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Air flow question
So heres what I got. I have:
Geforce 1080 ti 11gb founders edition (fan as and exhaust)
120 mm 1500 rpm fan on back exhaust
Noctua nh d15 for cpu
2 120mm front intake fans
1 120mm on the bottom of case where the hard drives would be.
im at 29.65 at idle (if this is an accurate program)
should i be adding top exhausts?
Geforce 1080 ti 11gb founders edition (fan as and exhaust)
120 mm 1500 rpm fan on back exhaust
Noctua nh d15 for cpu
2 120mm front intake fans
1 120mm on the bottom of case where the hard drives would be.
im at 29.65 at idle (if this is an accurate program)
should i be adding top exhausts?
Comments
Check the temps when you are gaming and see how high they go and if it stays within acceptable limits.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
The main ways to mess up airflow are:
1) Having far too little space, such as a laptop.
2) Having far too large heat output, such as a densely packed rack full of servers.
3) Having something physically block the intended airflow path, such as if the back of your case were up flush against a wall so that no air could exit your intended exhaust point.
4) Having fans die, especially if you have a single case fan and it dies, so that you have no case airflow.
Points (1) and (2) are manageable, but need to be handled carefully. There are sound reasons why those aren't viable enthusiast projects to build your own from parts. A mid-tower gaming desktop with a single video card is emphatically not either of those cases.
On point (4), if you have four case fans and one of them dies, it's really not a big deal. If you have a single fan for your CPU, GPU, or power supply and it dies, you could end up with that one component getting too hot, even as everything else remains fine. But the worst case is having a single case fan and then it dies, so that you have no case airflow at all apart from a little bit from other fans only intended to get heat off a single component.
Also at least your GTX 1080 ti fan should adapt its speed based on GPU temperature, so it'll push more air out of the case once it heats up.
The main reason to look at idle temperatures is if you suspect that something is severely wrong with your cooling, such as not having a heatsink on securely or having a heatsink so clogged with dust that air can't go through it.
For things that are placed outdoors or in a data center where the temperature can be set to the preferences of hardware rather than humans, the difference between an ambient temperature of 5 C versus 50 C can matter quite a lot.
Now, a lot of HSFs, AIB slot coolers on GPUs, and laptops utilize heat pipes, which do have a phase change element to them, and that will greatly stabilize that heat transfer because the phase change itself is going to burn a lot of that energy. A heat pipe can be designed to operate at a specific temperature based on what pressure (vacuum actually) and fluid is inside the pipe. Once the heat pipe hits that temperature it will become super efficient as the phase change starts to take place, and will stay that efficient until you finally saturate it (basically boil/wick all the liquid faster than it can re-condense and fall back down).
It takes a lot of energy to get a heat pipe to saturate beyond that working temperature, but it could be done if, say, the fan failed or the fins are clogged with dust or your trying for a massive overclock on an undersized HSF. A standard heat pipe operating within it's design envelope will usually be robust enough to absorb/mask any change in ambient temperature.
But if you are working with a water cooled loop or direct contact heatsink blocks (Intel stock cooler, most RAM heatsinks, VRM heatsinks, etc. come to mind), and heat pipes before they hit their magic temperature (or after you saturate it) - it will be close to a 1:1 temperature change with ambient.
Another effect that will mask that - variable speed fans. You will only see the ambient 1:1 effect if your fans are set to a static speed. If your fans are able to adjust speed, they will do so, and you probably won't see a difference in temperature, but your fans will ramp up/down with ambient to absorb the difference there. It wouldn't be much, so probably not even noticable unless you were looking at long term graphs (or your fan hits some harmonic and starts making an ungodly racket at certain RPMs)
It can mean the difference between a borderline overclock or a silent build working or not, but I do agree, in stock situations your cooling should be adequate enough that it isn't going to matter. Most systems are designed so their heat pipes (or sinks) are well oversized, and they modulate the fan to a target temperature. Only should you hit 100% fan speed (or you are concerned about the noise of your fans are making ramping up) and still not be able to control temperature - that's the point you really need to worry about your cooling.