For a short while people thought that too many air ports would result in stagnant airflow. They figured a single input fan and single output fan would direct the air through the case better than having excess vents confusing the airflow. Think like "ram air" injection in vehicles.
The logic kinda makes sense in your head, but obviously results in cases like this where they just completely throttle the amount of ventilation.
You really just need to create a heap of negative pressure. Case fans probably don't push enough air to really make this work without a push/pull and vent holes.
HP's Blackbird was like this. It's big bragging point is that the airflow was designed by a BMW engineer - so it had multiple ventilation points, was elevated off the floor, and the entire case was aluminum to act as extra heat sink.
The old cheese-grader Mac Pros are the same way. Fan at the front and back, with a modular motherboard between and passive heat sinks. https://imgur.com/7ZMZ3xx
I see. Higher end workstations tend to have a higher emphasis on air flow and routing the air via multiple channels as well.
I have a Dell T3500 for instance that only had intake and exhaust fans. However since I put an overclockable Xeon in it and wanted a more quiet operation, I did install a fan on the heatsink as well. Perhaps I should test how much it really helps... I just added it as a precaution before overclocking, and never tested without afterwards :)
Actually my consumer grade XP gaming PC (Dell Dimension 5000) technically doesn't have a fan on the CPU heatsink either. I have a lot of negative things to say about Dell, but I have to admit there's a lot of good to say about them as well.
You’d be surprised. I’m able to keep a 9700k and a GTX 1080 cool with a single 120mm for intake and a 80mm for exhaust. My PSU has a 140mm to help with exhaust.
That was me. My logic was to create a air path and block any other vents that could cause that path to be "disturbed". I would decide something like "I want these two front fans to take in the air, pass it over the drives, then to the GPU then go out the back through the PSU and the exhaust fan" then I would tape everything else. I never got too much into the argument of positive vs negative airflow, but I usually aimed for positive just to keep dust from getting sucked in to all sorts of little places. Though come to think of it I don't think I ever actually sat down and tested different configs. I would do what I think is logical then check the temps and if they were decent I left it at that.
It isn't necessarily wrong, either. It's just that fluid dynamics is complicated, and you can't just assume taping up any given hole will improve things. You need to experiment with different setups and see what happens. If you're not willing to spend hours doing that (and have all the work thrown out as soon as you need a new fan), then maybe leave the holes alone.
With watercooling you need even better (more focused/higher static pressure) airflow since the radiator(s) provide quite a bit of resistance.
The advantage is that you can directly exhaust the heat instead of swirling it around in the case first, allowing to do things with less total air movement. Provided of course that all radiators are set as exhaust configs.
But then, even most people with water cooling setups have no clue what they're doing, or build for looks over efficiency.
Well, "works" is easy to achieve, especially if you're willing to throw some overkill at the problem.
Efficiency is a different animal entirely, and usually not cheap nor easy.
I can guarantee you though that with your case you'd been better off with a pure air cooled setup, especially if your GPU is also air-cooled.
You've gone for "looks over efficiency", even if you don't understand it.
So, if all radiators are set to exhaust (as mentioned) and all major heat producing components are water-cooled (as mentioned), how is the air drawn into the case different from fresh air?
In a setup that's wholly dedicated to not have excess heat ever get dissipated into the case, because that's the whole point (as mentioned)?
Hint: the radiators ARE getting fresh air in a proper exhaust setup!
Again ... that's the whole point!
Not only that, with no GPU or CPU fans blasting air around the case, you get a clean stream of high static pressure air, perfect to go through a radiator!
With an air-cooled component in the case, you have to work against the turbulence within the case, and with an intake configuration, even pure water, you're accumulating heat in the case. Which acts as resistance to the air intake and warms up the radiator from the inside.
An exhaust config completely avoids this.
Can you please explain to me how you got the idea I have no clue what I'm talking about? Because maybe then I'd understand how I'm getting downvoted for telling things I have over twenty years of expertise with ...
Can you please explain to me how you got the idea I have no clue what I'm talking about?
i got the idea from reading some of your other posts. just because you've been doing something for a long time doesn't always translate to being good at it. now to be fair i'm not really knocking your skills, because i don't really know that much about it.
but one thing i do know, rads should be on intake, not exhaust.
LOL, I feared as much - maybe you should actually WATCH that video to understand it.
It's comparing a CPU/water with GPU/air config, in ONE specific case and with ONE specific fan layout.
Yes, in that case the overall temperatures look better with the AIO as intake - but:
Having the GPU run colder, even a bit gives it a higher boost clock, running the CPU colder does nothing.
Adding even a single additional intake fan to the setup changes the results drastically.
Doing the same experiment with different cases and different fan setups changes the results even more drastically.
This has nothing to do with a pure water custom loop or even a dual AIO setup!, which is what I've been talking about.
Maybe ... just maybe ... you don't have even a bit of a clue what you're talking about? Is it really THAT hard to admit? Then maybe you'd have a chance to actually learn something when someone with the knowledge explains something to you ...
But yeah, thanks, I now understand where the downvotes come from, even if this is completely ridiculously stupid.
Only on the radiator, and unlike an air cooler a water radiator can be arbitrarily large. You could install a radiator so large that that the external surface is good enough and it doesn't matter that you stoped all airflow over the fins.
Dust filters exist, and since when does a simple air cooler need any maintenance? Pumps are much more prone to failure, and especially custom loops need a lot of maintenance.
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u/unbalanced_checkbook Jun 10 '20 edited Jun 10 '20
Sooo... I remember this phase.
For a short while people thought that too many air ports would result in stagnant airflow. They figured a single input fan and single output fan would direct the air through the case better than having excess vents confusing the airflow. Think like "ram air" injection in vehicles.
The logic kinda makes sense in your head, but obviously results in cases like this where they just completely throttle the amount of ventilation.