On 8:00 text on the right is incorrect. It must be CPU - 80.9 and GPU - 69.1 I mixed it up with the same scheme, but with a fan beneath the GPU. You can see them next to each other at 8:29 in the middle. However, this doesn't affect the essence of what was said, because the text was written based on the correct data, and the error occurred during editing.
I have a ThermalTake 600 case. It holds 12 fans that can be intake/exhaust and 1 to move internal air. I currently have it set up with a very slight positive pressure with 6 intakes x 120mm and 3 exhaust x 120mm and 2 x 140mm. How would you set this up? it doesn't need all these fans but fans are cheap and look cool?
@@LucFireCraft He never intsalled the fans in the correct order. Front to back and bottom to top. If you install the fans in the correct way the temps are way better than without or his "Base" scenario with just one fan in the back.
Увидел превью. Увидел название. По моему рома делал что-то 1 в 1 такое, но пораньше. Смотрю на ру канал, смотрю на этот. Подумал кто-то видос украл. Кликнул на этот видос, осознал. Удачи с этим каналом, интересно будет увидеть как англоязычная аудитория отреагирует на видос про охлаждение радиатором жигулей
A summary/reminder at the end would have been golden. What was the best fan setup with all panels on in the "right side up"(non-upside down) configuration?
People are so overthinking this. Fresh air In from front and Hot air out from back. Adding extra fans to bottom or top just mess air flow. I use overpressure setup with 3 120mm fans at front and 1 120mm exhaust at back. All pcie slot covers removed from back. No dust collection inside case, runs cool and quiet
I have also found that less is more. I have two 140mm fans on my aio blowing in and one 140mm exhausting. My cpu and gpu throttle as much as they did when I had three 140mm fans at the top also exhausting or three 140 intakes and 1 back and 3 top exhausts.
After 20 years building these, nowadays first thing that goes to trash is the sidepanel. Open case always wins. No need for pointless fans either. Only coolers and ramfan for memory overclocking. It really doesn't even collect more dust. You'd be surprised if you never rock open case.
People are so overthinking this. Fresh air access for a good cpu cooler fan and the gpu fans is everything we need. Closing the case just messes with the air flow. I use the same open case since ~27years and vacuum it once a year just like the rest of the appartment.
The hot air coming out of the rear exhaust always returns to the case. The important thing is to keep the return path of the hot air as long as possible. This is necessary for the hot air to cool down. When you put the intake fans on top, this path becomes shorter and the hot air returns inside without cooling sufficiently. This is why the temperature increases in the multi-fan experiments. (Also, when all the fans are used as exhaust, there is no air circulation and the temperatures increase again.) The hot air coming out of the rear exhaust can travel a long enough path to cool down using the front fan. Because this is the longest path. It is ideal to provide air circulation with the rear exhaust and the front intake fan. You have produced useful information for many people. Good work!
Thank you so much for making this video! While building a PC, my friend and I got in a disagreement on how and where to place the fans so I’ve always had the question in the back of my head with no good answers.
Thank you so much for making this video. I had always wondered what config worked the best, and you have just answered it for me. I really appreciate your time and effort in doing this.
Man, thanks for all the efforts you made. For me, the number 1 rule for case cooling is always seeking the cpu to have less hot exhaust from gpu, and the second is to make all exhaust leaves the case as soon as possible. So no matter what kind of components you have, leaving the side panel open would be a better option; If not, have a meshed side panel instead or maybe get a gpu with aio liquid cooler.
Rear intake actually works extremely well for SFF. This is because the exhaust fan can be placed at the top of the case in very close proximity to the CPU cooler and you can pull air directly from the area above the GPU and in front of the CPU cooler.
I have almost the exact system! The difference is the msi rtx 3080 gamingZ 12g (which is very hot!) and cpu cooler is be quiet dark rock pro 4! Rear fan 14cm and 3 12cm top fans as exhaust, 3 12cm front fans as intake. I use the "Fan control" program to adjust each fan individually, including cpu and gpu fans. I recommend it HIGHLY! The most important case fans are the rear exhaust fan, and the rear top exhaust fan. All the heat accumulates at that corner because of the cpu cooler, which has to compensate the rising heat of the gpu also. I havent tried to install the bottom fan, because I still use the HDD tray below. When I have to play a game, I have a cooling profile which sets my fans to higher speeds (individually) to keep the system cool. Nice video!!
For a case with a solid side panel, the best results I've ever encountered were achieved by removing the side panel. That was enough info to tell me, either run it with the panel off, or start cutting/drilling. If you have a negative pressure environment in your case, while having vents as close as possible to your main components, that cooler air will get drawn in naturally. Best results I've gotten are from one front low intake, one rear upper exhaust, one top exhaust, vented sides. Position drives or other components and wiring so they don't block flow.
Why? Totaly dissagree with you. Chase builders should finaly build their chases with own seperated "room" for the Gpu connected with a riser cable. Sitting at a angle where the air Flow can go with fresh air in and hot air out without coming in contact to other parts. Everyone know that the Gpu is the hottest thing and the cpu can be modded with extreme big coolers, which gpus cant. For me it makes no sense to hold on the old sheme.
its actually very common for sff cases i run mine in this config so the gpu sits basically flush to three top intakes, it never reached more than 60c while the cpu never goes above 55
This channels was randomly recommend to me by RUclips, and i am so glad it did. I love it! Keep it up. These tests are really fun when you have a blower style card. My first ever PC that as my own had a EVGA 750ti in it. I was so proud! Almost physically impossible to get to hot. But got lucky and found a EVGA 1070 founders edition(An only recently upgraded from that! What a great card). I found with my crap case at the time that if I set all the case fans to intake and the one behind the CPU as a exhaust I got the best temps by far. An the extreme positive pressure kept the dust surprisingly low. I then went a little crazy and got a NZXT G12 bracket and a 120mm EVGA AIO and attached it to the 1070 and had a card that never got over 40 degrees while gaming.
