Help Please, Case Fan Flow and Placement

aroundthebay

Hi,

I am about to use a dual power supply setup on my computer.

My tower is just over the size of a mini tower so I dont have a lot of space for the second but I can manage to put it in the internal hard drive cage after I have moved my HD's to the accessible 3.5" bays. Right now I have a limited number of case fans but I am adding more.

Now my question is that since I will have a power supply where the front fan is should I now turn that fan into an exaust fan to remove that PSU's heat instead of blowing the heat on my motherboard? If I were to do this I would also mount an Intake fan on the lower side of the side panel to allow cool air in so the PSU can have an air supply.

I was also thinking If I did this I should then put another fan higher up on the side of the case as an intake that would blow close to the CPU cooler which the CPU cooler could take and flow to the rear exaust fan.

I have been reading about air flow short circuits but couldn't I use this to my advantage? Say an intake on the bottom of the side panel to go straight on to GPU and then out the back exaust? as well as straight through intake - cpu - exaust? I would also be using a top exhaust fan.

Oh as for fan size... i was thinking 92mm exaust in the front and back, 2 X 120mm intakes on the lower part of sidepanel, an 80mm intake on middle of side panel for CPU, and an 80mm exhaust on the top.

I may be way off in my thoughts but it seems to make sense to me.
Let me know, any help will be greatly appreciated

Also I do not need this much cooling in my case cause it never really gets that hot, I am doing this mainly for asthetics but I dont want to cause any problems by doing it wrong. And the reason for going with dual power supplies is naturally lack of money and it should look cool and be a good conversation piece when people see it through the side panel.

aroundthebay

This also doesnt account for the PSU fans, so there will be another exhaust at the top of the back from one PSU and the other psu will be oriented so its fans move the air in the proper flow direction.

The CPU will also have a heatsink with fan blowing towards the exhaust on the back and the GPU will have its standard GPU fan.

Seems to me I would have 10 fans on a mini tower
Should be lots of fun since they will almost all have blue lighting and I have some blue cold cathodes as well.

Got to pimp out this whacky computer of mine somehow.

RcRon7

Wow, two PSU's eh,

First off, welcome to the forums, stop by the user CP and be sure to update your info in there.

As for fans, if you have to much intake and not enough exhaust, that is not good. You want to try and balance that out. You have a large volume of air coming in but if you don't help it out then it will find it's own way out. That may not be the best for cooling. If you want the cooler air to head out the back over the CPU then increase that fan size to help that. You may need to put a larger fan in the top. I personally don't count the PSU fans when considering the flow of air. They generate their own heat and need cooler air just as much as any other component. Not to mention the fact that you are adding a second PSU. How will it vent out it's heat? To the front of the case??

Try to equal out as much as possible the intake and exhaust. It will help the FLOW of cooler air through the case and it's that Flow of air that will keep the case in lower temps.

aroundthebay

Yes the second PSU in the HD cage will be exhausting to the front of the case, I will put an exhause fan in the front to help blow that air out.

As for eqaulity I was planning 2 X 120mm and 1 X 80mm intakes.... and 2 92mm Exhaust and an 80mm Exhaust.. Since the original PSU has its own 80mm exhaust fan that will be 2 X 92mm and 2 X 80mm exhausts..

As far as my calculations this is: 126.5 CFM Intake and 154.5 CFM exhaust

This doesn't count the fans that will be internal just moving air around like the GPU, CPU, and 2nd PSU fans

RcRon7

Ok, I hope that all works for you. Just keep in mind the flow of the air. If you are not careful you can create hot pockets. Post some picks when you get it all done and let us know what your temps before and after are.

aroundthebay

Ok I will try it out... what is the best way to measure the temps?...

RcRon7

Core Temp,

aroundthebay

I tried core temp but I only have an Intel Pentium D processor so It doesn't work for it... any similar programs for this type of processor.. and yes I know I should upgrade my processor, well really i need to upgrade my mother board, processor, video card, sound card, ram, and PSU. Hmmm.... seems I need a whole new computer. I am not spending any more money on this computer, the little I have just spent on fans can be tranferred to a new PC. and I do hope to build a new computer from scratch in a few months and that will take quite a bit of my cash.

aroundthebay

Hey, Just wanted to do a follow up.

Well I didn't go with dual PSU's after all, I tried with 2 but one of them wouldn't come on unless the other one was unplugged and I know I had them wired right... I think the older psu is fried.

So aside from that with my stock setup: (straight from store shelf a few years ago)

Mini Tower
Pentium D820 CPU
300W PSU
2 GB DDR2 Ram
160GB HDD Sata
DVD RW Sata
Integrated Graphics, sound, and modem
The CPU had a stock wind tunnel with 92mm fan heatsink and case had one rear exhaust fan.

The cpu fan seemed to always be running at full speed so I looked around and just found the PC health thing on my bios bootup so I checked there running stock and it said CPU Temp 76 degrees, and system temp 34 degrees. This was with the side panel off

I was not impressed as this was only on startup clearly not running to potential, (well it seemed it was running to ITS potential. It also said the core shutdown temp was 90 degrees but I have never had it shut off on me.

See that certainly made me think about it all so heres what I did.

I changed my stock CPU cooler for an Evercool Buffalo 4 heat pipe cooler
Added 2 X 120 mm led intakes on the side and a 92 mm normal intake on the front, 2 led 80mm exhausts to go along with the 92mm already in there and the PSU exhaust.

I put in a 480w PSU.
I added a BFG Geforce 8600 GTS 256mb PCI E Video Card, (About time I know seeing as its really my first stand alone GPU)

I also added 2 cold cathodes for good measure, when i got it together they weren't really needed as It lit up pretty good but i am leaving them there anyway.

So back to results, I turned it on and made sure everything was running properly then I checked the ol PC health status thing and voila, CPU temp 34 degrees, case temp 22 degrees. Even while letting it run for la few minutes

That was way lower then I was expecting. However the video card would take some strain off the CPU but I believe the biggest help was the new CPU cooler. it seems to work great and it looks pretty nice, especially for the $19.99 price tag from xoxide.

So i think my computer is fine now for awhile until I actually get some money to burn and I can start building a computer the way I want. From scratch. Sucks being poor but you have to make due.

furball zen

Id +1 ya, but its too soon. Thanks. This shows my ITE Smart Guardian to be about +5, which sucks cause i was thinking i needed a new pump.....

aroundthebay

Hey again, wanted to do another follow up. Upon using my computer for a few days with my last setup I have since gathered that the 480w PSU was not up to the task... Looking at it more carefully revealed its only rated at 17amps on the 12 rail .. again not impressed. probably why my monitor would go black and say the graphics driver had stopped responding then recovered itself.

So again I went back to trying dual PSU's with a different one this time.. I seem to have a few around here. So I wired them up and tested to make sure it all comes on, it worked so now the master PSU powers the Motherboard and GPU, and the Slave PSU powers the HDD, DVDRW, Fans and Lights.

I would post a picture but I cant get the uploader to work, it always says upload failed. the jpeg is 227kb so i dont think size is the issue


I figure I will buy a full size case and a good 1000W plus PSU when I get the money and just transfer all my components.. Then I will work on getting a new Motherboard, CPU, and Ram and everything else as time goes