Fan and air cooling set up advice!

lttlejoe

lttlejoe

lttlejoe

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East Yorkshire
I'm finally getting around to having a go at gaming which I've put off in the past due to lack of time and I suppose interest.
Up to now case and component cooling has never been important to me but clearly gaming is another issue entirely so I'm prepping my old Akasa Raptor gaming case for gaming as well as for general use computing.
I've had the case for 7 years but it has only been used to house general use PC components including dual optical drives, internal card reader, dual HDD etc and I've just fitted a new 250Gb SSD and replaced the old primary HDD with a new one. The case has all of the options and free bays I require from a case and quite frankly what I chose 7 years ago I can't find better today to meet my requirements so I'm sticking with it and working on the air cooling even though the case looks a little dated.

So far I've added an Akasa 6 channel fan controller, replaced the old fans with Akasa Piranha 120mm fans and a new CPU cooler which is limited on an AMD 3 socket to driving air across the fins either toward the top or bottom of the case so I've opted to push the air toward the top which has a 120/140mm fan vent directly above and I've decided to fit a fan over that aperture so that it pulls air out to assist exhausting air from the CPU cooler..I presume that would be the best option here???

The rear case fan sits near the top of the case which I've set so that it too exhausts air directly from opposite the CPU cooler and rear of the case.
The Be Quiet PSU is at the rear case bottom and pulls air into the case from the base vent and case interior and out through the rear of the PSU.
The front fan is set to push ambient air into the case which never really exceeds 25degC but often less than 20C. I have two further 120mm fan vents on the removable case side though I'll probably only connect up one fan for the time being.
This is the one fan which I can't decide as to whether to push air in or pull air out...any suggestions would be most welcome here.
I would add that I'll be installing either a GT 1050Ti or 1060 temporarily as I will also be replacing the current mobo and CPU with something like a mid/upper range Ryzen based setup in the next few weeks depending upon how the prices go and once I'm happy with the case set up.

Any advice to optimise my air cooling further would be most appreciated.
 
Posting a picture of the case with the fan directions indicated would make life easier.

Why don’t you experiment a bit? Back when I was playing with PCs (slot A era) rather than just using them that part of the ‘fun’.
 
bremen1874 said:
Posting a picture of the case with the fan directions indicated would make life easier.

Why don’t you experiment a bit? Back when I was playing with PCs (slot A era) rather than just using them that part of the ‘fun’.
Click to expand...

I can post a pic once I've got the wiring etc tidied up which doesn't exactly look pretty at the moment!:o
Presumably the idea is to extract as much hot air as possible from the case once it's sealed and from what I can figure out, I'll have the option of one fan pushing air into the case from the front and 3 pulling it out OR, two pushing air in and two pulling air out. It's a decent sized case so plenty of air circulation around the Micro-ATX mobo. The case will also accommodate an ATX board.

The specs are
Size 200x430x476mm
Internal Drive bays 3 1/2in x 6
5.25in drive bays x 4
1 x External 3 1/2in
1 x Internal 3 1/2in internal
Fan mounts 4x 120mm, 1x 140mm
Fans supplied 2x 120mm

This is a generic pic of the case...there's a multi card reader in the 3.5in front slot and the fan controller sits in the bay above it. The only fan vent not visible in the pic is the one in the case top which sits just over the CPU cooler. The other two fan mounts are in the nearest case siding.
raptor_photo_143359.jpg
 
A case will never to sealed.

You generally want more air blowing in than out to reduce dust build up.

Don't bother making it pretty until you've finalised the setup.
 
bremen1874 said:
A case will never to sealed.

You generally want more air blowing in than out to reduce dust build up.

Don't bother making it pretty until you've finalised the setup.
Click to expand...

So perhaps the front and side panel fans blowing in and the top and rear pulling out?
 
That sounds good - your ideas around the CPU cooler are good, the next step is to feed that cooler's intake with fresh air. Consider also the graphics card's need to be supplied with air too.

Once those are taken care of it's a case of see how it behaves over time, does the case slowly heat up - this can indicate lack of exhaust, or dead spots getting no airflow. I find top corners and the area around the graphics card's rear IO panel can stagnate like this.
 
LuckyBenski said:
That sounds good - your ideas around the CPU cooler are good, the next step is to feed that cooler's intake with fresh air. Consider also the graphics card's need to be supplied with air too.

Once those are taken care of it's a case of see how it behaves over time, does the case slowly heat up - this can indicate lack of exhaust, or dead spots getting no airflow. I find top corners and the area around the graphics card's rear IO panel can stagnate like this.
Click to expand...

Now that I'm beginning to understand the importance of case air cooling, I'm beginning to realise how much more critical it is than I first thought.