One of the best configurations i have found so far for an (old) case that does not have any openings at the top is 2 good 140mm (covered by lite mesh) and 1 120mm exhaust fan and removing ALL obstructions from the back. This walks very well cooling pretty high temp hardware 12400h (stock fan!) + 3080ti, on the cheap. One 140mm fan had a place for it, the other one i had to jurry-rig on my own in place of the old cd and floppy trays. The result is very quiet with fans configured to run up to 80% speed, moves a lot of air through the case and the exhaust feels burning hot to the hand. First tried without removing the back covers, it worked but it felt that there is too much pressure in the case, the situation improved drastically with every additional cover i removed. The exhaust fan is there is there basically to circulate the air then the pc is idle or at a very low load. The fans are old Noiseblocker NB-eLoop that have a very unique shape and have some unique properties, like a very focused current of air. They are pointed directly at the cpu and gpu, and are configured to ramp up with gpu and cpu tems respectively. Unexpectedly, the fan pointed at the shitty stock intel cooler improves the cpu temps insanely, it drops like 10-15 degrees when the cpu focused 140 fan ramps up and is practically silent if its rmp does not go over 85% of max rpm. I call this my windtunnel setup. The fan curves are set up via the FanControl software, it also works well for limiting the speed of the stock cpu cooler to make it no go into its whiny and low top rpms. Dont remember the exact temps but the cpu is usually under 70, and gpu under 85, they could go much lower if I allow the fans to go to 100, but this is the sweetspot for cool and quiet for me. (This was done to save money, i wanted to reuse as much of my older system as possible, and the only cooling parts i purchased were the two 140mm fans fro 15$ each)
That was awesome! Yesterday I got so much hate against my open case design and today I got this video in my recommendation. Incredible how people think the "well-engineered" cases are for the greater good but NO, they are designed for to spend more money on accessories.
Three fans on the front, Two out through the radiator on the top and one out the back. No overheating issues but I did enjoy this video. Thank you for your time!
Good video man, it just confirms my assumption for system ( that i built in 2018 with cooler master Pro case 5 Pro) , My fan placement (inside case) were Front : 2 intake , 120mm each , front mesh Rear : 1 Exhaust , 120mm Top : 2 Exhaust , 100mm each PSU Fan : Default with Corsair HX 1200i CPU Cooler : Noctua NH-D15 ( 2 Fan) GPU: Gigabyte Aorus 1080ti 11GB GPU (3 fan) Total Fan: 11 inside case keeps everything under 70'C (without much noise, pretty much quite)It creates a little bit pressure inside cabin, More IN flow, less OUT Flow. ( only combination in your setup missed out) because air will find its way out (Physics). Just need fine balance between IN vs OUT flow to sustain air circulation inside case
What a delightful video testing the craziest forms of fans, all in the name of science and curiosity. I'm even going to recommend that the biggest hardware channel in my country do the same experiment.
The reverse airflow setup 2:10 works decently in cases where the GPU is isolated away from the motherboard using a PCIe riser-extender such as in mini-ITX builds where the GPU and mobo are sandwiched on opposite sites of the chassis. Also works best with liquid cooling so the CPU heat is siphoned away from the the memory and mobo.
Thank you for answering all the questions I always wanted to ask! I really enjoyed watching this one and got soo much information that I'll never use. :) I aim for max silence, so I have two slow front intake SW3 and one faster rear exhaust SW3 to cool 5800X + 4070. Ironically in Define S2, as the original GB-14 were too noisy. But there's something more important than fan configurations: DUST. :) Case with a dust filter on any intake should always be priority, even on gaming rigs.
I got 9 fans in mine and have also experimented a few setups, I found the most important one is the exhaust fan next to the I/O shield, I put a Fractal Venturi 120 CFM fan there and it made the most difference from getting rid of hot CPU air quicker. For my TUF 4080 Super, I put another Venturi 120 CFM fan on top of the large opening above the heatsink for suction. With proper undervolting for both CPU and GPU, it now runs the most demanding games stable at CPU: 61°C (142°F), GPU: 52°C (125°F). I setup optimally like your test with 2 smaller high CFM fans on top behind the CPU cooler. I also kept all panels and covers on to prevent dust buildup too.
I went with 6 fans in my current build. 3 intake airflow fans in the front, 1 exhaust airflow fan in the back, 2 static pressure fans on the AIO on top. I feel like the airflow fans carry the heat out from the 7800 XT and the CPU takes care of itself with the AIO.
I love playing with fans! I have a Tower 900, and I've been messing around with fan configurations a while. I currently have a separator between the gpu and cpu. Gpu side has intake on top and bottom (going to do more testing with that soon). Cpu side is top intake, and three exhaust fans blowing out the bottom. Top intake is working quite well. I get fresh air directed through a shroud to the cpu cooler, and it doesn't go over 70 at max load. 8086k delidded at 5.3 ghz
Thanks for all this work! I've been trying to find reliable information on pc case airflow, and this matched my findings too. I recently got a used PC for cheap, but it's an Alienware R7. One exhaust, one intake, blower gpu. I wonder if I can use this information to improve the temps since the GPU thermal throttles.
Something that absolutely needs to come back imo are side-cover fans. For glass-sided cases this is very hard to come by unless you like the look of acrylic. I noticed that although temperatures in my PC were relatively stable with or without the cover, the 10 degree difference is real without. but aside from that: The back-end of the GPU tends to get the hottest vs the front-end. which is where my suggestion of a side panel fan comes in.
PLEASE!!! Isolate the GPU (in and out airflow) from cpu cooler, make gpu suck fresh air from bottom and threw it directly on top exaust fan, or simply make a tube (or buy it in shop for vents system) for cpu fresh air directly from front intake fan. There no such tests on internet for "cheap" improvements, only 3d printing. "optimum" channel is a great example with "I fixed PC cooling.". I remember these days old cases with side panel cone/plastic cilynder directed to CPU for better cooling. Thanks for your greath video!
Good video, wanted answers to that question too but am too lazy to test. Noticed that if I don't clean my dust filters and let the only fan out not work (it's old, and riveted instead of screws, so i sometimes need to manually push it to overcome the resistance) For me the difference was for full load (lzx compression and stalker 2) about 15 degrees, while with dust covering the filters and the fan out not spinning, it reached 84-85 degrees as well as 40-42 degrees system. Now with dust removed and the fan out working, it's 69-72 under full load (100% on each core) for an hour and system slowly goes from 33 to 37 i8700 and a 4070 ti-s altogether I have 5 fans in and 1 fan out plus a normal sized fan on a monster 1.3 kilogram cooling element for the cpu.
I have a case that makes some sense, but I’ve never seen any other similar. It pulls air in the bottom, and exhausts out the top. But the main board is rotated 90 dregs so the cables are on top. It has a channel where they go so you don’t see them. So air blows past each component and out the case. ‘Theoretically’ no mixing of hot air between components.
