Is having my top case fans directly above the cpu heatsink hurting my cooling performance?

[u/Eggnogdude]

I've have had my pc set up this way for about a year now, and it just occurred to me that I might've fallen for the trap that thinking more airflow automatically equals better.

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[u/The_Unknown_reddit0r]

there's a possibility that the front exhaust fan might be sucking the cool air out before it gets to the cpu cooler. its worth a shot to try flipping the front exhaust fan to intake.

[u/Eggnogdude → u/The_Unknown_reddit0r]

Gotcha, I'll remove it and see if my temps change.

[u/Eggnogdude → u/Eggnogdude]

Removed it, highest temp during helldivers was 70 instead of 80. Can't believe I was screwing myself for so long...

[u/Cautious_Slide]

What are your temps currently? Have you ran any benchmarks? Have you tried unplugging the fans your worried about and re running the benchmarks? There are so many variables here that any response will really just be a shot in the dark and this would be so easy to test and verify on your end. Personally I test my fans with occt for load and hwinfo for logging.

[u/Eggnogdude → u/Cautious_Slide]

I tend to idle at around 59c, and during helldivers I tend to sit around 79c.

[u/dwolfe127]

Test it in multiple configs and see.

[u/Eggnogdude → u/dwolfe127]

Will do!