I've got an Utgard case and I'm going to fit a Tranquillo cooler to an i5-750. I could point the fan either up towards the roof mounted fan or down onto my graphics card (an ATI 5770). As the CPU fan sucks air in, I wasn't sure which way it should be pointed? The front fan sucking air in is in a line with the graphics card and blows air into it's cooler. Would appreciate any advice, I can post pictures if required.
Can you not mount it so that it sucks from the front and pushes air towards a rear fan? That seems to be the normal setup these days.
@roo: The Utguard has a 120mm rear fan and a 170mm roof fan. @OP: It depends. Does your 5770 exhaust air out of the back of the case or does it dump it into the case? If it dumps hot air into the case then there is a case (do'h) for mounting the CPU fan sucking air from the graphics card area and pushing it toward the roof fan. If it exhausts out of the back, then I am not so sure - can others comment on this specific case (do'h, done it again). Perhaps only experimentation can prove it? Try it both ways and record your case, CPU & GPU temperatures then pick which works best for you. I would suggest testing with the fans on low, medium and high via the front fan controller to get the balance right between cooling performance and noise.
I have my TRUE setup inmy HAF that way, my thoughts being that heat rises, so it'll help with cooling. Seems to do me ok, although when my 5870 is unter load the heat it gives off can affect it, but this is sorted by upping the GPU fan speed.
I would never install a cooler pushing air down onto the GPU, especially as you have a roof fan. Just doesn't make sense But this is just my way.
I could point the fan either up towards the roof mounted fan or down onto my graphics card (an ATI 5770) Do this and essentially the cpu fan will be trying to draw back in the hot air the roof fan is trying to expell... although I'm assuming that's what the roof fan is doing; expelling air rather than drawing it in. The front fan sucking air in is in a line with the graphics card and blows air into it's cooler. This usually how the front case fans tend to work.... so it's as roosauce said; set the fan up so it's facing the front and helping to draw that cool air in.
As many have said the best thing is to have it drawing in air from the front (over the RAM). But if you hav an issue with fitting it like this (e.g. memory in the way of fan) the next best thing is to have it pulling air up from the graphics card. Any other orientation will be going against the natural airflow of the case.
Rule of thumb: cold air in at bottom front, hot air out top back. Have a look here and here for more guidance/discussion on the matter.
Thanks for the advice everyone. For some reason when I originally installed the CPU cooler I thought I could only mount it so it points either at the gfx card or the roof fan, so I installed it so it draws air from above the gfx card and pushed it towards the roof fan. However, having had another look I can see you can install it so it points in any of the 4 directions. I now have it so that it's now taking air from the front (and also pulling air over the RAM) and pushing it towards the rear fan. The temps at the moment do seem about the same as they were before. Playing Torchlight with BOINC/World Community Grid (a distributed processing program) running on the other 3 cores at 70% use, the highest any of the cores has gone is 52. However, the new setup has air being pulled over the RAM so I think I prefer it this way.
RAM never gets hot unless its faulty or massively overvolted, so addition airflow isn't needed really.
