haswell cooling for overclocking.
How high you can OC is firstly determined by your luck in the bin lottery.
I had high expectations from the Devil's canyon parts and their better thermals.
I found out that the thermals really do not matter unless, perhaps, you are a competitive overclocker.
Haswell runs quite cool, that is, until you raise the voltage past 1.25v or...
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AdmiralDonut

AdmiralDonut

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Front fans and any bottom ones should be intakes, back and tops should be exhausts unless you are using a radiator in the top, in which case setting the top fans to intake would be better. By having one intake and one exhaust right next to each other you will be creating unstable airflow in the top of the case, which will neither intake nor extract in a decent manner.

Switch both top fans to exhaust and the side panel to intake and you should see an improvement. You don't state what CPU cooler you have, nor what direction the air flows through it. Can you please provide that information, as well as the make and model of your GPU, thank you :)
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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What case do you have?

The objective of fans is to get hot air out of the case asap.

To do that efficiently, it is best to have an unobstructed airflow from front/bottom intake to top/rear exhaust.
I think side fans probably disrupt that flow, but if you use one, I would make it intake.

If all your intake fans have air filters, they will keep your case more dust free.
To be effective, the intake airflow in total needs to exceed the outflow of the helper exhaust fans.
This is called positive pressure.

IN the end, do you really have a heat problem?
A cpu and gpu is built to tolerate heat and will protect itself if it ever gets too hot.
We are looking at 100c as a limit.
 
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AdmiralDonut

AdmiralDonut

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Here, I made a little airflow diagram using my rig as an example. http://imgur.com/lpWknhz The red lines indicate the direction of air through the case and CPU cooler. Ideally you would have everything set up in this fashion, though obviously you also have a side and bottom fan. The direction of airflow through the side fan would depend upon the style of GPU cooler you have. For example, if you have a blower style cooler, as with the reference AMD R9 series and NVIDIA GTX reference cards, then having the side fan as an intake would be best, as these cards exhaust out of the rear of the case. For all other kinds, I would recommend the side fan as intake to provide cool air directly in to the GPU.

That hot air would naturally rise up and either go behind the CPU cooler and out of the top or back of the case, or it would get sucked through the CPU cooler, along with cool air from the front intakes and then exhausted out of the back and top afterwards.
 
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AdmiralDonut

AdmiralDonut

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If I recall correctly, most CPU's and GPU's will start to throttle back, effectively decreasing their performance and impacting on gaming, movie watching or pretty much any kind of activity once they get over 70°c.
 
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ChazzerB314

ChazzerB314

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I have a Rosewill R5 case. The side fan is not filtered therefore is facing outwards. The top fans have a filtering.
GPU is the MSI Radeon R9 270X

I currently have an i5 4760k with stock heatsink. I bought a 212 Evo online yesterday will install asap.

My problem was the CPU before I switched the fans was idling at around 50c and under a small load exceeded 105c. I haven't even attempted to overclock yet. Now my CPU idles around 42c or less.
 
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ChazzerB314

ChazzerB314

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Ignore the poor cable management I'm still working on it. Limited space.

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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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At idle, your temps should be 10-15c over ambient.
The intel stock pushpin mount can be tricky; most likely all 4 pins were not through and locked.

Your case and the stock fans are adequate with two 120mm intakes and a single 120mm exhaust.

The evo will be quieter with a 120mm fan and will cool adequately for a decent overclock.

I have become a bit jaded on the subject of haswell cooling for overclocking.
How high you can OC is firstly determined by your luck in the bin lottery.
I had high expectations from the Devil's canyon parts and their better thermals.
I found out that the thermals really do not matter unless, perhaps, you are a competitive overclocker.
Haswell runs quite cool, that is, until you raise the voltage past 1.25v or so.
Once you go past 1.3v, then you really do need very good cooling to keep stress loads under say 85c.
But, voltages higher than 1.30 are not a good thing for 24/7 usage.
Even if you can handle the heat, how much do you really need that extra multiplier from say 4.4 to 4.6?
 
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Solution
ChazzerB314

ChazzerB314

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I was only planning on tops overclocking to 4.0Ghz. I feel like 3.8 or 3.9 would work for me. Although I am not entirely sure. I am making the switch from console gaming to PC gaming. I play games like Metro Last Light, Shadows of Mordor, and Skyrim. I'm hoping what I have will play these games well enough for my liking. I built this from scratch as my first build. I've run into plenty of bumps along the way and it tends to be very frustrating. But like I stated earlier I noticed my temps were very high and I noticed not a lot of air movement around my CPU, thus why I've been trying to figure out what to do.
 
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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I think the top intake fan is a mistake.
I think it should be oriented as an upwards exhaust.

Past that, I see no problems.
I don't get too hung up about cable management so long as airflow is not restricted.
Can you remove some of the hard drive attachments that you are not using?


Look at the back of your motherboard at the 4 pushpins. All 4 shoud be through and locked.
The cooler should have no wiggle if you nudge it.
 
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ChazzerB314

ChazzerB314

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I changed the direction of the top fans to face outward. Also I checked the pushpins. All four were completely through and the heat sink fit very securely to the CPU/Motherboard.

Hopefully the new heat sink will help with keeping my idling temps and load temps down.

Thanks for everyone's input.
 
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AdmiralDonut

AdmiralDonut

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Glad to hear you're getting things sorted. The new CPU cooler will help immensely, especially if you fit two fans to it like I have with mine :)
 
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