Side fan - Blowing air in or out?

Soldato
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In relation to the side fan I have on my case which is situation over the GFX card, should I have air blowing into the case or air going out of the case? i.e should the arrow on the fan be pointing in the direction inside the case?

Cheers
 
I have my side fan, and a fan at the front of the case at the bottom sucking air in. Then I have a top back, and top fan (on the ceiling of the case) pulling air out. This gives me an airflow of air coming in at the bottom; side and front, and being pulled to the top and back and going out there. And heat rise's, so this kinda logical.

But I guess it would all depend on what other fans you have in your case and whats happening with the overall airflow!
 
In relation to the side fan I have on my case which is situation over the GFX card, should I have air blowing into the case or air going out of the case? i.e should the arrow on the fan be pointing in the direction inside the case?

Cheers

If your gpu exhausts most of the heat our the rear, side intake.

If your gpu dumps most of the heat in the case, side exhaust.

This works best for me with an accelero gpu cooler. I can feel my side exhaust pumping out a lot of hot air.
 
If your gpu exhausts most of the heat our the rear, side intake.

If your gpu dumps most of the heat in the case, side exhaust.

This works best for me with an accelero gpu cooler. I can feel my side exhaust pumping out a lot of hot air.

This is a question I've seen a lot, so I've got some figures for you.
My cooling setup is: 2x Scythe Gentle Typhoon front intake, 1 back exhaust, 2 top apache 140mm exhaust, 1 side apache 140mm exhaust/intake

Running all my fans full whack playing Crysis 3 with the side fan as intake on two Windforce cards at 1254/1780 (dumps heat into case) my max temps were 67 on the top card, 60 on the bottom card. Fan profile:
34247222.png


With the side fan as exhaust my temps are a lot better:
79262135.png


In fact swapping the side fan to exhaust even dropped my CPU temps a little...
 
Airflow is such a fickled wench. She sometimes defies logic.

Side vent intake / exhaust is good example of this.

Removing unused PCI slot covers sometimes helps GPU cooling.. flowing air in / out.

My cooling setup is: 2x Scythe Gentle Typhoon front intake, 1 back exhaust, 2 top apache 140mm exhaust, 1 side apache 140mm exhaust/intake
You might try turning of the top front exhaust.. and it that helps maybe try it as a slow speed intake. ;)
 
You might try turning of the top front exhaust.. and it that helps maybe try it as a slow speed intake. ;)

I understand your logic, but I cannot for the life of me be bothered to take my system apart to swap a fan over hehe, I had to to fit them. -.-
 
I would say it's depending on whether your exhaust at top/rear is good enough to shift the heat effective enough away from the lower half of the case/graphic card area.

Personally I've tried bought intake and exhaust on the side-panel mount, and I found that for the cards with "dump heat into case" type cooler, exhaust provide lower temp due to heat are getting dump out of the case at the shortest distance and not getting recycled back into the cooler.
 
Hmm I may change my side intake to exhaust as I'm sure my twin frozr dumps hot air into the case.

Glad a thread like this came along, always pondered on turning the side fan around, just never got around to actually doing it.
 
I understand your logic, but I cannot for the life of me be bothered to take my system apart to swap a fan over hehe, I had to to fit them. -.-

Not to be rash but I don't think you understand at all. Your intake area/cfm to exhaust area/cfm ratio is way out of whack.

You have 2x 120mm fans intake area = 226sq cm trying to supply air to 3x 140mm + 120mm exhaust fans = 574.6sq cm. That's more than twice the exhaust area as you have intake.... meaning your intake doesn't have snowball's chance in hell of supplying the air your exhaust is capable of. But if you unplug your top front fan those numbers change to 417sq cm in to383sq cm out.

Just unplug the top front fan and see.
If you just unplugged it your intake : exhaust area ratio would go from
226:575 (half as much in as out) to
417:383 (just slightly more in than out) . ;)
 
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Than just unplug the top front fan.

Not to be rash but I don't think you understand at all. Your intake area/cfm to exhaust area/cfm ratio is way out of whack.

You have 2x 120mm fans intake area = 226sq cm trying to supply air to 3x 140mm + 120mm exhaust fans = 574.6sq cm. That's more than twice the exhaust area as you have intake.... meaning your intake doesn't have snowball's chance in hell of supplying the air your exhaust is capable of. But if you unplug your top front fan those numbers change to 417sq cm in to383sq cm out.

At least if your top front is unplugged your intake : exhaust area ratio would go from 226:575 (half as much in as out) to 417:383 (just slightly more in than out) . ;)

Yeah I see where you're coming, I'll do a few tests now. My front intake when gaming are full whack (fan switches), however my 3 140mms only hit around 60% speed (PWM) too.
 
Now that I've convinced you to try it probably won't help...

Airflow being the fickled wench she is. :D

Edit: 2x 140mm fans flow the same as 3x 120mm fans.. both being similar design and speed.
 
She's now a Fickled WITCH!! :D

Just goes to show just because it makes perfect sense doesn't mean it will be true.

I expected them to stay the same or drop slightly but the way this witch works I can't say I'm surprised.
 
I have never noticed any benefit having a side fan on my Arc Midi. I keep fitting one but always remove it as it makes no difference to temps.
 
This is a question I've seen a lot, so I've got some figures for you.
My cooling setup is: 2x Scythe Gentle Typhoon front intake, 1 back exhaust, 2 top apache 140mm exhaust, 1 side apache 140mm exhaust/intake

Running all my fans full whack playing Crysis 3 with the side fan as intake on two Windforce cards at 1254/1780 (dumps heat into case) my max temps were 67 on the top card, 60 on the bottom card. Fan profile:
34247222.png


With the side fan as exhaust my temps are a lot better:
79262135.png


In fact swapping the side fan to exhaust even dropped my CPU temps a little...

Yes i see drastically better temps with my side fan as exhaust. The advice to blow air on the gpu from the side fan is dated. Maybe it would benefit a leaf blower but with a radial gpu its better to exhaust.
 
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