Obsidian 650D Airflow - One Intake?

[stosterud]

The components for my new build are trickling in. I've given cooling a lot of thought but my current plans don't feel right to me. Any feedback would be appreciated.

I'll have a Corsair 650D case. Seems like the bottom intake will be cancelled by the PSU exhaust, so let's just put that aside. The only intake I'm currently planning on having is the 200mm fan on the front (yes, I'll probably upgrade the fan itself). I honestly don't understand why people have an intake on the top of the case. Dust obeys gravity and heat rises. For these reasons, I plan on making this an exhaust point (also, maybe I'll float balloons on top of it to entertain my son). I was going to make the upper fan on the back an intake but figured that would mainly just suck in warm air exhausted from the PSU below it, so that will also be an exhaust. That leaves me with the one intake on the front.

Is that enough air?

Some other points: I'll probably have the Corsair H100 cooling my CPU and whatever comes with one of the high-end GeForce cards. I was planning on removing one of the 650D's hard drive cages and moving the other one back a little to give the front fan some room. If anyone has suggestions or information, I would be grateful.

If it makes a difference, here are the specs (starred items have already been purchased):
*Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D ATX mid-Tower
*Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79
*CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz
GPU: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) 3GB (or perhaps the 680)
*Memory: Corsair 64 (8x8) GB Vengeance PC3 12800 1600MHz 240-Pin DDR3
*Boot/App Drive: Crucial 256 GB m4 SATA III 6 Gb/s
*HDD Cache: Crucial 128GB m4 SATA III 6 Gb/s
*Storage Drive: Seagate Barracuda XT 3 TB 7200RPM SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache OEM
(there will almost certainly be another high capacity internal HDD at some point)
*Optical Drive: Samsung Blu-Ray Combo Internal
*Card Reader: Atech Flash Pro-57U USB 3.0 Internal Flash Memory Card Reader
*Power: Corsair Professional Series Gold 1200-Watt 80 Plus Gold
CPU Cooler: Corsair Hydro Series H100 Liquid CPU Cooler
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64bit


thank you,
~Steve

 

[Raiddinn]

I am pretty sure the bottom of the case below the PSU is perforated and the PSU will have its own dedicated intake from below the case because of that.

That frees up the front intake to supply the video card and processor with enough intake air.

I don't suggest having top or rear fans as intake fans.

The Hyper 212 will probably do just as good as the Corsair Hydro H100 you chose for like 70% less $.

Windows Ultimate probably won't give you any more value than Professional would unless you really want Bitlocker encryption (which will slow down the PC).

I highly recommend you re-think your RAM. 8 GBs is enough for 90% of people and 16GBis is enough for 90% of what is left. Only servers really want 64 GBs.

Each copy of an application can only use 2GBs or, with special programming, 3GBs. Assuming you want to play games on this thing you would be looking at having to run 30 games at the same time to burn through that much RAM and that is without even considering the page file. Your processor would be crushed far before your RAM ever was.

Assuming you want to run just 1 game at a time, you only ever need 8 GBs. High end picture, video, and audio editing environments can eat up 16GBs, but that is pretty much all that can do it outside of the server space.

Having that much RAM has serious downsides too. Especially if you have to use 8GB sticks to get there. Too much RAM gives you a performance hit (think of a needle in an 8GB vs a 64GB haystack) and 8GB sticks in general just give a lot of systems fits by themselves.

CT2KIT51264BA1339 for 8 GBs or x2 of that for 16 GBs is what I suggest to people who want to use the editing environments I mentioned, because it is maximally likely to lead to a good user experience.

PSU - Overkill. I would go with an XFX 850w instead. Even a GTX 680 with maximum OCing on both the processor and the video card can't even begin to touch 850w. Your system will likely be a lot closer to 400 watts of usage than 1200 watts of usage.

2x 680s at the same time has been tested to barely touch 500w.

SSD - If you are scaling back elsewhere, you might want to scale up here. The Crucial M4 256 GBs is really really nice. So is the 512 GB if you have so much money you don't know what to do with it all.

Case - The HAF 932 would give you a lot better cooling than that for less money, I would say.

 

[foscooter]

Side note: since you want a large SSD for boot/OS, then reduce the cache drive form 128GB to 64GB.

The cache drive chipset/software will only use 64GB max for a cache drive, so anymore would a waste (of money).

I assume you will cache the HDD, which is a data/storage drive. This MIGHT be a waste, but I have the same set-up. iTunes does launch it's library much faster, as it's on my data/storage drive. I do notice enough of an improvement to warrant the cache. In fact, I have a thread in here asking just than question, here. I didn't get an answer.

Cheers.

 

[foscooter]

Don't count on the PSU fan doing any real cooling, execpt for itself. Yes, it moves air out, but not as mush as just a fan.

Reduce the CPU Cooler to a Corsair H70 or H80 (single or dual fan design), and mount it to the rear case fan "holes." This should be enough, and it's also really not an exhaust, just like the PSU. And you won't have to modify the case.

Don't count on the GPU cooler doing any real air movement either. All these things do move air, but usually just enough to cool themselves, not the whole case.

So then you are left with the one (huge) intake, and the top fan exhaust(s). Check, and check.

You are looking at such high-end stuff, look into the Cooler Master Cosmos II case. It's a monster! Or the Corsair 800D.

 

[stosterud]

Thanks guys; I feel better about the one large front intake.

Sorry for not specifying earlier, but this will be used primarily for Adobe Creative Suite 6 (mainly Photoshop) and Lightroom 4. I'll be moving and processing ~50MB files around, and Photoshop likes to use RAM. Plus, I've already purchased most of this list. The GPU is main thing on which I still haven't decided.

Also, I was going to get the 800D until I took a closer look at the features. It's bigger than the 650D, yes, but I decided the 650D had more to offer.

Thanks again

 

[stosterud]

Thanks guys; I feel better about the one large front intake.

Sorry for not specifying earlier, but this will be used primarily for Adobe Creative Suite 6 (mainly Photoshop) and Lightroom 4. I'll be moving and processing ~50MB files around, and Photoshop likes to use RAM. Plus, I've already purchased most of this list. The GPU is main thing on which I still haven't decided.

Also, I was going to get the 800D until I took a closer look at the features. It's bigger than the 650D, yes, but I decided the 650D had more to offer.

Thanks again

 

[foscooter]

There are 2 threads going for this same quetion, the other is here.