Cooling

Well -- Here's to hoping this is in the right section!

I have a mid-tower case. For a few months I only had the Power Supply fan and the CPU fan to cool my system, which was fine until I started adding many cards to the system.

So - Several months ago I got another fan and installed it in the case. This addition (obviously) caused a good drop in temperature.

Now, I have the new fan also mounted to exhaust... The fan is mounted so it's right in line with the processor, so I figured I could expel the CPU heat much more efficently by exhausting. Also - Where the case's air-holes are, I figured it would "drag" more air across the other components and cards.

I've been pleased with the results thus far.... However - Today I read another article on cooling and they discussed installing a new case fan to force air in rather than exhausting...

Does anyone have ideas? What would the benefit be for me to flip the fan around and have it drawing air into the case rather than having it exhaust?

 

I'd leave the fan blowing out. If the fan you have now is in the back of the case, adding a fan in the front of the case that blows in may very well benefit you. I suspect this is what they are talking about.

I'd be surprised if turning the fan around so it blows in rather than out results in a cooler running PC. There's one way to find out though. Turn it around and see what happens.

 

Hehehe -- True enough... Yeah, it's on the back of the case. I was just curious...

 

It's human nature. I'd be worried about you if you weren't.

 

Hmm -- While we're on this cooling discussion, I thought I'd offer a bit of advice to anyone who may read this post:
I've been doing this with my computers for ages, and I thought I'd just pass this on...
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Everyone knows a computers worst enemy is heat. (Hence, my curiousity about the fans) -- Especially at this time of year, when furnaces are running full-tilt and spewing dust everywhere, you should be concerned about dust buildup inside your PC's case.

Here's what I do: Once a month, I open the case, and (using a can of compressed air) I blow out all the dust I can (i would recommend doing this somewhere away from everyone and everything else, as the dust cloud coming out of it will get all over everything).

If you don't have a can of compressed air, CAREFULLY get the smallest attachment you can find for your vacuum cleaner and get as much dust out of the power supply as you can. if you can directly access any fan, also vacuum these out (HOLD the fans blade still while you do this, as making the fans blades spin from the vacuum could burn out the fan motor!) Also -- a Q-Tip cleans fans quite nicely.

Then (and this can be dangerous if you're not VERY careful) - Remove the fan from your CPU's heatsink.. DO NOT remove the heatsink from the processor!!!! Using this attachment, try to get all the baked-on dust out of the fins of the heatsink and remount the fan..

Also clean out all the air-holes in your case...

Finally -- If you have your box sitting directly on the floor, you'll run into far more dust than if you have it sitting higher up.

Once everything is as clean as you can get it, turn the system on before putting the case cover on, to make sure the fan you previously removed is mounted properly and is running smoothly... then put the cover back on and you're ready to roll..

I do this once a month all year long, and in just one months' time you wouldn't believe the amount of BAKED on dust I remove just from the heatsink alone...