Question Regarding Airflow

[Dmitry]

For you wiser gentlemen with more experience building than I, I ask your opinion about the airflow in my case.

I have the HAF 922 case from Cooler Master. I just added a Hyper212+ cooler to it, and just wanted another opinion on the airflow in my case. I added a crude drawing of what it's like below:



http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/1783/caseflow.jpg

That's not the same heatsink on the processor, but that's the image I got from CM's site for the case, and I also have a 200mm fan blowing in from the side panel as well.

Anyway, when I was talking with my coworker about the airflow, he mentioned having the back fan blow in, and only have the top fan blow out since heat rises. My thoughts were that the fans could help alleviate any heat the memory, but thinking about it now, that heat would just be blown through the heatsink...

tl;dr: Should I reverse my rear fans and only have the top blowing out?

[shidobu]

CM 690 II case owner(not that much diff from hafs)
I went with the idea of "getting rid of the hot air in the case". (basically your setup). Works fine for me i get
42c idle on i7 oced @ 3.6
XFX 5870 50c idle fan @ 30%
i7 -71c full load (using some program i forget now)
5870 - 84c playing FF14 beta @ 1080p 4xAA highest textures/shadows no OA
My cpu temps seem a lil high, those noctua fans are not famous for moving air. They are realy fucking quiet and slow. So ill take quiet and slow over a mini wind tunnel in my room.

[Crowort]

Try it and see, but front to back and bottom to top is normal airflow. If you are going to do that then you'll want the cpu cooler to be blowing air up and out instead of out the back fan which is more 'normal'. This means it will be drawing air off your GPU most likely so hot air going into it. IMO sticking with the normal airflow will be better but really without trying nobody is going to know for sure.

[Knyghtmayre]

I don't think you'll have great/good results with only 1 exhaust fan. The top-most fans in the case should generally be exhaust since heat rises, leaving the bottom-most fans for intake. The way it is in the diagram is best in my opinion, as well as having the case side fan as intake so that you'll get cool air blowing directly on your video cards and probably hitting most everything on your board to some degree. The only time I've ever heard of anyone flipping rear fans to intake is via Corsair's recommendation for the H50, but that's only because of proximity. Other than that I don't think it'd be ideal at all to only have 1 exhaust.

[Celeras]

Picture is right, friend is an idiot.

[Dmitry]

CM 690 II case owner(not that much diff from hafs)
I went with the idea of "getting rid of the hot air in the case". (basically your setup). Works fine for me i get
42c idle on i7 oced @ 3.6
XFX 5870 50c idle fan @ 30%
i7 -71c full load (using some program i forget now)
5870 - 84c playing FF14 beta @ 1080p 4xAA highest textures/shadows no OA
My cpu temps seem a lil high, those noctua fans are not famous for moving air. They are realy fucking quiet and slow. So ill take quiet and slow over a mini wind tunnel in my room.

I've noticed my temperatures going up while doing the beta, but I'm not sure how much. I'll have to check again now that I have the new cooler in.

Do you ever get BSODs after closing the beta? I'm on 7, not sure if it's an OS or beta thing doing it atm.

[shidobu]

I've noticed my temperatures going up while doing the beta, but I'm not sure how much. I'll have to check again now that I have the new cooler in.

Do you ever get BSODs after closing the beta? I'm on 7, not sure if it's an OS or beta thing doing it atm.

yes
<_< actualy iv been getting blue screens alot randomly. Even if i didnt run beta lol.. but im trying to figure it out. I dont have an extra GPU to check, even when i run stress tests it perfectly fine. But say i turn it on after it being off all day at work, go get a drink get out of my work clothes come back. Its bluescreened and restarted in like 10 minutes time. Its annoying but i cant find whats wrong. And its recently only started around the time i started phase 2 beta lol.. and its Windows 7 also.

[Knyghtmayre]

Find out the BSOD code and you can easly fix it. Could be low vCore or something quite easy to fix.

[Dmitry]

The thing is, it's been stable since I put it together back in January or so, and the only thing I've changed was my GPU from a 4860 to a 5770, and even then it's been stable unless I've run the beta. It doesn't crash or anything while I'm playing, and I really don't run much otherwise, I think just Microsoft Security Essentials and uTorrent.

