Corsair Air 540 fan setup

[Aa83]

I've been working on upgrading the cooling in my Air 540 for a little while now, where I've now got an air cooler for then CPU, and AIO and NZXT Kraken for the GPU, and decent fans pretty much everywhere there's space. However, I just wanted to ask to see if anyone thought my fan setup could do with a tweak. Here's my setup as is:

I've tried to show the airflow with arrows, where blue is an intake and red is exhaust. At the front of the case, what I would like to have done is have the AIO against the case and the 120mm fans pushing air through them, but due to the length of the AIO that would mean I'd have to remove the top 120mm fan, which acts as one of only two intakes. On the top of the case, I've got two 140mm fans, one of which is an intake as I'm lacking those and one which exhausts the warm air over the CPU cooler. Finally at the back, I've got another 140mm fan which again exhausts the warm air from the CPU cooler (continuing the flow of air from the CPU cooler's 140mm fans).

As a side note, I've got a couple of spare 120mm fans which I will try to add onto the AIO, though I'm not sure if there's 25mm space between the AIO and the end of the GPU. The spare fans I have are the OcUK Silverstone ones, so are pretty decent for pushing air through a rad.

At the moment, I'm getting between 45 and 50 degrees on an overclocked 3570k and between 70 and 80 degrees on a stock speed and voltage 290 while gaming. My question is does anyone think there's anything in my setup that needs tweaking that might mean better airflow or reduced core temps on my GPU? At this point I've tried leaving the front fans as intakes, and this seems to have the effect of raising the CPU temps by around 5-10 degrees but doesn't seem to affect GPU core temps.

 

[neil_g]

not sure why you'd want to exhaust from the front?

personally ive got mine set up for 3x 12cm on the front for inlet and a 14cm on the rear for exhaust. all fans are aquaero controlled and are set to throttle up based on CPU and GPU temp.

 

[Relentless81]

That looks completely wrong to me, I played with 540 air cooling setups and the absolute best CPU air cooled combined with GPU AIO cooled setup was -

GPU AIO rear mounted exhaust
3 x 120 mm intakes
1 x 120mm exhaust in the rear of the roof (Simply because the rad on the AIO restricts air flow otherwise you wont need this additional fan you would 140MM exhaust at rear instead)

I have a similar setup in my Define S

Front should be intake, roof and rear should be exhaust, in your setup you have more exhaust than intake, not only that you have no cool air hitting your GPU as it will be exhausted by the CPU cooler before it can reach it so I would guess your GPU VRMs are toasty.
Also, the front exhausts are dumping out hot air which is getting sucked straight back in by the only front intake

If you cant rear mount the GPU rad on the rear because the CPU cooler is too big then see if you can use it as an exhaust in the roof rear

 

[Relentless81]

Just noticed your AIO isnt 120mm

In that case it should go in the roof as pull exhaust setup, 3 x 120MM intakes and 1 x 120 rear exhaust

 

[neil_g]

Here you go, this is mine. Excuse the crude paint drawing.

3x 12cm cool inlet feeding straight into the CPU and GPU, the 14cm pulls hot air straight out from the case/CPU. Any excess hot air should just naturally ventilate out the top of the case.

 

[Aa83]

No worries, I'm all about the crude paint drawings! That is the setup I had prior to putting a Kraken and AIO on the GPU, except I had the AIO on the CPU at the top of the case. It's now dawning on me that my problem is the AIO at the front of the case, though I'm not sure where else it could go and I'd rather not get rid of it as it allows me to have a lower core GPU temperature at a much lower noise level than the MSI 4G air cooler it replace.

Yeah, the reason I'm exhausting from the front isn't by choice but because that's the only place the 240mm AIO will fit and will still reach the GPU. The AIO might fit up top if it isn't obscured by the CPU cooler, but it then won't be able to reach the GPU. The GPU VRMs temps are fine as is, as they've been covered in heat sinks and are cooled by the Kraken's 92mm fan.

 

[sgavan]

I have mine with a inno3d hydro 980ti 1x240mm exhausting out the back and a Corsair Hydro H105 with 2x240mm on my 4.4Ghz 2600k exhausting out the top, used to have two 240mm intakes on the front but disconnected them as it didn't have any effect on temperatures, made the system a low quieter now

 

[Stealthploit]

if you exhaust out of the front wont the hot air go up ?? and get sucked from the otherfan ?? i would use the top fan to exhaust and 2 botom ones to put cold air in.... Hot Air tends to go up

 

[D1craig]

you can have intake on the aio. just turn the fans around and try it. the temps will probably be better.

 

[Aa83]

if you exhaust out of the front wont the hot air go up ?? and get sucked from the otherfan ?? i would use the top fan to exhaust and 2 botom ones to put cold air in.... Hot Air tends to go up

Well I can feel hot air from the AIO fans, but when I put my hand over the top front fan it feels cold - I don't think the hot air is making that much difference.

you can have intake on the aio. just turn the fans around and try it. the temps will probably be better.

