What better way to wrap up a scorching summer than with a last word on cooling? We explain the most important rules for creating ideal airflow, address the potential effectiveness of side fans, and discuss the finer points of graphics card cooling.

At least in Europe, the summer wasn't really all that warm (Ed.: Yeah, try living in Bakersfield, CA). But for a PC owner or do-it-yourself builder, the issues of waste heat, cooling, and ambient temperature are always worth thinking about. That's why we're going to start at the very beginning in this, our introduction to cooling. Every year we have new readers, and every year we see some of the same questions posed in our forums. The very last thing we want is for an expensive project to fail as a result of a mistake made in the most basic tenets of keeping hardware running at acceptable temperatures.
Because the topic is extensive, and because we want to offer a comprehensive tutorial, we'll present the whole story in two parts (the second of which will appear next week).
So, first we'll talk about the best sort of chassis, including the mounting location of the power supply. Then, we'll take a look at the potential drawbacks of other solutions. Optimized airflow is the most important consideration in an air-cooled system, so we plan to go into a lot of detail on that. Then, we'll take a look at classic case fans, and show why even a beginner doesn't need to be afraid of applying thermal paste. If you also bear in mind the importance of having space between your multi-GPU configuration and understand why the often-maligned side-panel fan can be useful, your PC will be better-equipped to survive next summer's heat.
- Back To Basics On Cooling
- Cooling Theory Made Easy
- Our Test System
- Power Supply: Mounting Location And Chassis Selection
- Airflow: Install Tower Coolers Right-Side-Up
- Airflow: Horizontally-Mounted Tower Cooler
- Airflow: Common Installation Errors
- Airflow: Unique To Downward-Facing Blowers
- Airflow: Hard Drive Cooling
- Airflow: Measurements And Comparisons
- Airflow: Ventilate Graphics Cards Well
- In Anticipation Of Part Two
If you plan ahead of time, you can make a super quiet and cool running system. It's easier to build a cool and quiet system from the start than retroactively go back and try to make a noisy (and/or hot) system quiet with great temps.
I'll be waiting for article 2.
All kidding aside...curious though, the test setup is on AMD CPUs. What about Intel CPUs? I would assume many of the concepts are similar.
Would be better if there's some tips on dust management.
PSU's don't pull that much air, normally. So unless your Unit kicks it's fan speed way up there then don't royy abotu it and do as suggested. If it doesn't work then you can always just flip it back to where it was.
LOL, you both in the US and Australia think that it is hot at your home.
Come taste the hot weather + high humidity in the Gulf countries.
Seconded
However, the compilation of articles on Silent PC Review provide much more thorough details on air-cooling effectively. SPCR also comments on noise characteristics, with detailed comments on specific component selection. It makes this article kind of redundant.
only prob with the side fan is that most manufacturers don't include dust filters on the side went, even if the front and psu intakes have it. you can always make/buy one though...
i was going to make a similar comment regarding Indian summers
Positive air pressure in a case, that has optimal channels for air movement, will cool components better than neutral, or negative pressure.
All else equal, the positive air pressure creates more small eddies that pull more heat from the surface of components, which would otherwise be missed.
You can test this, grab a good tower case, with a bottom mounted PSU, well groomed cabling, and make sure the case has no perforated walls (which defeats the purpose of air pressure testing). If you have 6 fans, 3 point in and 3 point out, in any configuration, it will cool less effectively than arranging the same 6 fans in a 4 in 2 out configuration.
Try it and see if you get the same results...also any thermodynamic engineers care to join in? I am no engineer, just interested.
As for the case you're working with in this article...I would not recommend it to anyone. These cases with the hard drives mounted sideways may be slightly handy, but there is basically no airflow over them. I don't see why a person with a simple tower would need quick removal. If you want server-type features, man up and buy real server hardware. Hard drives don't need much airflow to stay cool. There is no need to add anything to a hard drive to cool them, they should be properly cooled in the first place.