Pictures of my rig. Please advise on airflow.

vwgolfman

vwgolfman

vwgolfman

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Hi,
I was wondering if I could ask for advice on the air-flow in my PC's case.

Apologies if I bore you. I just wondered if there's anything obvious I should be doing :confused:
I could do with taking a few degrees off of my CPU temperature if possible :)

I have:
* A 120mm fan behind the front panel at the bottom drawing air in across 4 hard drives.
* An 80mm fan in the righthand side panel at the bottom drawing air in from the side across the same 4 hard drives.
* 2 x 80mm fans in the lefthand side panel drawing air in onto my graphics card.
* A 120mm fan at the top of the rear panel drawing air out.

The PSU draws air up through its base and out of the rear using 2 fans in push-pull.
The graphics card is a dual slot type and exhausts air out of the rear.

There are another 2 hard drives sitting in the top two 5 1/4" bays which adds to the heat.

For fear of annoying you all I post a few pictures of it.

* please ignore the dust! *

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Maybe fit a 120mm fan onto the side panel as an intake, doesn't necessarily have to be high speed, just something to draw cool air toward the intake fan on the cpu cooler?
In this sort of position...
image1fp.jpg
 
Pneumonic that's what I already have :D
I know, it's late :p

ryder, that could be a fun thing to do.
It could be made even better by running some kind of conduit/ducting directly to the face of the front-facing CPU fan from the side panel don't you think?

Also, I was wondering if I can get a faster/stronger fan in the rear of the case?
It's currently running at 1800RPM.

EDIT: I could always add a bit of ducting from the righthand 80mm fan up the front-facing CPU fan to see if that makes any difference.
 
Reckon your those 2x 80mm won't be doing you much good - They've got mesh in front of them and presumably there's mesh in your side panel?

You'd do better do ditch that assembly in favour of a big fan on your side panel if it can fit one?
 
Stop adding more fans and tidy up the damn cables instead.... run some behind trays/mobo...

You shouldn't need more than 3 or 4 fans anyways tbh.
 
By the looks of things I don't think it can get much tidier...

But yeah, ducting could work ... If it was directly onto the CPU intake fan, you wouldn't need to put one on the side panel!
 
it looks to be restricted a fair bit, that rear 120mm fan has to try to push air out of them tiny holes in the back, maybe you could openup that back vent by removeing them holes, if you do go modding the case, might be worth puttin in a couple of holes in the top for a couple of 120mm fans up there.
 
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1. Fans only move air
2. More air moving is not necessarily a good thing
3. 120mm fans are only better than 80mm fans because they move the same air at a slower speed and are therefore quieter.
4. Cold air falls, warm air rises
5. Because of (4) most cases have the intake fan at the front bottom of the base and an exhaust at the top at the back.
6. Your graphics card has an intake at the back of the graphics card (front of case), nearest the bottom mounted 120mm fan. It blows horizontally out of the back of the case. You should be able to feel this if you put your hand by the exhausts on the card slots.
7. The two 80mm fans will be dumping cold air into the bottom of the case. The only place this can go is out the graphics card. However they are blowing across the graphics card, not into it. They could be fighting it.
8. The single 80mm fan will be disrupting airflow from the front 120mm fan.
9. The two 80mm fans are potentially trapping hot air at the top of the case by preventing circulation.

Based on that - I would turn off the three 80mm fans and monitor temperatures under load. I very much doubt anything will heat up and it should be quieter.

Unfortunately, unless you can drop the ambient temperature outside the case the only way that you will drop the CPU temperature substantially is to substantially increase airflow across the CPU cooler. That will mean faster fans and more noise.

Try stripping out the 80mm's - you might be pleasantly surprised.
 
I would do as above and ditch the 80mm fans, but then fit a front drive bay mounted fan, as the air from the 120mm intake is going to be blocked by the mass of hard drives!
So, either move the hard drives to be front bay mounted with a fan, to help the air flow from the bottom 120mm intake, or leave them there and let the front fan supply additional air through your case to the CPU cooler/graphics card.
This would mean losing one of the optical drives, but do you really need 2? Looks like you have plenty of HDD space for 'backing up' those DVD's!
Hope that makes sense and helps.

Oh, and you would need to move the optical drive to the top.
 
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This is my cooling setup for amd 955 running @3.8 with idle temps @31c and 48c stress test,mobo temp was 29c.
Top fans: coolermaster 120x25mm/1200RPM/17dBA X2 (EXHAUST)
Bottom fan: coolermaster 120x25mm/1200RPM/17dBA (INTAKE
Rear fan: coolermaster 120x25mm/1200RPM/17dBA (INTAKE) Connected to a corsair H50-1 in a push/pull configuration
airflowd.png
 
hyperst said:
it looks to be restricted a fair bit, that rear 120mm fan has to try to push air out of them tiny holes in the back, maybe you could openup that back vent by removeing them holes, if you do go modding the case, might be worth puttin in a couple of holes in the top for a couple of 120mm fans up there.
Click to expand...

This is what I'd do as well. If you have a dremel put a fan in the top of the case as an exhaust and then maybe try reversing the flow direction of the rear 120 so it acts as an intake, also reverse the two cpu sink fans accordingly. And take out as much metal in front of all fans as you can. If you do this maybe also swap the hdds in the top of the case with the dvd's such that they get some airflow, at the moment it looks like they don't. Also if you have the spare cash why not consolidate your hdd collection into a couple of large capacity drives, which will reduce noise and heat output.
 
Clean the dust out mate, dust reduces the cooling ability of everything, restricts airflow, blocks radiators, overheats electronic components etc etc. As suggested before, strip it down and give it a good cleaning you might be surprised at how much your temps drop (It certainly worked for me) Also change/clean your filters.
 
modular psu , better cable routing and get rid off all the usb cables if you dont use them.

does that side extra panel actually remove heat ?

try without and with it on . test the temps.
 
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