Hi guys, Just wanted to see what you all thought of the above? In my head, push seems to be the obvious choice, but I'm doing my first watercooling mod and I was hoping to mount a rad at the bottom of the case, and have the fans pulling air through them from above. This would provide greater airflow inside the case, and also dampen sound. Do you think I'd see any significant difference in temps compared to if I mounted them in push?
I never saw more than 1ºC difference using pull over push. To help you decide have a look at Martin's tests http://martinsliquidlab.petrastech.com/Radiator-Fan-Orientation-And-Shroud-Testing-Review.html old but still useful.
Thanks very much for that link. Very informative. In case people are interested the bottom line is: "Push Vs Pull - This depends on fan speed/power. The high speed fans at 2000RPM with a 38mm fan thickness provided the best performance in a push condition. The slow speed fans with 1350RPM with a 25mm fan thickness provided the best performance in a pull condition. I would estimate that performance line is likely to cross in the 1500-1700RPM range where they are equal. So.... slow speed = pull, high speed = push, medium speed = it doesn't really matter."
Right, both is another option if you have room, or use 12mm thick fans. Generally I think most fans push better than pull even low rpm. If you simply put a hand on each side, you can feel more air being moved on exit than enter in most fans.
Surely not. More air cannot escape a fan than is being put in. It may be the case that the air is exiting is more concentrated in one direction so that is why you feel the air blast on exit.
Both is better but it's not worth getting thinner fans tho to fit it in as u will lose pressure with the thinner fans or gain noise having to have them at a higher rpm.
What it comes down to no mater what way you do it is the air flow over the rads. My EK cool streams are happy with the fans set to minimum even in summer cranking them up just creates noise for not a lot of a temp drop. But that said my cooling is way over the top. On smaller rads push/pull defiantly helps on bigger rads the orientation of the fans seems to be less crucial. These are my own findings, different set ups will alway throw up slightly different results.
At the end of the day, more surface area will always give bigger gains that swopping to push or pull or push/pull.
most of my w/cling set ups have had either or .. depending on whether I wanted to see LED fans or have a subtle glow through a rad, my latest loop using a 360 Rad (unsure of brand name) is double the thickness of a GT stealth and I have three coolermaster fans on pull at the top, the rad, then three Phobia spacers and then three coolermaster fans underneth pushing, all fans set to lowest RMP cool the loop (i72600k Unclocked and two GTX580's clocked at 850) really well, so much better infact than the last loop which had a EK480 Rad and a 360 GT Stealth with one set of fans on the rads in a pull config.