I'll have to try the beta again when I get home and see if it still crashes. I can't remember, but I think it did before I installed riva tuner, hard to say though.

If I catch it in the act again, I will try to get the code. Next time I have to restart I'll turn the automatic restarts off.

[shidobu]

90% of the time happens when im not looking at it honestly. But that shit happens so fast i can barely make out the code.

[Neogearzx]

on the subject of airflow - there are 2 cases im looking at


AZZA Solano 1000
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/...04-S01?$S300W$
Cooling System

80mm Fans No

120mm Fans
1 x 120mm fan in rear

140mm Fans
2 x 140mm blue LED silent fan (19DBA) in front

230mm Fans
1 x 230mm blue LED silent fan (24DBA) on top
1 x 230mm blue LED silent fan (24DBA) on the side
PRICE: $99~


OR
Azza Hurican 2000
Spoiler for huge

Spoiler: show

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...landADcopy.jpg

PRICE 170~


would the additional 230mm fan on the side and top be worth the extra $70 for air flow and keeping my system cooled?

sorry for hijacking - figured it would be better to tack it onto a thread already on this subject than make my own

[Surealistic]

for the "perfect" airflow setup you want to have the same amount of air going out of the case thats coming into the case, meaing find out the airflow of all the fans you have that either bring air into or take air out of the case and get the same going in as going out, the fans inside the case dont really matter much, except as for direction of the air, the biggest thing is that you dont want to create a mini vacum or a mini balloon effect inside the case, not enough air will restrict your cooling, and too much air will mean your blowing hot air around inside, so you want to have a medium where the air does not linger in the case for too long, but is there long enough to do its job

after you get the airflow evened out, you want to get rid of any obstruction, this means hours of cable management, oh what fun lol, get everything out of any possible way of the airflow, my case allows me to tuck all the cables behind the motherboard, if yours does, do that, if not, lots of twist ties and get the cables out of the way as much as possible, you should be able to "see" where the air will flow, video cards will fuck this up, deal with it, get over it and move on with your life, nothing you can do about this short of starting your own gpu company and doing it yourself

ehh, kinda still tired, and at work, but i think i covered it pretty well

[Amastacia]

Picture (especially if there is a low-side-entrance 200mm fan) is right.

Also, of more note since the case bit has been beaten to death, if you have a heatpipe tower, set it up if at all possible so that the airflow is bottom-to-top in the case and not front-to-back.

You should see a 2-3C drop in temperatures.

This naturally only works if you have a top-mounted exhaust fan, but you do. Bottom-to-top provides a better exhaust path for hot air and tends to pull cooler air into the HSF, despite proximity to the northbridge and graphics cards.

[Adajer]

on the subject of airflow - there are 2 cases im looking at


AZZA Solano 1000
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/...04-S01?$S300W$
Cooling System

80mm Fans No

120mm Fans
1 x 120mm fan in rear

140mm Fans
2 x 140mm blue LED silent fan (19DBA) in front

230mm Fans
1 x 230mm blue LED silent fan (24DBA) on top
1 x 230mm blue LED silent fan (24DBA) on the side
PRICE: $99~


OR
Azza Hurican 2000
Spoiler for huge

Spoiler: show

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/m...landADcopy.jpg

PRICE 170~


would the additional 230mm fan on the side and top be worth the extra $70 for air flow and keeping my system cooled?

sorry for hijacking - figured it would be better to tack it onto a thread already on this subject than make my own

I have been looking for a great airflow case myself. I saw that solano 1000 on newegg, I think I didn't like the solano because it has no dust filters. I have never seen that Hurrican before though. It looks interesting. Where did you find it on the net? I don't like how the HAF X or Antec 1200 look at all but they seem to be the top dogs in cooling. The NZXT phantom looks really nice but doesn't look like the airflow is very good. Youtube has no video reviews on those 2 Azza cases.

The search for the perfect case makes me want to build my own.

[Korietsu]

HAFx or Antec 1200 are two of the best. You can also reconfigure both cases to house rads instead of the fans so its all enclosed as well.