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Case cooling questions

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mitofi   08-26-2009 at 06:43:08 PM

Re: case cooling

I have seen some cases place the PSU at the bottom of a tower. Isn't this a bad idea in regards to cooling? Shouldn't the PSU be at the top - above the CPU?

Also - I have seen suggested builds that have a cooler fan that blows sideways (parallel to board), and a case that has a vent or duct that sort of assumes a fan that blows vertical to the board - thus makin guse of the vent or duct. Is this not as big a deal as I am assuming?

Thanks.

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505090   08-26-2009 at 07:08:09 PM

cases with the psu in the bottom have a case fan where the psu would have been. the case fan will pull the air the psu would have leaving that at the same point it was and the psu can now pull cool air so that it doesn't have to run the fan as fast.

not sure what you are referring to in the second question.

------------------------------ E8400 : GA-EP35-DS3L : mushkin 4GB DDR2 800 : HD 2600PRO : 450W ATX12V : Windows 7
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mitofi   08-26-2009 at 07:23:26 PM

Look at the 'budget' and 'bargain' builds here:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/foru [...] _13_0.html

It seems the coolers blow air across the chip and not onto it (due to heat dispersion element alignment), yet the case has a vent or duct that seems to be intended to work with a direct fan. I have one currently like this - wit ha duct and fan that pulls air straight from the duct and onto the cooling elements.

Maybe I am not seeing things correctly . . . Maybe these cases have a back vent that is aligned with the cooling fan.

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Newf   08-26-2009 at 08:17:59 PM

Well, with a "parallel to board" cooler, the side cover vent/fan will not help much. The important part here is that these coolers do better with rear case exhaust fan(s) pulling the hot cpu air out of the case. You see these in the examples you cited. The side cover with duct is designed for pulling cool outside air directly to the cpu. It's in the right place for a "vertical" cooler, but the wrong place for a "parallel" one.

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Bronze CPUs badge jsc   08-26-2009 at 08:46:07 PM

Many of the cases with bottom mounted PSU's have a large fan mounted on top of the case. Antec 300, 900, and 1200 are like that. In my 900, I have three drives in the lower drive bay. The lower fan pull air in over the drives and mostly out the back of the PSU. The highest drive temperature that I have seen was 29 C. PSU exhaust air has never been more than 3 C. above ambient. I have pretty good PSU's (a Corsair and two Antecs) and I try to operate them at no more than 50 - 60% of capacity. So they do not get very hot.

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