Potentially had my radiator fans direction wrong

King Mustard · 21 Oct 2018 at 22:44

I've had the following in place for a year:

I actually intended the radiator fans to be reversed, so they were pulling air from inside the case up into the radiator and out of the top of the case.

I discovered today that they are both, in fact, pulling air into the case.

However, my system temperatures (overall, CPU and GPU) have been excellent for the year (hence me not noticing).

Would you say the radiator fans, as they are in the image above, are going in the optimal direction?

PiKe · 21 Oct 2018 at 22:46

UnworthyBean · 21 Oct 2018 at 22:47

It will arguably give cooler temps to the CPU but everything else will be warmer.

Personally, i'd switch them to exhaust out the top.

Resistance · 21 Oct 2018 at 22:49

the 140 point so fan air comes in the two at the top I would turn them so the fan air goes into the radiator

King Mustard · 21 Oct 2018 at 22:52

This is the actual system:

Resistance · 21 Oct 2018 at 22:55

I would still change the fans so air is going into the radiator the best way is put fans above radiator so the way you have it now swap them around so fans blow into radiator from the top

Distracted · 21 Oct 2018 at 22:59

Looks fine to me. You are pulling in cool air over the radiator fins and it is being exhausted by the rear fan.

The front fan provides additional airflow to keep things cooler than they would be if you were just pulling in hot air from above.

You could debate push vs pull or the location and direction, but really you would need to try the alternatives to see if there is a difference and if it is significant.

I would say leave it if it is working.

Semple · 21 Oct 2018 at 23:09

Probably not making too much difference, but could be argued that you're making the cooler work slightly harder as pushing warmer air into the system rather than extracting it, means the CPU will be running warmer than it should and this need the cooler to work harder

pastymuncher · 22 Oct 2018 at 13:56

I would have them exhausting to get the heat out of the case, especially if that gpu is dumping heat into the case as well.

What are those two stacked boxes in the bottom right? Lighting controllers?

King Mustard · 23 Oct 2018 at 10:29

pastymuncher said:
I would have them exhausting to get the heat out of the case, especially if that gpu is dumping heat into the case as well.

What are those two stacked boxes in the bottom right? Lighting controllers?

That's right.

I need to buy a single lighting controller that supports four LED strips.

I'll look on eBay at some point, soon!

Rroff · 23 Oct 2018 at 10:39

Not the direction I'd normally go but in your case (with a filter on the back fan) I'd actually consider reversing the direction of both the AIO fans and the rear exhaust fan so you have sufficient positive air flow to push dust out the case as well as provide cooler air to the radiator. I'm not sure the front fan alone is enough for bringing air in and you don't really want filters anywhere near the radiator (assuming you care about dust at all).

doyll · 23 Oct 2018 at 14:02

King Mustard said:
I've had the following in place for a year:

I actually intended the radiator fans to be reversed, so they were pulling air from inside the case up into the radiator and out of the top of the case.

I discovered today that they are both, in fact, pulling air into the case.

However, my system temperatures (overall, CPU and GPU) have been excellent for the year (hence me not noticing).

Would you say the radiator fans, as they are in the image above, are going in the optimal direction?

As long as GPU temps are good I wouldn't worry about it. The rear exhaust is probably pulling the heated air coming off of radiator out the back. Airflow is a fickled witch that often does things we did not predict. Seems your's is doing that.

What case and what 200mm fan are you using? As long as it's flowing cool air to GPU so GPU is running cool I wouldn't change anything.

King Mustard · 23 Oct 2018 at 21:59

doyll said:
As long as GPU temps are good I wouldn't worry about it. The rear exhaust is probably pulling the heated air coming off of radiator out the back. Airflow is a fickled witch that often does things we did not predict. Seems your's is doing that.

What case and what 200mm fan are you using? As long as it's flowing cool air to GPU so GPU is running cool I wouldn't change anything.

Thermaltake Suppressor F51 Window.

1x 200mm Thermaltake TT-2030 (front intake)
1x 140mm EK-Vardar F3-140ER (PWM, rear exhaust)
2x 120mm EK-Vardar F4-120ER on a 240mm liquid cooler radiator (PWM, up top)