Hardware The big air cooling investigation

Y'know, bearing in mind the changes you guy have been through, you must be pretty happy with the feedback. Looking forward to the new edition of the magazine (which I haven't done for a long time).

Now, when you gonna do an article on FreeNAS and using old hardware...

 

Remember the old BT days? Well this article reflects one of them!

 

Excellent article indeed.
after this review been slowly thinking into getting more fans, but i doubt it that i will go for the fullm monty of 4 additional fans. Perhaps two on the side as intakes should suffice.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2008/08/14/akasa-omega-review/3

 

Very nice, apparently I'm not the only one who thinks this harks back to the days when I enjoyed reading bit-tech articles! Relevant, scientific and detailed.

Bravo, and keep it coming!

 

Same here, I even asked here

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=225934

 

While i really liked the article (any article about fans and cooling could save you money and wasted time), it did'nt unfortunately answer the only real question i had concerning case cooling.....

......Which way to have the side fan!! Intake or Exhaust????

You see, i also have a G-card (GTX570) similair to the one shown but with an un-cased Geild cooler on it. It spits all its 70º temp inside and around the case, clearly heating all it come in contact with.

Now i would have thought that a side fan acting as an EXHAUST, would collect the cool intake of the close sitting front fans and drawn the cool air over the card and exhaust the heat out the side of the case before it is even alowed to head up towards the CPU!!

Thus the CPU would draw cool air from the top front fan and exit at either rear or roof (or both) without using the heat from the G-card!

Basically i would like to see the same 4-5 fan test with the side fan acting as an EXHAUST.


P.s, A full / decent and comprehensive test of 120 / 140mm fans Including most of the well used / known / popular ones would be a seriously appreciated article. Its a complete minefield of info and counter info when trying to decide on which fans actually do perform, one say's its great, the next person say's avoid!!...and decent fans being £8-20 each...a potenially expensive mistake.!!

Oh and like other are saying...the same test with a Corsair H100 would be interesting now water cooling is becoming afordable and more mainstream.

Thanks

 

Great article. This sort of formal testing really helps system builders even if they're not "modders".

One thing I've noticed(by it's absence) is that very few builders/modders use ducts to direct the air exactly where it's needed. I built a new system in a Define R3 about a year ago, and built a duct that feeds air from the lower of the 5.25" bays directly to the CPU cooler and the output air from the HS to the usual fan outlet above the i/o shield. So the CPU gets ambient air that isn't affected by the MB, and the exhaust doesn't touch the mosfets.

I've got a NOCTUA NH-U12P and am running the two fans on the LN adaptor. I didn't use a fan in the rear panel as the two on the Noctua do the job.

The lower standard fan at the front blows directly at the GPU, so it gets cool air. The top exhaust fan pulls air under the CPU duct from the top inlet fan so it's forced to flow around the RAM and mosfets. I'm running the case fans near the lower end of the built in controller.

The result is CPU core temps of 64-65 C in an ambient temperature of 35 C running 8 threads of Prime95 on an i7 870 at 3.2 GHz. It's virtually silent, and has good MB temps as it's not getting any hot air from the CPU cooler.

Not having the tools/skills/patience/.. to do it in acrylic, I built the duct from cardboard joined and reinforced with CA glue. Works great, was cheap to make, is surprisingly rigid and doesn't resonate like a metal one would.

I'm very happy with the result of what was a bit of an experiment. I'm sure those with the skills could take this idea a lot further. I'll try and post a few pics in the forums to better explain how it works.

Dogknees

 

My pc is now running 5c cooler as a result of this article, that's a big happy face for me! Excellent work bit tech!

 

I was a little disappointed to see no hard-drive temperatures reported. I'm pretty sure that would make something of a difference, especially with several drives. I think that would bring more credence to the "Front-to-back is best" arguments. Though, of course, hard-drives are a little less sensitive to temperature than other parts.

 

Welcome to Canada! W000000t!!!!!11111111one one one one eleven eleven

HDD temps varies a lot from manufactures, and even models. And also how they are installed. Some HDD (7200RPM) NEEDS to touch metal of the case, to spread it's heat... some don't. Some heats up more under heavy load, while others can sustain somewhat their temperatures.
So I think, unless you have the exact same HDD on the review, it won't be helpful.

 

200mm side fan or bigger will take 10 degrees off an overclocked 3930k @load. I've modded 5 kandalfs and armors with 200mm side fans by cutting the acrlyic with a jigsaw.

 

Without reading past page 1 of the comments I have one little gripe with the article...

You didnt show the difference of rotating the CPU cooler to blow up, so both roof vents can do their intended jobs. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the difference this can make.

After all, heat rises, so bottom front to top back, with a little more emphasis on the top part makes thermal sense

 

i own this case, im confused as to why the front roof fan placement is described as troublesome?

 

Hard Drive Temperatures were overlooked.

Of course the front intake fans don't have as big an impact on CPU and GPU cooling -- because much of what they're doing is removing heat from the hard drives.


Would love to see all those charts updated to show Hard Drive Temperatures in each configuration. They're reasonably likely to fail when they get very hot; and if a GPU fails I can simply take out the board; but if a hard drive fails I can lose data.

 

on my Lian-Li mid tower case i have found something interesting
got 2 front 140's 1HDD bay 7 1CD bay plus 1 roof 140 & exhaust 120.

when i mistakingly switch the roof fan to intake, it saved me much more cpu & mobo temps.