Just got myself one of these http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=398 And I will probably only be using one fan with it and this fan will need to sit so it is covering the black fins, ( I will be covering the radiator casing with some white 4D Carbon Fibre Vinyl Wrap), Given that the rear of the case only 90mm fans I will need to fit this either to the top or the front of the case, as yet I am undecided which at the moment. Should the fan be blowing air across the fins or sucking and will this change depending on where I situate the radiator. At the moment I do not have fans for the top of the case but I do have 2 x 120mm at the front drawing air in and 2 x 90mm exhausting air at the rear.
If you're sticking with a single fan, push air through the rad. However, the rest of your chassis airflow will help you determine whether it should be push intake or push exhaust.
How will I determine? What is the criteria for working this out and what about position front or top and does this have a bearing?
It's personal preference, but I always opt for a slight positive pressure inside the chassis - greater fan capacity drawing air in than exhausting. It helps keep the dust levels down inside the case. It seems somewhat counter-intuitive but a negative pressure set up will attract more dust and fluff than the intake fans will on their own.
Still not sure where to place it though the roof of the case is looking favourite which means another fan which I will add to my GTX 980 order on Wednesday.
Though I have always followed this train of thought, this is some of the best advice I have seen in ages.
That looks pretty smart, Glenn. I occasionally toy with the idea of buying some carbon wrap, but I've a feeling that, once I start, I won't be able to stop. It'll start off well enough - rads, SSDs etc.. but it'll soon expand to include the telly, microwave, door bell, sofa, missus, dog and the kids...
LOl. It is great stuff to work with and looks pretty good and easy to remove. It was my intention to paint the radiator and in fact ordered the paint for it 9 fortunately from Amazon so a free return as I missed cancellation time), but the rad is rather nice so painting would spoil it if A) I sold it on 0r B) I used it in another build which was not white predominantly.
If you have positive pressure then dust will only be sucked in via the fans, so as long as they have dust filters you're ok. With negative pressure dust/fluff will get sucked in via every hole, and seam. Guess how I know this
So just to clarify to get positive pressure most of my fans need to do what? I have decided to use the radiator in the roof and have bought a couple of Enermax Cluster whites. One for the rad and the other beside it. This will give me two 120mm in the front one, single in roof, one on the radiator and finally two 90 in the rear of the case. Which should be doing what pray tell. Cheers Guys.
Heh, I was looking into this in the early hours of this morning. Linus advises a 'push' configuration as a 'pull' configuration tends to suck air from around the cooler as well. The results do show a difference as well.
Yep, that's what I said. I've done the same thing - I had a 240 and a 360 rad both push/pull. If I oriented the fans so the 240 was the intake and the 360 was the exhaust, the system would start to fur up in mere days.* Vice versa, with the 360 as intake, it'd take months to see anything more that a slight build up on the fan blades. *Laminate floors are the anti-christ
So what configuration am I looking at for my 6 fans? Obviously the rad fan will be pushing air through the radiator but what of the others?
No idea - "custom parvum" doesn't tell me a lot about your chassis, mate. Have you got any pics or a link to another parvum case with a similar layout? Is it like this one?
Yep, the custom only refers to the fact that it is a size decided by my particular motherboard and the need for a five holed PCI slot part in the back.
Pull, because science! Many years ago the French site Overclex decided to do a scientific comparison on a Black Ice Xtreme radiator in push, pull and push-pull configuration. All configurations performed almost the same, with only 1 degree C difference between them. Best performance was a push-pull setup, followed by pull, followed by push. I suspect that different radiators may produce slightly different results, but in principle pull seems to beat push.
Pull works ok with low FPI rads, but dreadfully with AIOs, in my experience. AIO rads tend to have a higher FPI count and require decent static pressure to force air through the rad. I used Pull with a 240mm SR1 and it was pretty good but swapping the rad for a GT Stealth saw the temps rise significantly. The GT in push was marginally better than the SR1 in Push/Pull. I had an RS240 (iirc) which had a middling FPI and pull wasn't great with that either. My 240 Monsta rad didn't like pull setups either, and even had a low fin count.
