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darkcircuit
Member Posts: 211
Hey all,
Recently rebuilt my SO's PC from scratch and everything was working fine until I decided to switch out her HD4870 for a GTX570. To cut a long story short, her fans are now working overtime to keep her PC cool and I'm a big stickler for having a PC quiet (as you will see in the choice of components below). My aim is to bring the fans down to a low level when under heavy load (as are they are in my machine).
Her current configuration is as below:
Case: Corsair 550D
PSU: Seasonic X650W
MB: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H
Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance LP 1600Mhz
HD: 120GB Corsair Force 3 SATA III
Seagate 1TB Hard Drive SATAIII 7200rpm 64MB Cache
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K (OC'd to 3.8Ghz)
GPU: Asus DirectCUII GTX 570
Cooler: Corsair H80i (running fans in push-pull and they have been switched for Noctua NF-F12)
System Fans: 2 Corsair fans (came with the case) in the front of the case pulling air in, 2 Noctua NF-F12 fans on the H80i pulling air into the case from the back, and 1 120mm Nexus PWM fan pushing air out of the case at the top. All the fans (short of the Noctua's) are running on a silent profile off the MB.
Now I appreciate that I only have 1 fan exhausting hot air from the case and that the GTX570 throws a lot more hot air into the case than the HD4870 (wasn't reference design so was chucking hot air into the case as well), so I can probably solve this by putting another Nexus fan at the top of the case to help expell the hot air, I just wanted to double check with you guys that you think this would solve the problem?
Thanks
Comments
Which corsair fans are they on the front of the case? I assume they're just generic ones aye?
Perhaps change them for something like the Corsair SP120's or if you can fit 200mm on there Coolermaster Megaflow, then get everything hooked up to a fan controller. Controllers are cheap and will likely cost you less than the fans.
I'm using the SP120's atm, 2 on the front, 1 rear and 1 top and i can barely hear them. Bear in mind that a fan controller makes all the difference for sound.
You are right in that he has it going the wrong way to make sense. It won't be adding much to the case ambient temp though as the air that comes out of the H80i is barely higher in temp than goes in, it's only a couple of degrees difference and is much better in that regard than air coolers. Good chance it's messing with the airflow in the case though with it pulling in.
This is the key. Blowing hot air from the CPU into the case rather than out of the case adds a lot more work for your case fans to do. If you had six fans, that wouldn't be such a big deal, but you don't.
ATX case standard says fans should flow from front to back, and from bottom to top.
So, fans in front are intakes, fans in the rear are exhaust.
Fans in the top are exhaust (generally fans aren't placed in the bottom of a case).
Fans in the side panels can go either way depending on their location and function.
Fans connected to a radiator or heat exchanger should always exhaust out - you never want to blow hot air back into your case if you can help it.
Once upon a time, power supply fans used to intake so they could blow across CPU heat sinks, in an effort to eliminate the need for a second fan on the CPU heat sink. It was quickly realized that blowing hot air into the case was a bad, bad idea, and that overall you are much better if you can exhaust hot/heated air outward at every opportunity, and suck in cool air where possible.
Companies that make cheap liquid cooling kits sometimes recommend having the fan blow air across the radiator into the case, but that's an effort at cheating at reviews. The idea is that pulling cool air from outside of the case across the radiator will keep it cooler than pulling hot air from inside the case across the radiator. That will make the CPU run cooler, and if all that a review checks is the CPU temperatures, then that makes the liquid cooling unit review better.
The problem is that blowing the hot air into the case is bad for everything else in the case. Review sites might not check for this, but it's a problem that the end user has to deal with whether you directly measure it or not.
As these guys have said.
Change the H80 to exhaust, Leave your top fan as exhaust, front as intake. If you have an option for another side fan / front fan make that intake.
Buy some better quality and quiter fans to replace the generic ones you have. Buy a controller for the fans.
If I am not mistaken the 570 is gonna push out alot of heat regardless. So if quiet gaming was the goal then that was a bad choice as the gpu fans will have to run high just to keep it cool.
Unless you want to liquid cool your gpu the above advice is about all you can do.