Question on airflow & temps

[Aamon]

I have a coolermaster haf 932, with an xspc rx360 rad on top. There are 6 fans in push/pull bringing air into the case through the rad. I have been leaving the side off for a while, but now that I want to put the side of the case back on I seem to be getting worse temps, and poor airflow through the rad. So I was thinking if I had positive air pressure inside the case I would probably get a lot better airflow with my fans exhausting air out through the radiator. Do you guys think this will adversely affect my cpu temps or will it even matter.

[century child]

How much airflow do you otherwise have going into the case? Are all the fan locations populated? If you've got good airflow into the case, I think you will see a minor improvement in temps if you switch to exhausting air out through the radiator.

[Aamon]

There's a 230mm fan on the front, a 230mm fan on the side, and there's a 140mm fan on the back of the case. The 140mm on the back is currently exhaust, and the other 230mm fans are intake. But if I switch the rad fans around I'm going to also switch the back 140mm fan to intake. I figure if i'm using the rad fans to exhaust it would be better to have a little positive air pressure in the case. I should also note i'm not worried at all about graphics card temps, because it's in the water cooling loop. And the memory isn't a big concern as it's only clocked at 1600.

[M.Fixit]

Aamon,

I am planning on building a very similar system to you (same case, rad and fan mounting) so I am very interested to find out which is the best way to set up the fan intakes / exhausts.

What else you have in your system and what temps do you have with and without the side on?

[Aamon]

My ambient temp right now is 25, my cpu cores on an idle qx6700 at 1.4875vcore are 33/33/25/28. My gtx260 is at 40. Running Prime95 in place large fft's i sit at about 59/59/56/56, and running furmark or any other graphics benchmark i can't get the gpu over 50, it's usually at 46 or so during gaming.

My fan setup is the 230 on the side and on front both as intakes, and the 140 on the back is intake as well. I have a rx360 on top with 6 95cfm coolermaster fans in push pull exhausting air out. I'm really happy with the setup, i get nice temps, and it's almost a perfect balance of airflow. There's a tiny bit of positive air pressure in the case, but hardly any air at all comes out through any of the vents in the case. The top fans exhaust a ton of air through the rad.

Overall i'm using an ek-150 res, laing ddc3.2 with ek rev2 res top. An ek 260 55nm gpu block. Heatkiller 3.0 LT cpu block. All bitspower compression fittings with a couple double rotary 45's, and one triple rotary 90. About 4 feet of 7/16's primochill tubing.

Everything fits in the case nicely with room to spare for another double rad on the bottom if you don't mind getting creative with how you mount the psu, and hard drives. I initially used the case with the side off and the top fans pulling air in. It gave me virtually identical temps to side on and top exhaust. But with the top fans set to intake I couldn't use the case side panel, unless I turned one of the 230mm fans around, and I didn't want air blasting me in the face or blowing paper around on my desk lol.

Hope any of that info is useful to you and gl on your build =).