I know this isn't ment to be a serious video, but for those who want the correct setup; The fans should blow in the same direction, i.e. front to back and bottom to top. No fans should blow against another Keep the intakes together (front and bottom) and all the exhausts together (rear and top) Have filters on the intakes and at least one less exhaust fan to help keep dust out Edit; typos
@@Clashy69 A slight positive pressure pushes air out the gaps in the case, helping to keep dust out, You could have a 3+3 setup, but have a 240 radiator as exhausts, and the restriction from the rad would create positive pressure
@@AndroidBeacshire what if u just have normal 120 fans? is what i said still good or is it better to just have 3 front intakes 1 rear exhaust and then only 1 top exhaust?
It's best to expel hot air from the top and draw in cool air from either the rear or front, as cooler air tends to stay lower, especially in an air-conditioned room. For optimal performance, the CPU and GPU should maintain closely matched temperatures simultaneously, particularly when both are running at peak performance.
Thanks for sharing your findings!! It's true, sometimes our meddling with the fans worsen things. lol I have a matx with slightly smaller than medium tower case, 2x120mm fan front and 1x90mm fan rear. After some testing, decided to downclock my cpu (Ryzen 5600G) and old gpu RX580 8GB, and the two run at relatively cool temps of 37degC/40degC idle, and 45degC/55degC full load ... with both front fans turned off. And I am in Singapore, avg temps 27degC - 33degC. Dec 2024 recorded 36degC tops!!
Very good video! I would have loved if you mentioned dust accumulation with possitive pressure and negative pressure configurations not to forget dust filtered intake vs unfiltered intake, etc. because i still believe dust filtered possitive pressure configuration is the best one overall.. :)
Extremely informative video. I will have to adjust my fans a bit to experiment with dust reduction and improved thermals with the knowledge you gifted us. Also, kudos on all the constant cable management you endured for this video, excellent work all around.
That was a hard work for us from you Roman. I can say, i have no idea about my Fans in my computers, but i did add and remove so long if i have the resoults i wish. So they are looking too.^^
It's also important to think about dust intake with negative internal pressure. Its better to have a slight possitive pressure to make sure the air is getting in through the filters of the fans
I got XT VIEW case. Top 3x intake, rear 1x intake, bottom x1[GPU extra] intake, 2x back side exhaust. Custom fan curves on all, CPU tower fan to pull. No thermal issues without custom fan curves, however fans do ramp when gaming custom fan curve by design. G/HTPC sofa experience so fan noise doesn't bother.
used different fan layouts in most of the pcs Ive built. Just more fun that way. I've found them effective enough, my main rig uses 8 intake fans and one exhaust, nevery have issues with throttling from a 5950x and 3090. that said I agree with you that "out of the case" thinking usually doesn't work as initially imagined
I couldn't help but notice that you left out the most efficient setup. Front and bottom panel fans are intake, top and back ones exhaust.(CPU exhaust also facing the back panel) I'd be really curious to see the temps with this fan configuration since I use the very same one.
Not gonna lie, these are the kinds of questions I wanted answered. I built a PC that I designed to cool a 65W i7 passively with the NH-P1, but I decided it was such a neat build that I wanted it to be my main PC. So now I have intake fans for the GPU and to try to maintain positive pressure to try to reduce dust buildup in the full-mesh case, and my one exhaust fan only comes on when things are getting toasty (mobo above 40C and/or CPU/GPU at pretty high utilization). And yeah, I'm getting similar results to some of these where my CPU thermals are a little worse when the GPU fans and intake fans near the GPU are active. But my case is really well ventilated, so it only goes up by a few degrees. And I always thought the "hot air rises" arguments for fan placement were silly because fans necessarily introduce turbulence.
In my configuration, I have a 360 mm AIO on top, a 120 mm exhaust at the back, and a 140 mm intake at the front. The question is whether another 140 mm at the front will improve the cooling situation.
Увидел превью и уж хотел кинуть жалобу за кражу ролика, а это просто Рома тренирует свой английский и предает свои эксперименты более масштабной огласке) Так держать, удачи в развитии и этого канала!
That's why pc layout of ''tower'' cases haven't changed since late 80's / early 90's because, it just works, what changed was addition of bigger fans, bigger heatsinks on components, removed 5.25'' or 3.5'' drive caddies and other features but, foundation itself - didn't
given there are 3 intake front mount , 1/2/3 intake bottom mount depending on case ,1 rear exhaust , you should try : 1. one intake top mount close to the front panel , one exhaust top mount just above the cpu cooler 2. two intake top mount , one exhaust top mount close to the rear exhaust fan 3. one intake top mount close to the front panel , two exhaust top mount all should be done with 2 fans attached to the cpu heatsink given the heatsink is dual tower , but in your case its single tower but would still recommend using 2 fans blowing the air in the SAME direction which ideally would be towards the rear end ( with ofc the case in the normal layout and not in inverted layout )
It would be also interesting to see some examples of positive pressure inside with low amount of fans(2-4). In the vid only negative pressure is shown with low amount of fans
One of my PCs is 20x20x9cm. With 1 intake fan and 1 exhaust fan, both 6x6x1cm large. Idle temps are around 60c and when watching RUclips it sometimes goes to 70c. Without fans temps are 100c and the system is thermal throttling like crazy.
As someone who designs cooling systems for industrial applications such as trains, the short comings of this testing is that it only takes into account the temperature of the CPU & GPU and ignores all other component's thermal performance where benefit of having lower surface temperatures is overlooked e.g disks. You can have a very cool system and still fry components due to the differences in ambient temperature & surface temperature around a box when using air cooling, which is really what the 'bad' fan setups demonstrate. Also it's not true that you will see any performance gain at all simply by having a progressively cooler system. Components are designed to operate efficiently between nominal temperature ranges. The CPU for example has to be overheating substantially to see any benefit. Lowering the temperature beyond a threshold is not a net gain unless you overclock the CPU as all CPU are exactly the same e.g the model variation is simply what the stable operating base of the CPU was tested too. i.e Unless you have this exact PC layout (admittedly a lot of people do), then beyond basic principles it might not be good in practice.
