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Airflow help needed, corsair air 540

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  • Overclocking
Last response: in Overclocking
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August 24, 2014 2:52:03 PM

Hello all,

I would like to note, I am not very experienced at all with hardware, building and overclocking. I have also never touched water cooling.

That said, Im in the process of figuring out what hardware to choose for an upgrade, when the new Haswel is released. I know roughly what im after, its hard to choose specifics right now.
I am very confused on the cooling side.
The aim of the system is for archviz.

I dont know what speeds the 8 core, 16 thread 5960x will have, but thats what I'm intending to get, and would want to over clock it above 4ghz.
I will be looking at an ATX x99 and 32 gigs of DDR4 ram, most likely 2800 tops speed.
For the time being, i will stick with my gtx780ti, but will be adding in a gtx 870 when avail.
I do eventually want to go up to 4 cards.
I wont be looking to SLI, as vray-rt doesnt need sli for gpu rendering.

The case i am looking at is the Corsair Air 540.

I am quite lost with what cooling I should be looking at. A custom water setup looks very expensive (i had a quick play on the ekwb store, and quickly realised i would be adding 1k on).
If I was to go the EK route, is it possible to leave out the GPU in the loop, and just cool the CPU?
Is it possible to use an EKWB setup just for the CPU and let air cool multiple GPUs?

I also want to note, that im quite keen on making this build look uncluttered and appealing. I havnt found any heatsinks that I personally like the look of, once mounted. (Ive spent quite alot of time looking at other mods).

What is the best setup on the Air 540 to use both radiator and regular fans?
Is it a situation, where you cant really have both air cooling and water, is it one or the other?

In terms of airflow on the 540, is this correct;
the front should be sucking air in,
the top sucking air out
The back sucking air out
I dont think you can mount fans on the base.
When mounting a radiator on the top, does this block the air from escaping out?

I looked at various AIO CLC units, swiftechs h320 seems well thought of, but i cant find it online to buy in the UK.
The Nzxt Kracken a61 looks quite nice.
With these AIO units, it seems to only cool the cpu, and not the surrounding elements of the mobo.
How do i get cooling to the other elements once an AIO CLC is in place?

As you can read, im quite lost on this topic of cooling.

Hope someone can help,
Cheers.

More about : airflow needed corsair air 540

August 25, 2014 10:06:43 AM

Can anyone give some advice?
September 29, 2014 4:43:10 PM

im not sure about rads but do 3x120mm intake or 2x140mm intake in front, do a push/pull for your rad in exhaust and back rear fan in exhaust
!