Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultramaroon
Hmmmmm.... That's not how the cabinet is designed to operate. They may not look like it but cabinets and internal components are laid out specifically with airflow in mind. You don't want to blow cold air in. Always pull hot air out.
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If only that were so. I've tinkered with puters since Commodore had a bright future. Laptops, desktops, workstations, servers, rack blades. I've built many of them from parts. And the component manufacturers' lack of a holistic approach to airflow has bewildered me since the beginning. It looks like the need for heat dissipation comes as a surprise, every time.
In a typical gaming PC the CPU has a fan, the graphics card(s) has a fan (each), the power supply has a fan, and the cabinet needs to provide cold air to all of those in addition to cooling the chipset, the RAM and the drives.
My general advice to gamers wanting to build their own computer:
- Don't go for liquid cooling unless you absolutely have to. It's expensive, hard to get right, and usually unnecessary.
- Get a big tower with lots of empty bays and lots of air ducts.
- Replace puny boxed CPU fan with big heavy duty fan.
- At least 3 cabinet fans, as large as you can fit. Suck in front and side, blow out back and top.
- Invest in a programmable fan controller with at least 2 sensors, one of them for mounting under the CPU heatsink. This will keep the fans running on low RPM with low noise under "normal" operation conditions.