Odd airflow question.

best way would be a pull design.

This would relate to having a good size fan in the back of the pc. Then you connect the duct work to it with an opening in the front.

The fan would blow outwards... thus pulling air in through the front.

However, air movement by other fans in the system [IE cpu fan, some video cards] could mess this air flow up... unless of course you use a silent cpu heatsink and video card that dispels heat out the back.

You would definitely want a temp probe in there so you could monitor the temp of it. Don't forget about cooling those hard drives either.

I believe the OP was speaking of having an in and an out fan. If this is the case is it a good way to go? Does the pull fan need to be stronger than the push fan? Is it a bad idea all around to use both and that being why your responses were what they were?

If it's a sealed system, then they would surelywould to be equal, although I think smaller fans would help to split the airflow evenly to the different comopents. Best bet is to leave fans on CPU but fit a side blowing HSF. For the graphics cards, make sure you have a rear exiting cooler and just stick the pipe over the whole where the fan is.

No, I don't know anyone who's done this.

interesting, share some pics!!!

I believe he meant a single 6" fan, not an intake AND exhaust fan.

For a single-fan configuration with ductwork that would direct airflow to simulate many fans, I believe using it as an exhaust fan would be ideal as pushing air in would create hot pockets of air, while negative pressure would suck air in through the vents and more hot air is being sucked out. You will have more hot air in the case with an intake setup vs. an exhaust setup. Creating ductwork would be difficult as you would have to create parts that cover all of the primary heatsinks, but it would be easier to create an intake setup. You can find setups like this in pre-built machines from Dell where the exhaust fan has a "duct" around the CPU to suck the air through the heatsink. The fan acts as both intake and exhaust that way and cuts down on noise.

Personally, the best solution would be to have two low-noise, low RPM fans that would equal the airflow of an industrial 6" fan and use one for intake and one for exhaust, as most typical PCs have today.

I've not seen or heard of someone using ductwork combined with a push/pull airflow system. Certainly sounds like an interesting idea.

However, I did see a custom mod once where a guy used a 2 - 18" fans in a push/pull in a custom created case that was rectangluar in shape, the fans on the ends of the rectangle, and the components arranged inside in a way that allowed for complete ariflow over all parts. I believe he also used one of those passive Zalman flower type cpu coolers (CNSP-6000Cu), and a passive heatpipe gpu cooler. The layout of this guys mod looked something like the below image.