I recently added a fan as exhaust through the spare PCI slots (my aftermarket GPU cooler JUST permits one to fit one between it and the slot covers), helped a bit (without dedicated testing), likely by getting more intake to reach more of the GPU cooler fans and keeping more of the GPU exhaust away from the CPU cooler. Though I also added intake and exhaust fans to the top panel (as this motherboard has no heatsink in the SoC VRM so wanted intake directly over them). My higher priority is for reduced / stable temps at idle to low-load, trying to have as quiet as possible, without causing the fans to ramp from light loads like heavy web pages or opening apps.
With how easy, fast and efficient it is to do undervolting... and you don't have to fight with a lot of fans, connectors and screws, not to mention the constant assembly and disassembly of PC components...
My current setup has two front intakes for the motherboard and gpu, and I set the rear fan as intake to add more cool air inside while two top fans blowing the aio radiator on top. surprisingly it did better temp alittle compared to the rear being exhaust.
I put one of the reverse fans on my cpu cooler so its basically a contra rotating prop, it didnt lower my temps that i noticed but i noticed a hell of a lot more air coming out the back exhaust, i think cause its by a wall its somehow sucking it back in
After years of trying different cases I've ended up with a full mesh case. Tower cpu cooler and full 4 pull 3 push fan setup. Best airflow, temps and dust control I've achieved. For now my money on full mesh cases.
the four fan test you need to include having the top right blowing in and the top two right blowing in, they blow cold air directly into the CPU intake
I think also it needs to be considered that in this test CPU and GPU is air cooled. Also GPU is the recirculating air design, rather than blower design. In general choice of coolers does benefir from good airflow in the case, hence huge inprovement when simply removing side pannel. However, there are more variables - for example if you running AiO on CPU, or AiO on GPU, then placing of those radiators and how they interact with the intake/exaust fans and directions of flow will matter as well. I mean it is still interesting test and may be relevant for some people, but I can't really imagine myself air cooling CPU ever again in the future and where possible I would aslo want GPU to be water cooled as well. And that changes a lot of results.
with GPUs getting increasingly heavy I once had the showerthought of just flipping the case 90° and have the GPU hang from the top, having the display ports on the top of the case. No GPU sag that way, right? Never tested the idea, but I think the next time I build a new PC I'd take some time to experiment with that.
Some forgotten knowledge from years ago, PC's came with CPU Fan Duct, which dramatically reduced the overall system temperature, but mind you, GPU's at the time were pretty low power and even some of them had a passive cooler or a tiny fan... *Coughs heavily in Nvidia MX440*.
The main problem these days is always the hot air exhausting from GPU in a big ball in roughly the middle of the case and near CPU. If we could have cases with quite heavy ducting around GPU to separate it's intake and exhaust air route off the rest of the case, we would be golden, and some guy on youtube demonstrated it.
Awesome data... But there is something that I would do differently... I believe strongly in channeling air in one direction from the back to the front or bottom to the top - let me finish - across the CPU & GPU, where the panels parallel to the airflow are sealed... So I would have - with your setup in mind - sealed off the top & bottom of the case, put 3 fans on the front of the case, then placed the case on it's back(on feet), letting air flow up through the rear\bottom & out through the front\top, & test it like that(making sure that the heat generated from the GPU flows away from the CPU cooler & not through\over it)... I would have liked to have seen that configuration tested as well...🤔
I'm looking to build a new PC and stumbled across this video, it was very helpful. I was wondering if anyone has tested a 4 exhaust (1 back, 3 top) and a 3 intake (front) setup, curious if it would be better than a 4 exhaust and 0 intake setup.
On 8:00 text on the right is incorrect.
It must be CPU - 80.9 and GPU - 69.1
I mixed it up with the same scheme, but with a fan beneath the GPU. You can see them next to each other at 8:29 in the middle.
However, this doesn't affect the essence of what was said, because the text was written based on the correct data, and the error occurred during editing.
It's ok. Nice video
Рома виходить на новий рівень?)
I have a ThermalTake 600 case. It holds 12 fans that can be intake/exhaust and 1 to move internal air. I currently have it set up with a very slight positive pressure with 6 intakes x 120mm and 3 exhaust x 120mm and 2 x 140mm. How would you set this up? it doesn't need all these fans but fans are cheap and look cool?
Great video, thank you for sacrificing your components for the RGB god.
How about custom 3d printed pieces that restrict air flow to create a tunnel?
These aren't stupid , but very smart and useful experiments. Thanks for your time dedicated to it.
What if you programmed the fans to “inhale and exhale” on a loop? Breathing pc lmao might actually be good airflow 😅 and it would be funny to see.
i would love to see that
watch DIY Perks, he made a breathing PC
Your lungs expand to breathe in. Lmk when your PC case can do that 😆
@ two words “soft case” nah but I know lol
@@cosmic_gate476 i honestly laughed at the image of a pc actually breathing like a lung
while we are at it why don't we remove the case
caseless builds be like
Because then you won't have any airflow and in turn would have bad temps.
@@rene837 nope, actually it's cooler.
@@LucFireCraft He never intsalled the fans in the correct order. Front to back and bottom to top. If you install the fans in the correct way the temps are way better than without or his "Base" scenario with just one fan in the back.
then your new issue would be dust
This video alone is worth a subscribe
I dont want to imagine the amount of work this took, respect
Увидел превью. Увидел название. По моему рома делал что-то 1 в 1 такое, но пораньше. Смотрю на ру канал, смотрю на этот. Подумал кто-то видос украл. Кликнул на этот видос, осознал. Удачи с этим каналом, интересно будет увидеть как англоязычная аудитория отреагирует на видос про охлаждение радиатором жигулей
i once (while braindead) tried 2 fans on the cpu cooler, both facing inwards lol vaporised the writing clean off the cpu.
That must have been a long time ago. But understandable.
good way to give your cpu some extra warmth in the cold winter
Super fun watch to satisfy all my fan setup dreams haha.
A summary/reminder at the end would have been golden. What was the best fan setup with all panels on in the "right side up"(non-upside down) configuration?
My exact thoughts, then what was the optimal setup?
Negative pressure to draw air in using top and rear exhaust.
11:34 he summarizes the results of the video
7:00 best is exhaust behind and top.
People are so overthinking this. Fresh air In from front and Hot air out from back. Adding extra fans to bottom or top just mess air flow. I use overpressure setup with 3 120mm fans at front and 1 120mm exhaust at back. All pcie slot covers removed from back. No dust collection inside case, runs cool and quiet
I have also found that less is more. I have two 140mm fans on my aio blowing in and one 140mm exhausting. My cpu and gpu throttle as much as they did when I had three 140mm fans at the top also exhausting or three 140 intakes and 1 back and 3 top exhausts.
