Airflow advice

[britain4]

I have a Game Max Onyx case with 3 front fans and 2 top fans. I also have a Corsair H80i attached to the single rear fan mount.

Previously, I had 2 blower style GPUs and the H80i as exhaust which is potentially an ideal cooling setup - all I did was set every other fan to intake and the more cool air blown in there the lower all the temps got - easy peasy.

I recently changed the 2 blower GPUs for a single open cooler style one and I’m now having some cooling issues. With the fans all set to intake as they were before, the H80i temps were fine (cool air from the top fans) but the GPU was getting too warm.

So I changed the top fans to exhaust and this dropped the GPU temps significantly at the expense of making the H80i temps uncontrollably high and the fans kicking up to full speed = very loud.

Anyone know what would be the best airflow setup in this situation? It seems like making the H80i and the top two fans intake and the front 3 fans exhaust could work but I don’t know if this would give adequate cool air to the GPU...

 

[EsaT]

Only 92mm rear fan?
And front?
https://www.eteknix.com/game-max-onyx-rgb-chassis-review/2/
https://youtu.be/m6y205DQmgM?t=2m20s
Dear god what a bling bling with ****** up design priorities...
That case simply doesn't have general airflow fit for any higher end gaming PC.
Now if it didn't have that PSU shroud fad, bottom could have had intake fan or two.

Usually optimal airflow is simple pattern of good intake flow from front/low, with warmed air exhausted from rear/top.
But it simply doesn't have any cooling holes anywhere else than top.


With anything other than blower cooler graphics card this is going to be tricky.

You could try turning H80's fans to draw air in from rear.
But decrease in exhaust flow could again mess graphics card cooling.

If you have Dremel or something like that, you could increase airflow through radiator little by replacing stamped mesh of rear fan with wire finger quard.
And would check if its possible to do same for top fans.

But really only way toward proper fixing of airflow would be opening holes for front fans.
You could use something like this for front fans if you want some pattern to light:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/silverstone-120mm-fan-grill-and-filter-kit-fg-026-sv.html
There are also other decorative fan grills from Bitspower etc.

 

[britain4]

Only 92mm rear fan?
And front?
https://www.eteknix.com/game-max-onyx-rgb-chassis-review/2/
https://youtu.be/m6y205DQmgM?t=2m20s
Dear god what a bling bling with ****** up design priorities...
That case simply doesn't have general airflow fit for any higher end gaming PC.
Now if it didn't have that PSU shroud fad, bottom could have had intake fan or two.

Usually optimal airflow is simple pattern of good intake flow from front/low, with warmed air exhausted from rear/top.
But it simply doesn't have any cooling holes anywhere else than top.


With anything other than blower cooler graphics card this is going to be tricky.

You could try turning H80's fans to draw air in from rear.
But decrease in exhaust flow could again mess graphics card cooling.

If you have Dremel or something like that, you could increase airflow through radiator little by replacing stamped mesh of rear fan with wire finger quard.
And would check if its possible to do same for top fans.

But really only way toward proper fixing of airflow would be opening holes for front fans.
You could use something like this for front fans if you want some pattern to light:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/silverstone-120mm-fan-grill-and-filter-kit-fg-026-sv.html
There are also other decorative fan grills from Bitspower etc.

The rear fan is definitely 120mm as well as the three front ones. It’s more the hard drive cages than the PSU shroud that restricts airflow from the bottom... I agree that if these were in a more conventional place (or behind the motherboard tray) this would be a better solution for airflow.

I’ll have a look at modifying the fan mounts for better airflow though that would be one solution. I’m going to try the H80i as intake and see what happens, maybe that and the top two as intake and the front 3 as exhaust??

 

[EsaT]

I’m going to try the H80i as intake and see what happens, maybe that and the top two as intake and the front 3 as exhaust??

Those front fans are simply too blocked to move significant amount of air to any direction to count on them.
Well, I guess if you put some 5000rpm Deltas in there they could push some air.
But it would sound like passenger jet in take off.

Also that front panel mounting doesn't leave much of gap for airflow.
But opening that ridiculous plate of front fans would certainly give major improvement to airflow over current state.

 

[britain4]

Those front fans are simply too blocked to move significant amount of air to any direction to count on them.
Well, I guess if you put some 5000rpm Deltas in there they could push some air.
But it would sound like passenger jet in take off.

Also that front panel mounting doesn't leave much of gap for airflow.
But opening that ridiculous plate of front fans would certainly give major improvement to airflow over current state.

OK, I figured out why my H80i was going nuts... I’d somehow accidentally enabled auto voltage in the BIOS and it put my Vcore up to over 1.4v on a 4770k... yeah. Thankfully it wasn’t running like that for long. Now the main issue is out of the way I can focus on making improvements.

I’ve decided against having the H80i as intake as it raised case temps too much. I’ve been doing some gaming tests over a few hours with the front 3 fans as intake - top fans as exhaust gives decent temps all round not far off taking the side panel off. Both top fans as intake increases GPU temps too much.

However with the fan above the H80i as intake and the other top fan as exhaust this drops the water temps by a couple of deg while keeping a cool GPU... weird setup maybe but Sony did it with the PS3

Anyway I’ll have to test it more to see which way has the bigger impact - in the meantime I’m going to look at modding the case for airflow a little