I did try that previously, and that only seemed to increase the CPU core temps by about 5 degrees but had no impact on GPU core temps.

 

[passey89]

i would swap the cpu cooler for the 240mm rad and exhaust out the top

get a 120mm rad for the gpu and exhaust out the back.

Then 3 intake on the front.

You only need a 120mm rad on a GPU.

This is my current setup.

 

[Aa83]

I am wondering about a 120mm AIO for the rear to act as the GPU cooler, but I'm already getting quite high temps on the 240mm AIO and I like my quiet setup as is (i.e. I'm worried that a 120mm AIO would have to work that much harder to be as cool as the 240mm).

 

[passey89]

I am wondering about a 120mm AIO for the rear to act as the GPU cooler, but I'm already getting quite high temps on the 240mm AIO and I like my quiet setup as is (i.e. I'm worried that a 120mm AIO would have to work that much harder to be as cool as the 240mm).

U have tereible airflow thats why your getting high temps.

I ran crossfire 290xs on 120's and temps never went above 60.

Heat rises and ur only intake is at the top so ur pushing hot air through the gpu.

U need intakes at front exhaust back and top.

U will get loads better temps just doing that

 

[Aa83]

I'm really not sure my airflow is terrible as you put it, as my CPU temps are good and GPU temps are a little high but nothing is happening that would suggest I'm recycling lots of warm air back into my case. Having felt the flow of air around the intakes, it feels quite cool. Conversely the air coming out of the AIO is warm but the warm air doesn't seem to be making its way up to the intakes.

I've done a little experimenting and added another 120mm fan (OcUK Silverstone that came with the AIO) to the AIO to act as a push fan. I'd have added two but the GPU is sticking out just enough to not let me. It looks like GPU core temp is down to 65 degrees from 75 degress while gaming. As such, I think the fans I have pulling the air through the AIO (two Noiseblocker Multiframe M12-S1) are quiet but as they're low RPM aren't pulling enough air through the AIO on their own to cool the GPU down enough.

I might try experimenting with swapping out the Noiseblockers for the OcUK Silverstones and seeing what happens, but for now I'm really happy with the results the extra fan has given me.

 

[Relentless81]

I have a 120MM on my 290X and it never goes over 62C as an exhaust with the CPU cooler pointing at it

passey89 is onto something, put current AIO on CPU and get a 120mm for the GPU and set your case up properly because at the moment its pretty wrong

Push/pull on a rad is pretty pointless, you cant clean the AIO without stripping the fans off it so eventually your temps will go up over time

 

[Aa83]

I would agree by the accepted case fan doctrine my setup isn't right, but given the additional AIO fan now means my temps are in the 60s rather than approaching 80 I do wonder how much of an effect changing where the intakes and exhausts around would have. Might have a bit more of an experiment later in the week to see.

Not sure what you mean by not being able to clean the AIO. Do you mean the AIO fins will get dusty over time?

 

[Mariusz]

I would agree with what's been said about your airflow, I've got the below spec in sig in a Corsair air 540 and temps are only in the 40's whilst gaming. I've got the front three fans as intake, the rear is where my 120mm AIO watercooler from the gpu is exhausting out of the back. I've got a Noctua NH-U9S on my cpu exhausting out the rear and two 140mm fans in the top exhausting hot air out. Works fine for me

 

[Relentless81]

Not sure what you mean by not being able to clean the AIO. Do you mean the AIO fins will get dusty over time?

Yes, and quite quickly if you are intaking unfiltered air

 

[Aa83]

In that case I'd imagine I would take the fans off every once in a while and clean the fins. However it's been exposed to unfiltered air for some time now and there's only a hint of dust on the fins.

 

[Aa83]

As an update, I had a play around with the fans and case and I suddenly realised the Air 540 lets you mount 25mm thick fans on the front of the case (as long as you remove the dust guard). As such, I decided to:

1. make the front three 120mm fans exhausts
2. make the rear 140mm fan an intake
3. swap the top two 140mm fans around in terms of intake and exhaust
4. flip the Olymp fans around so air is blown the other way
5. add in both 120mm rad fans that came with the AIO, now that I have space to mount them

The idea behind these changes is that rather than mixing up the airflow as in my original diagram, it keeps a continuous airflow from the back to the front of the case. This seems to be the best solution given my current setup and it seems to have had an impact; during gaming, CPU temps have dropped by 5 degrees and GPU core temps have dropped by 10-15 degrees (the extra fan definitely helps here).

I think all I need to do now is consider a dust guard for the intakes. For now I've just stuck the magnetic front dust guard to the rear of the case.