Yes. I’m blowing warm air in. It affected my gpu 2 degrees over having many more fans and aio exhaust.
I put my Mini PC in my Freezer. So Cool!😊
After 20 years building these, nowadays first thing that goes to trash is the sidepanel. Open case always wins. No need for pointless fans either. Only coolers and ramfan for memory overclocking. It really doesn't even collect more dust. You'd be surprised if you never rock open case.
People are so overthinking this. Fresh air access for a good cpu cooler fan and the gpu fans is everything we need. Closing the case just messes with the air flow. I use the same open case since ~27years and vacuum it once a year just like the rest of the appartment.
I haven’t laughed this much at a RUclips video in quite a while. And yet, it was probably the most informative video on PC cooling I have ever seen.
Кошмар,в 2024 не шарить за потоки )
The hot air coming out of the rear exhaust always returns to the case. The important thing is to keep the return path of the hot air as long as possible. This is necessary for the hot air to cool down. When you put the intake fans on top, this path becomes shorter and the hot air returns inside without cooling sufficiently. This is why the temperature increases in the multi-fan experiments. (Also, when all the fans are used as exhaust, there is no air circulation and the temperatures increase again.) The hot air coming out of the rear exhaust can travel a long enough path to cool down using the front fan. Because this is the longest path. It is ideal to provide air circulation with the rear exhaust and the front intake fan. You have produced useful information for many people. Good work!
I prefer the cursed rear and bottom intake setup 🤣
Thank you so much for making this video! While building a PC, my friend and I got in a disagreement on how and where to place the fans so I’ve always had the question in the back of my head with no good answers.
Thank you so much for making this video. I had always wondered what config worked the best, and you have just answered it for me. I really appreciate your time and effort in doing this.
Nice, that is great knowledge, the only missing opportunity I noticed was all 8 fans intake but with the side panel open
Man, thanks for all the efforts you made. For me, the number 1 rule for case cooling is always seeking the cpu to have less hot exhaust from gpu, and the second is to make all exhaust leaves the case as soon as possible. So no matter what kind of components you have, leaving the side panel open would be a better option; If not, have a meshed side panel instead or maybe get a gpu with aio liquid cooler.
Rear intake actually works extremely well for SFF. This is because the exhaust fan can be placed at the top of the case in very close proximity to the CPU cooler and you can pull air directly from the area above the GPU and in front of the CPU cooler.
I have almost the exact system! The difference is the msi rtx 3080 gamingZ 12g (which is very hot!) and cpu cooler is be quiet dark rock pro 4!
Rear fan 14cm and 3 12cm top fans as exhaust, 3 12cm front fans as intake.
I use the "Fan control" program to adjust each fan individually, including cpu and gpu fans. I recommend it HIGHLY!
The most important case fans are the rear exhaust fan, and the rear top exhaust fan. All the heat accumulates at that corner because of the cpu cooler, which has to compensate the rising heat of the gpu also.
I havent tried to install the bottom fan, because I still use the HDD tray below. When I have to play a game, I have a cooling profile which sets my fans to higher speeds (individually) to keep the system cool.
Nice video!!
For a case with a solid side panel, the best results I've ever encountered were achieved by removing the side panel. That was enough info to tell me, either run it with the panel off, or start cutting/drilling. If you have a negative pressure environment in your case, while having vents as close as possible to your main components, that cooler air will get drawn in naturally.
Best results I've gotten are from one front low intake, one rear upper exhaust, one top exhaust, vented sides. Position drives or other components and wiring so they don't block flow.
I've never seen a pc build "upside down". Thats diabolical. But great video, learned alot!
Why? Totaly dissagree with you.
Chase builders should finaly build their chases with own seperated "room" for the Gpu connected with a riser cable. Sitting at a angle where the air Flow can go with fresh air in and hot air out without coming in contact to other parts. Everyone know that the Gpu is the hottest thing and the cpu can be modded with extreme big coolers, which gpus cant. For me it makes no sense to hold on the old sheme.
@@Wrutschgeluck its not a bad idea. With diabolical i mean its very unusual to see an upside down pc ;)
its actually very common for sff cases
i run mine in this config so the gpu sits basically flush to three top intakes, it never reached more than 60c while the cpu never goes above 55
This channels was randomly recommend to me by RUclips, and i am so glad it did. I love it! Keep it up. These tests are really fun when you have a blower style card. My first ever PC that as my own had a EVGA 750ti in it. I was so proud! Almost physically impossible to get to hot. But got lucky and found a EVGA 1070 founders edition(An only recently upgraded from that! What a great card). I found with my crap case at the time that if I set all the case fans to intake and the one behind the CPU as a exhaust I got the best temps by far. An the extreme positive pressure kept the dust surprisingly low. I then went a little crazy and got a NZXT G12 bracket and a 120mm EVGA AIO and attached it to the 1070 and had a card that never got over 40 degrees while gaming.
One of the best configurations i have found so far for an (old) case that does not have any openings at the top is 2 good 140mm (covered by lite mesh) and 1 120mm exhaust fan and removing ALL obstructions from the back. This walks very well cooling pretty high temp hardware 12400h (stock fan!) + 3080ti, on the cheap. One 140mm fan had a place for it, the other one i had to jurry-rig on my own in place of the old cd and floppy trays. The result is very quiet with fans configured to run up to 80% speed, moves a lot of air through the case and the exhaust feels burning hot to the hand. First tried without removing the back covers, it worked but it felt that there is too much pressure in the case, the situation improved drastically with every additional cover i removed. The exhaust fan is there is there basically to circulate the air then the pc is idle or at a very low load. The fans are old Noiseblocker NB-eLoop that have a very unique shape and have some unique properties, like a very focused current of air. They are pointed directly at the cpu and gpu, and are configured to ramp up with gpu and cpu tems respectively. Unexpectedly, the fan pointed at the shitty stock intel cooler improves the cpu temps insanely, it drops like 10-15 degrees when the cpu focused 140 fan ramps up and is practically silent if its rmp does not go over 85% of max rpm. I call this my windtunnel setup. The fan curves are set up via the FanControl software, it also works well for limiting the speed of the stock cpu cooler to make it no go into its whiny and low top rpms. Dont remember the exact temps but the cpu is usually under 70, and gpu under 85, they could go much lower if I allow the fans to go to 100, but this is the sweetspot for cool and quiet for me.