The graphics card in my situation should benefit from the removable case side fan which will push air from the outside toward the cpu cooler/mobo while also directing the air flow toward the graphics card too that will be mounted just below it. The rear and top fans should pull the air through as I can adjust the fan speeds to avoid any air direction conflicts.
I had planned only to fit 4 fans but if it looks as though there is a build up of heat in certain areas, I could even add and fit a fifth fan also on the case's removable side panel ( it has two fan apertures) which would push plenty of air into the important areas.
Actually thinking about it now, there's really no reason not to fit the 5th fan...my controller handles up to six and the two side fans pushing air into the case will cover virtually all of the mobo.

My next upgrade will be to fit an ATX mobo rather than a micro ATX as in the current situation .....the case will accept it either and the more spacing around the components the better.
 
doyll said:
As already said, probably the best. Your case doesn't have as good airflow as many newer cases do. You might find this link to a basic guide to airflow and how to optimize case airflow of interest.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...-i-put-my-temp-sensor.18564223/#post-26159770
Click to expand...
Interesting link!
I agree it's an older case and perhaps doesn't have the airflow of a modern case but it's probably the best case available for my needs given the number of extras I have fitted. It's certainly better than some of the tiny cases that are around these days.

However I would have thought that physics would dictate that input must equal output, irrespective of how it's achieved to get an equal and constant through flow of air both entering and leaving the case therefore minimising air contamination which is effectively tuning the case for optimum air flow and similar in principle to the physics behind Helholzt ported resonator speaker enclosures which tunes the enclosure to the fundamental frequency of chassis speakers, thereby cancelling out harmonic distortion.

Having looked at it logically, I would say that the front fan on my case is little better than useless when used as a induction fan as it's 50% blocked by the case construction and probably even less than 50% efficient on the exhaust side of the fan due to the layout of HDD transverse bays so I might as well reverse that fan and use it for extraction.

The two most important induction fans have got be those of the case side as between them they will deliver a maximum between them of roughly 160 CFM directly onto the mobo/cpu/gpu etc. As the CPU fan is driving air toward the top of the case, the 140mm fan directly overhead will assist and exhaust the warm air coming from the cpu so the rear 120mm fan will only have to extract any gpu heat. The front fan as I said will probably be better employed removing any residual warm air from the front half of the case where there are few components.

At this stage I'm unlikely to fit any GPU more efficient than a GT 1060 and Ryzen 5/7 CPU so the case will probably be ok for the moment but if not or I want to up-spec my gear, a new case would probably be needed.
 
You'd be surprised what can be achieved through experimentation, there are no fixed rules with air flow. Just good concepts and guidelines as doyll offered.

My quietest computer is cube-shaped and has two top fans pulling air in, and one rear fan exhausting. Mesh front to the case and a big passive heatsink on the CPU. I can't explain why it stays so cool and quiet (other than choosing a low power CPU) but I tried every possible combination of fans to get to this setup. I highly recommend you do a few A-B tests!
 
Input does equal output, but flow does not require fan on both intake and exhaust. Whatever amount of air the intake fans push into case must come out .. mostly through vents which are the path of least resistance. The study of airflow is fluid dynamics .. because air is a fluid. ;)

Airflow through a case is at least as much about where and how that air flows as how much air flows though the case. We need cool intake air flowing to component intakes with out having heated air from components mixing wiht it. These means it's not about moving as much air as possible but about flowing cool air to components and flowing their heated exhaust air out as smoothing as possible .. because usually when there is turbulence there is mixing of hot and cool air flows.

I agree, the side vents as intake will likely give best results.

What LuckyBenski said. Airflow is a fickled witch that more often than not will do something we do not expect. Experiment with different fan speed curves, fan placement, etc.

The simple low-cost indoor/outdoor digital wire lead remote sensor thermometer is best way to monitor airflow temp into cooler fans .. just place senor about 25mm in front of cooler intake fan and monitor temp while system is under heavy load. As guide says, as long as component intake is less than 5c warmer than room it's probably okay .. I prefer 2-3c max. difference.
 
I've spent literally dozens of CPU intensive hours on the computer this week recovering accidentally deleted data from two 1Tb drives, reinstalling software etc etc and with a three fan set up, it's keeping the CPU amazingly cool.
The top fan extracting air from directly above the CPU cooler is extremely effective and I could just about keep a can of beer cool between the top fins of the cpu cooler and the overhead fan, the upward draught is so cool even when the CPU has been running constantly for hours on end under load so I'm no longer concerned about keeping the case cool.

The fan controller is probably the best inclusion I could have made as I can tune the fan speeds perfectly and keep the flow even and constant and most of all, quiet!
I'll be fitting a GPU this week so that will determine if I need to fit any more fans or if three are sufficient which I suspect they might be.
 
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