Airflow and case/Cooler design

[Yo Spiff]

First off, I'm new here. I've had a login for a while, but had not spent any time here till now.

I'm putting together my new system and was curious about airflow in the case and CPU cooler designs. There seem to be two main styles of coolers, those with fans than blow outward from the CPU toward the side of the case and those that have the fan blowing from the front of the case to the back. I'm just curious if these different approaches may be more suited to different case designs and where the fans in those case are located. Haven't been able to find any specifics other than general cooling advice with a web search. (I went with a Thelmaltake V1 cooler and Antec Sonata III)

Thanks.

[Yo Spiff]

Well, I suppose nobody has any real insight into this. There's no problem anyway, I was just curious over design philosophy. The new system is running nice and cool, however. Plenty of overhead if I should decide to try some overclocking.

[Yo Spiff]

Ok, how do I post an image in this forum? I've tried HTML and BBCode, and neither works.

[robbie]

Originally Posted by Yo Spiff

Ok, how do I post an image in this forum? I've tried HTML and BBCode, and neither works.

You can just upload it.
Scroll down under the submit button. There is a manage attachments button. This will pop up another window to add files. I'll get too your PM when I have a min.

[Yo Spiff]

So I need to upload it, rather than linking to an image located elsewhere?

[robbie]

Originally Posted by Yo Spiff

So I need to upload it, rather than linking to an image located elsewhere?

Yeah, we had a problem a while back if I remember right.

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Yo Spiff

So I need to upload it, rather than linking to an image located elsewhere?

Yeah, unfortunately, some brain-damaged individuals wanted to get stinky about posting linking to an image from their site, when THEY were the ones who posted the link to start with. So, in order to prevent such problems in the future, we just require you to upload the image you want to use here.

[Gizmo]

Back to your original question, I suppose the choice rather depends on your design philosophy, but there are some things to consider:

A cooler that goes from the front to back of the case is going to generally tend to work with the natural airflow pattern in most cases, where the fan that goes toward the side of the case will tend to disrupt the airflow.

A fan that pulls from the side of the case and blows down onto the cooler is going to tend to pull cooler air from the side case panel (indeed, many cases are designed with this in mind, even to the extent of a special duct for that purpose). In addition, the transistors for the CPU vreg will generally be located in that area, and will benefit from the airflow of the exhaust off the heatsink being blown down onto the board. One of the biggest reasons that CPU overclocks become unstable is because the vreg capacitors dry out, and a big portion of that problem comes from the caps running hot, owing to the fact that the water block the typical OCer fits to the CPU doesn't allow for any airflow across the vreg to cool it (no fan).

[sasrob]

i would say for the best cooling try making the case as small as you can its not easy as you got the graphics card plus PSU and the cd/dvd drives keeping the case wide. the faster you can move the air the better cooling you will get. and the longer the pc will run. my rig has lasted 5 years the psu has failed me but 5 years....

[Daniel ~]

Actually I think there is much to be said for a LARGE case.... it allows hot air to rise naturally, air to circulate more easily and with less need to push it rapidly though the case... to each his own... I say that as I have no proof what so ever that my "intuition" is right on this...":O}

[MUff1N]

The only advise I have to say about case cooling is make sure all your airflow is going in the same direction, otherwise there will be turbulance which makes for bad cooling.

The other point is make sure you have the same amount of air going in as out.
It does no good to have a bunch of fans blowing in with only one or 2 blowing out.
If anything it's better to have more exhaust fans than fans blowing in.

I use the Zalman CNPS9700 so it blows to my rear exhaust fans, but some that use say the Antec case will have it blowing to the big exhaust fan they have at the top of the case.
Just make sure the CPU heat is being blow towards an exhaust fan...

The pic below is an example of my case fan configuration.

[cloasters]

Antec Sonata III, good choice. Mine's been sitting in its shipping carton for at least a year. How lazy can I get?! I just don't feel like spending ~$1100 for a spiffy new machine when I seriously don't need the upgrade in performance. Luddite? Yes, to some degree.

[MUff1N]

Originally Posted by cloasters

Antec Sonata III, good choice. Mine's been sitting in its shipping carton for at least a year. How lazy can I get?! I just don't feel like spending ~$1100 for a spiffy new machine when I seriously don't need the upgrade in performance. Luddite? Yes, to some degree.

At least you'll have that new case ready to go when you do decide it's time to build a new system.

[cloasters]

Yeah, it's good to have it at hand, where it goads my something or other. But de-motivational propaganda is dominating the conversation. Always somet...

[Yo Spiff]

As a follow, up, I should mention not to buy the Thermaltake V1 for use on an AMD CPU. The heat pipes interfered with locking down the retention mechanism. Took me 45 minutes of fussing and fiddling to get the lever locked down. I saw mention in Maximum PC magazine that they had the same problem.

System has been running nicely for about 10 months now.

[cloasters]

Good news is good!