(This was done to save money, i wanted to reuse as much of my older system as possible, and the only cooling parts i purchased were the two 140mm fans fro 15$ each)
с таким ржачным акцентом даже интереснее
+
нормальный акцент, через пару минут уже даже не замечаешь 😅
The best PC cooling video I've seen. Forget all the other complex ideas, start with basics and tests, so glad I watched this.
That was awesome! Yesterday I got so much hate against my open case design and today I got this video in my recommendation. Incredible how people think the "well-engineered" cases are for the greater good but NO, they are designed for to spend more money on accessories.
Wanted to say - you’ve got some cool vintage lenses I spotted, and the look of your footage has a great aesthetic!
really good video man, absolutely loved watching it all the way through. Keep climbing
Awesome experiment. I have a feeling that a metal side panel instead of a glass panel would have helped dissipate heat by a few more degrees.
Three fans on the front, Two out through the radiator on the top and one out the back. No overheating issues but I did enjoy this video. Thank you for your time!
Good video man, it just confirms my assumption for system ( that i built in 2018 with cooler master Pro case 5 Pro) ,
My fan placement (inside case) were
Front : 2 intake , 120mm each , front mesh
Rear : 1 Exhaust , 120mm
Top : 2 Exhaust , 100mm each
PSU Fan : Default with Corsair HX 1200i
CPU Cooler : Noctua NH-D15 ( 2 Fan)
GPU: Gigabyte Aorus 1080ti 11GB GPU (3 fan)
Total Fan: 11 inside case
keeps everything under 70'C (without much noise, pretty much quite)It creates a little bit pressure inside cabin, More IN flow, less OUT Flow. ( only combination in your setup missed out)
because air will find its way out (Physics).
Just need fine balance between IN vs OUT flow to sustain air circulation inside case
REally surprised with temps on last scenario (3 on top, rear a,d CPU exhaust - reverse).
Have to try it.
Thanks for the vid. Very fun and useful
Awesome video, great to see actual testing on so many fan configs and demystifying some myths.
What a delightful video testing the craziest forms of fans, all in the name of science and curiosity.
I'm even going to recommend that the biggest hardware channel in my country do the same experiment.
The reverse airflow setup 2:10 works decently in cases where the GPU is isolated away from the motherboard using a PCIe riser-extender such as in mini-ITX builds where the GPU and mobo are sandwiched on opposite sites of the chassis. Also works best with liquid cooling so the CPU heat is siphoned away from the the memory and mobo.
Thank you for answering all the questions I always wanted to ask! I really enjoyed watching this one and got soo much information that I'll never use. :)
I aim for max silence, so I have two slow front intake SW3 and one faster rear exhaust SW3 to cool 5800X + 4070. Ironically in Define S2, as the original GB-14 were too noisy.
But there's something more important than fan configurations: DUST. :) Case with a dust filter on any intake should always be priority, even on gaming rigs.
I got 9 fans in mine and have also experimented a few setups, I found the most important one is the exhaust fan next to the I/O shield, I put a Fractal Venturi 120 CFM fan there and it made the most difference from getting rid of hot CPU air quicker. For my TUF 4080 Super, I put another Venturi 120 CFM fan on top of the large opening above the heatsink for suction. With proper undervolting for both CPU and GPU, it now runs the most demanding games stable at CPU: 61°C (142°F), GPU: 52°C (125°F). I setup optimally like your test with 2 smaller high CFM fans on top behind the CPU cooler. I also kept all panels and covers on to prevent dust buildup too.
thank u for testing the things i would never ever have the patience to do
The old BTX setup has been very under rated, and under used.
Totally true
Perhaps, but an ATX motherboard upside down is not BTX. BTX motherboards are more or less mirror images of ATX (with some components rotated as well).
Really great video that pretty much addresses all my questions regarding airflow, thanks for the experiment
I went with 6 fans in my current build. 3 intake airflow fans in the front, 1 exhaust airflow fan in the back, 2 static pressure fans on the AIO on top. I feel like the airflow fans carry the heat out from the 7800 XT and the CPU takes care of itself with the AIO.
Сенкью вери мач фор зе видео! Вери гуд джоб! Ай вуд лайк ту саджест ван синг, потеншелли ин и дифферент видео: кэн ю плиз эксплейн Вай экзактли ду зис конфигурейшнс ворк зыс вэй? Фор экзампл, вай даз олл экзост фэнс пойнтинг аутворд перформ соу бэдли?
Все ещё лучше, чем у британцев
@ ну пош акцент вполне ничего. Обычный Лондонский в принципе тоже обычно несложно понять. А вот какие-нибудь местные - да, бывают трудности
Great video! Loving the content, happy to always see a new video from you!
wanted to see this experiment long time ago, you my bro, deserve a subscribe.
I love playing with fans! I have a Tower 900, and I've been messing around with fan configurations a while. I currently have a separator between the gpu and cpu. Gpu side has intake on top and bottom (going to do more testing with that soon). Cpu side is top intake, and three exhaust fans blowing out the bottom.
Top intake is working quite well. I get fresh air directed through a shroud to the cpu cooler, and it doesn't go over 70 at max load. 8086k delidded at 5.3 ghz
Thanks for all this work! I've been trying to find reliable information on pc case airflow, and this matched my findings too. I recently got a used PC for cheap, but it's an Alienware R7. One exhaust, one intake, blower gpu. I wonder if I can use this information to improve the temps since the GPU thermal throttles.
Great video. Entertaining and informative without much fluff
Didn't knew Roma had a second Eng dub channel. Cool!
Something that absolutely needs to come back imo are side-cover fans. For glass-sided cases this is very hard to come by unless you like the look of acrylic.
I noticed that although temperatures in my PC were relatively stable with or without the cover, the 10 degree difference is real without. but aside from that:
The back-end of the GPU tends to get the hottest vs the front-end. which is where my suggestion of a side panel fan comes in.
PLEASE!!! Isolate the GPU (in and out airflow) from cpu cooler, make gpu suck fresh air from bottom and threw it directly on top exaust fan, or simply make a tube (or buy it in shop for vents system) for cpu fresh air directly from front intake fan. There no such tests on internet for "cheap" improvements, only 3d printing. "optimum" channel is a great example with "I fixed PC cooling.". I remember these days old cases with side panel cone/plastic cilynder directed to CPU for better cooling. Thanks for your greath video!
i have an AIO, does the same but less effort
Good video, wanted answers to that question too but am too lazy to test.
