should I have my side fan intake air or exhaust air?

[Shift]

I have a CM storm and I'm wondering if I should use a 120mm side fan to blow air to the car or exhaust it.. anyone have any results? thanks.

[jmke]

remove the fan; duct tape the hole

[roofsniper]

test things to find the best results. i had mine blowing in at first and that worked best but after some hardware changes exhaust became better.

[vengance_01]

Yup Roof is right. Load the machine via an intense game and see how your temps are both ways.

[Shift]

I had it intake for a while but saw no temp decreases so I think I'll have it exhaust air, thanks.

[OldChap]

Will probably depend on your graphics card ...if it exhausts wholly out the rear then intake may help NB temps....if any of the graphics exhaust is into the case then exhaust to lose the heat

[vinister]

remember that many times you may be improving temps without even knowing. Many mobo's don't have nb/sb temps, and many video cards don't have VRM temps, which are all important for stability.

I think, blowing in if you have 2 or more other exhaust fans. Unless your GPU's are dumping heat into the case, then I would probably go for exhaust.

[roofsniper]

Will probably depend on your graphics card ...if it exhausts wholly out the rear then intake may help NB temps....if any of the graphics exhaust is into the case then exhaust to lose the heat

exactly how my situation was. although exhaust really isnt much better for me. its still a mess with a ball of 40C heat between the graphics card and cpu right where the side fan is. everywhere else in the case is like 24C.

[jmke]

by using a fan in your side panel you mess up the ATX airflow, which can result in poorer CPU cooling depending on the cooler you use

[Armored_Kech1]

Intake works best assuming there are stock coolers on everything. It's important that the point of side fan is to feed fresh air into the case (since other intakes are usually blocked/heated by hard drives), not disrupt airflow. As such you should never use extremely high RPM fans for side intake.