Best Air Flow??

demon8991

demon8991

demon8991

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Joined
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Hi guys i am getting my ivy bridge system ready for when I put the chip in tomorrow. I have a Bit Fenix Shinobi Mid case and a Noctua NH-D14, but I was wondering what the best fan setup would be for this case and heat sink combo??

Should I have the fans blowing from front to back? Or should I have them blowing from bottom to top?? In both case I was planning on having 1 or two intake fans at the front of the case and then exhaust fans either at the back or top of the case.

If it makes any difference I will be using a Gigabyte 7970 OC edition graphics card.*

Thanks for your help
 
Generally I would say front/side as intake and back/top as exhaust. However I'd wait for more experienced people to put in there input. Also always have the heatsink lined up with a chassis fan so that the hot air goes straight out of the case, generally through the back.
 
Antony101 said:
Generally I would say front/side as intake and back/top as exhaust. However I'd wait for more experienced people to put in there input. Also always have the heatsink lined up with a chassis fan so that the hot air goes straight out of the case, generally through the back.
Click to expand...

sounds perfect to me
 
I'd rarely use side fans. I just feel it messes up the general air flow.

If possible, use front/bottom as intake, and back/top as exhaust.

Line up the heatsink as above though, so it exhausts out the rear.

In the Shinobi, I'd probably go for something like, 2x120 in the front(intake), 2x120 in the top(exhaust) and 1x120 in the rear(exhaust).

If you really want to improve air flow, upgrade the fans to something like Noctua NF-F12's, Silverstone Ap120 or Scythe Gentle Typhoons. All have great airflow.

kd
 
Side fans will give you a direct hit of air on your components...
The difference in temps on my two gtx 580's when I added four 120cm vipers to the side of my 600T-se is unbelieavble.

This is after I upgraded the rest of my fans from the default supplied ones to vipers also.

In my experience (so might not be and probably isnt) the case in most scenarios - side fans are the way forward.
 
Yeah, side fans can be greatly beneficial. However generally speaking (generally), the turbulence in air flow that can be created, alongside the sheer noise of adding four fans in really isn't worth it.

I never really liked the Vipers myself anyway, think they're too loud :p

To be fair though, whenever people ask about airflow, I always think, it's really down to what you like, and what you find effective. I'd rather my PC ran a couple of degrees hotter if I get to see my components rather than a bunch of fans, and I also get a quieter rig. Some people really want the coolest temperatures possible though. It's all about trade off.

kd
 
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Chaos said:
Bi-tech done a big fan placement roundup, worth a read.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/02/10/the-big-cooling-investigation/1
Click to expand...

Interesting read, but not sure how much I agree.

Biggest thing I have against it is their choice of fans. The fractal fans aren't the greatest, and it's for exactly that reason that they found that the traditional silverstone set up was so broken even though the FT02 is the best air cooling case on the market. Mostly because silverstone air penetrators have a great focussed flow so work well at cooling in this configuration. They'd also be much better at the traditional front to back setup as they could create single flow of air, whereas the fractal fans are just awful air flow wise...

I think it had interesting results, but I'm not sure how much I agree,especially as the fans are so poor, plus whilst they briefly mentioned noise, the amount of turbulence a side fan adds can greatly add to noise, and oddly there results seemed to real basic thermodynamics...

kd
 
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