Noticed that if I don't clean my dust filters and let the only fan out not work (it's old, and riveted instead of screws, so i sometimes need to manually push it to overcome the resistance)
For me the difference was for full load (lzx compression and stalker 2) about 15 degrees, while with dust covering the filters and the fan out not spinning, it reached 84-85 degrees as well as 40-42 degrees system.
Now with dust removed and the fan out working, it's 69-72 under full load (100% on each core) for an hour and system slowly goes from 33 to 37
i8700 and a 4070 ti-s
altogether I have 5 fans in and 1 fan out plus a normal sized fan on a monster 1.3 kilogram cooling element for the cpu.
I have a case that makes some sense, but I’ve never seen any other similar. It pulls air in the bottom, and exhausts out the top. But the main board is rotated 90 dregs so the cables are on top. It has a channel where they go so you don’t see them. So air blows past each component and out the case. ‘Theoretically’ no mixing of hot air between components.
I know this isn't ment to be a serious video, but for those who want the correct setup;
The fans should blow in the same direction, i.e. front to back and bottom to top. No fans should blow against another
Keep the intakes together (front and bottom)
and all the exhausts together (rear and top)
Have filters on the intakes and at least one less exhaust fan to help keep dust out
Edit; typos
So for example 3 front for intake, one in the back for exhaust and one in top for exhaust so that way you have one less
@tarta5844 isn't neutral pressure the best? 3 intakes front and then 1 rear exhaust and 2 top exhausts?
@@Clashy69 A slight positive pressure pushes air out the gaps in the case, helping to keep dust out,
You could have a 3+3 setup, but have a 240 radiator as exhausts, and the restriction from the rad would create positive pressure
@@AndroidBeacshire what if u just have normal 120 fans? is what i said still good or is it better to just have 3 front intakes 1 rear exhaust and then only 1 top exhaust?
@@Clashy69 A 240mm AIO radiator has two 120mm fans.
But if you have 3 intakes at the front, one or two exhaust fans at the back/top will be fine
0:18. Ah yes the gaming coolinglol
Did i miss it or there was no test on having 3-4 intake fans to have a positive pressure one?
А я то думаю, где-то я уже это видел, думал что видос украли :)
i laugh so bad, my wife had to check on me and think I am insane over some man testing fan videos.
It's best to expel hot air from the top and draw in cool air from either the rear or front, as cooler air tends to stay lower, especially in an air-conditioned room. For optimal performance, the CPU and GPU should maintain closely matched temperatures simultaneously, particularly when both are running at peak performance.
Thanks for sharing your findings!! It's true, sometimes our meddling with the fans worsen things. lol
I have a matx with slightly smaller than medium tower case, 2x120mm fan front and 1x90mm fan rear. After some testing, decided to downclock my cpu (Ryzen 5600G) and old gpu RX580 8GB, and the two run at relatively cool temps of 37degC/40degC idle, and 45degC/55degC full load ... with both front fans turned off.
And I am in Singapore, avg temps 27degC - 33degC. Dec 2024 recorded 36degC tops!!
Very good video! I would have loved if you mentioned dust accumulation with possitive pressure and negative pressure configurations not to forget dust filtered intake vs unfiltered intake, etc. because i still believe dust filtered possitive pressure configuration is the best one overall.. :)
Extremely informative video. I will have to adjust my fans a bit to experiment with dust reduction and improved thermals with the knowledge you gifted us. Also, kudos on all the constant cable management you endured for this video, excellent work all around.
That was a hard work for us from you Roman. I can say, i have no idea about my Fans in my computers, but i did add and remove so long if i have the resoults i wish. So they are looking too.^^
It's also important to think about dust intake with negative internal pressure. Its better to have a slight possitive pressure to make sure the air is getting in through the filters of the fans
I got XT VIEW case. Top 3x intake, rear 1x intake, bottom x1[GPU extra] intake, 2x back side exhaust. Custom fan curves on all, CPU tower fan to pull. No thermal issues without custom fan curves, however fans do ramp when gaming custom fan curve by design. G/HTPC sofa experience so fan noise doesn't bother.
used different fan layouts in most of the pcs Ive built. Just more fun that way. I've found them effective enough, my main rig uses 8 intake fans and one exhaust, nevery have issues with throttling from a 5950x and 3090. that said I agree with you that "out of the case" thinking usually doesn't work as initially imagined
I couldn't help but notice that you left out the most efficient setup. Front and bottom panel fans are intake, top and back ones exhaust.(CPU exhaust also facing the back panel) I'd be really curious to see the temps with this fan configuration since I use the very same one.
Excellent video. Love your sense of humour and effort. The details are wonderful! My system only has 3 fans and it runs nice and cool 👍
Not gonna lie, these are the kinds of questions I wanted answered. I built a PC that I designed to cool a 65W i7 passively with the NH-P1, but I decided it was such a neat build that I wanted it to be my main PC. So now I have intake fans for the GPU and to try to maintain positive pressure to try to reduce dust buildup in the full-mesh case, and my one exhaust fan only comes on when things are getting toasty (mobo above 40C and/or CPU/GPU at pretty high utilization). And yeah, I'm getting similar results to some of these where my CPU thermals are a little worse when the GPU fans and intake fans near the GPU are active. But my case is really well ventilated, so it only goes up by a few degrees.
And I always thought the "hot air rises" arguments for fan placement were silly because fans necessarily introduce turbulence.
In my configuration, I have a 360 mm AIO on top, a 120 mm exhaust at the back, and a 140 mm intake at the front. The question is whether another 140 mm at the front will improve the cooling situation.
I once tried reversing the CPU fan, and the results were good.
Unfortunately the fan and heatsink get dusty very quickly
Увидел превью и уж хотел кинуть жалобу за кражу ролика, а это просто Рома тренирует свой английский и предает свои эксперименты более масштабной огласке)
Так держать, удачи в развитии и этого канала!
