High case temperatures

Kei · 14 Apr 2013 at 12:04

During gaming the ambient temperatures inside my case are rising up to 34°C, which doesn't seem all that ideal. This is the present layout of my case. Red arrows are showing warmer air, blue showing cool. (ignore the fan orientation vs my arrows, as things have moved slightly since i took the photo. The arrows are correct)

The fans are a bit of mishmash at present:

Front fan is a 140mm bequiet silent wings
Side panel fans are coolermaster stock - intend on replacing these with corsair AF140's
Rear fan is akasa amber - Probably move the s-flex or uf120 here
Bottom rad fans are scythe S-flex 1600 and deepcool uf120 - intend on replacing these with GT1850's
Top rad fans are both scythe GT1850

Just to give an example, my present room ambient temperature is 21.8°C and the case ambient is 28.9°C whilst the pc is pretty much idle. (cpu is 37°C and the gpu is 40°C)

There is some argument over how i should cool the bottom radiator, some people suggest pulling air through it into the case as high rises.

doyll · 14 Apr 2013 at 12:51

Of course your case is getting hot while gaming! Your bottom radiator is pumping all the hot it is radiating into the air your bottom fans are drawing into your case!

Turn them over and things will cool off.. and try switch your back fan to an intake too after you try just turning the bottom fans. Might lower temps even more.

Kei · 14 Apr 2013 at 13:17

This is how it was before:

Case temperatures were still in the 30's back then. I asked about it and got told to swap the fans around to the way they now.

doyll · 14 Apr 2013 at 14:04

Cool air in, hot air out.

Hot air in, hotter air out.

Pump setting on your fan isn't helping either.

I'm betting if you reverse your fans again and raise your case so you have 50mm clearance, block the front and window side so hot air from bottom radiator is exhaust our the other side (so it doesn't mix with front and side intakes), your temps will go down.

The first rule of cooling is to keep heated air from mixing with the cooling air. Every degree you raise the cooling air temperatures raises your component temperatures

Edit: That's things you can try for free.

Kei · 14 Apr 2013 at 20:16

Flipped the lower radiator fans and my case temperature is now 28.2°C in an ambient of 24.2°C whilst idle. It has dropped slightly, I'll have to play some games for a while to see how it has affected load temperatures. I've left the rear fan as an exhaust for now.

doyll · 14 Apr 2013 at 23:48

4c warmer in case than room is not too bad. Hopefully you can get that down another couple.
You have 5 exhaust and 3 intake. Reverse the back exhaust to intake. That will balance your air intake to exhaust.

Kei · 15 Apr 2013 at 00:31

Whilst running 3dmark ambient temperatures rose up to 31 as usual. I reckon the two coolermaster fans in the side definitely need to change as they seem to barely flow any air at 7V and they aren't even that quiet. (12V just makes them louder)

doyll · 15 Apr 2013 at 07:36

Just a thought here:
How are you controlling your radiator fan speeds? If you are using PWM you could use PWM case fans and control them with the same PWM signal.. if using voltage fans you could get a PWM to voltage fan adapter and use PWM signal to control their speed. Tealc here makes these PWM to voltage adapers (has a long development thread with many satisfied customers).

Doing this would keeps fan speed / noise low when system is not working hard and ramp them up as needed to supply air / cooling.

Did you try raising your case and blocking the left side and front to keep hot air from bottom radiator from being sucked back into front and side intake fans?

Kei · 15 Apr 2013 at 09:22

3 of the radiator fans are controlled by a fan controller. The front fan is running on a fan mate, the deepcool is pwm running off the motherboard and the rest are running off 7v molex adaptors.

I've blocked off the left side and front so air underneath has to go out the right. Don't have any way to safely raise the height though. I raised it up from the carpet using that piece of plywood, which improved things slightly.

doyll · 15 Apr 2013 at 10:18

Might try running others at 12v for a stress test and see if that improves cooling. Blocking the front and side might not make as much difference as I think it might but it's easy to check and see. Maybe you could find 4 jar lids or even screw on bottle caps to set under case feet on the board would raise case for quick test. Steel the neighbor's wooden baby blocks.. just don't let anybody see you doing it.

Airflow is a fickled witch. Sometimes does what we think and sometimes does thing that almost defy logic. I've seen a case with 2x 140mm front intakes, 1x 140mm bottom intake and 120mm side intake with only 1x 140mm back exhaust (140mm vent in top no fan) and when the unused PCI covers came off air flowed into case... 4x intake and 1 exhaust fan and the air still came into case on it's own??? Bottom line is the GPU temps dropped 1-2c.

GPU = VTX3D Radeon HD 7950 X-Edition V3 w/cover removed & 2x Arctic F12 TC case fans added. Was 70c now 50-60c, ultra settings, 60fps unless particularly detailed cut scenes