Так же)
respect for the amount of time you put on this, you are awesome. subscribed
That's why pc layout of ''tower'' cases haven't changed since late 80's / early 90's because, it just works, what changed was addition of bigger fans, bigger heatsinks on components, removed 5.25'' or 3.5'' drive caddies and other features but, foundation itself - didn't
What I wonder is about having case cover on vs off for the same amount of noise/thermal performance.
given there are 3 intake front mount , 1/2/3 intake bottom mount depending on case ,1 rear exhaust , you should try :
1. one intake top mount close to the front panel , one exhaust top mount just above the cpu cooler
2. two intake top mount , one exhaust top mount close to the rear exhaust fan
3. one intake top mount close to the front panel , two exhaust top mount
all should be done with 2 fans attached to the cpu heatsink given the heatsink is dual tower , but in your case its single tower but would still recommend using 2 fans blowing the air in the SAME direction which ideally would be towards the rear end ( with ofc the case in the normal layout and not in inverted layout )
Рад видеть столько просмотров в английской версии. Поздравляю, Рома
It would be also interesting to see some examples of positive pressure inside with low amount of fans(2-4). In the vid only negative pressure is shown with low amount of fans
As long as you learned something, no experiment is stupid.
One of my PCs is 20x20x9cm. With 1 intake fan and 1 exhaust fan, both 6x6x1cm large. Idle temps are around 60c and when watching RUclips it sometimes goes to 70c. Without fans temps are 100c and the system is thermal throttling like crazy.
As someone who designs cooling systems for industrial applications such as trains, the short comings of this testing is that it only takes into account the temperature of the CPU & GPU and ignores all other component's thermal performance where benefit of having lower surface temperatures is overlooked e.g disks.
You can have a very cool system and still fry components due to the differences in ambient temperature & surface temperature around a box when using air cooling, which is really what the 'bad' fan setups demonstrate.
Also it's not true that you will see any performance gain at all simply by having a progressively cooler system. Components are designed to operate efficiently between nominal temperature ranges. The CPU for example has to be overheating substantially to see any benefit. Lowering the temperature beyond a threshold is not a net gain unless you overclock the CPU as all CPU are exactly the same e.g the model variation is simply what the stable operating base of the CPU was tested too.
i.e Unless you have this exact PC layout (admittedly a lot of people do), then beyond basic principles it might not be good in practice.
I recently added a fan as exhaust through the spare PCI slots (my aftermarket GPU cooler JUST permits one to fit one between it and the slot covers), helped a bit (without dedicated testing), likely by getting more intake to reach more of the GPU cooler fans and keeping more of the GPU exhaust away from the CPU cooler. Though I also added intake and exhaust fans to the top panel (as this motherboard has no heatsink in the SoC VRM so wanted intake directly over them).
My higher priority is for reduced / stable temps at idle to low-load, trying to have as quiet as possible, without causing the fans to ramp from light loads like heavy web pages or opening apps.
With how easy, fast and efficient it is to do undervolting... and you don't have to fight with a lot of fans, connectors and screws, not to mention the constant assembly and disassembly of PC components...
My current setup has two front intakes for the motherboard and gpu, and I set the rear fan as intake to add more cool air inside while two top fans blowing the aio radiator on top. surprisingly it did better temp alittle compared to the rear being exhaust.
I put one of the reverse fans on my cpu cooler so its basically a contra rotating prop, it didnt lower my temps that i noticed but i noticed a hell of a lot more air coming out the back exhaust, i think cause its by a wall its somehow sucking it back in
After years of trying different cases I've ended up with a full mesh case. Tower cpu cooler and full 4 pull 3 push fan setup. Best airflow, temps and dust control I've achieved. For now my money on full mesh cases.
Can you give some examples please?
much love for translating the videos into english, very dedicated work thank you 💙
the four fan test you need to include having the top right blowing in and the top two right blowing in, they blow cold air directly into the CPU intake
I think also it needs to be considered that in this test CPU and GPU is air cooled. Also GPU is the recirculating air design, rather than blower design. In general choice of coolers does benefir from good airflow in the case, hence huge inprovement when simply removing side pannel.
However, there are more variables - for example if you running AiO on CPU, or AiO on GPU, then placing of those radiators and how they interact with the intake/exaust fans and directions of flow will matter as well.
I mean it is still interesting test and may be relevant for some people, but I can't really imagine myself air cooling CPU ever again in the future and where possible I would aslo want GPU to be water cooled as well. And that changes a lot of results.
with GPUs getting increasingly heavy I once had the showerthought of just flipping the case 90° and have the GPU hang from the top, having the display ports on the top of the case. No GPU sag that way, right? Never tested the idea, but I think the next time I build a new PC I'd take some time to experiment with that.
Just found you, really fun and good content. Keep it up. I wish you the best
Some forgotten knowledge from years ago, PC's came with CPU Fan Duct, which dramatically reduced the overall system temperature, but mind you, GPU's at the time were pretty low power and even some of them had a passive cooler or a tiny fan... *Coughs heavily in Nvidia MX440*.
I wish we saw a test for adding a 2nd fan to the cpu cooler AND having a the 1 rear and 1 top exhaust. 4 total fans.
Very well put together video and very informative! Thank you
what if side pannel had holes like the front pannel? keep the pc protect against acidentaly throwing stuff inside it while having good air flow
this is what ive been searching for so long, thanks!
Thank you for the research and testing!
The main problem these days is always the hot air exhausting from GPU in a big ball in roughly the middle of the case and near CPU. If we could have cases with quite heavy ducting around GPU to separate it's intake and exhaust air route off the rest of the case, we would be golden, and some guy on youtube demonstrated it.
Awesome data... But there is something that I would do differently... I believe strongly in channeling air in one direction from the back to the front or bottom to the top - let me finish - across the CPU & GPU, where the panels parallel to the airflow are sealed... So I would have - with your setup in mind - sealed off the top & bottom of the case, put 3 fans on the front of the case, then placed the case on it's back(on feet), letting air flow up through the rear\bottom & out through the front\top, & test it like that(making sure that the heat generated from the GPU flows away from the CPU cooler & not through\over it)... I would have liked to have seen that configuration tested as well...🤔
I'm looking to build a new PC and stumbled across this video, it was very helpful.
I was wondering if anyone has tested a 4 exhaust (1 back, 3 top) and a 3 intake (front) setup, curious if it would be better than a 4 exhaust and 0 intake setup.
5:51 Gracias por el video al "Don Roberto Benigni" de la informática.
Video muy esclarecedor... Saludos desde Argentina.
amazing video but i would really like to see what things would change if you where using a top down cpu cooler instead. (definitely subscribing)