We always insist on the importance of choosing a suitable case for your PC, because the airflow depends largely on it and with it the temperature of the components. As good as it is sink that you put in your CPU, you’d be surprised at how badly it can perform if the case and its airflow don’t work together to extract heat, so we’re going to go over a series of considerations. that you need to take into account.
If you don’t design the airflow, you will never have the best performance
It is quite possible that, if your PC has a case with the fans supplied as standard, you already have a level of thermal performance that you are satisfied with. However, you should know that while many boxes don’t really need an internal flow overhaul as it’s already decent enough with what they come as standard, you can’t aspire to have the maximum performance though. you don’t design it yourself.
This is because the manufacturer cannot know what material you are going to put inside the box, in what arrangement or if there will be cables or other components interfering with the flow during assembly. Because of this you can have good thermal performance but it is not the best it can be so what you need to know is that if you design it yourself you can gain several integers in temperature which will mean in turn, better overall equipment performance and lower noise levels, in addition to extending the useful life of all your equipment.
In short, if you are an average user who has bought a good PC case, airflow is usually not something you need to worry about, but if you are a devotee (or a maniac of silence) who wants to squeeze the airflow. no more possible. possibilities of the PC, as you will see below, in performing this preliminary task is something worth it and really worth it.
How to design the best airflow for your PC
When designing internal cash flow, there are several factors to consider:
- The hot air tends to rise, so it is always preferable that the fans which draw hot air out of the box are located in high positions, while those which bring in cool air from the outside are in high positions. lower positions.
- You should take special care when mounting and routing the cables to the enclosure so that there are no components or cables between the two blocking the passage of air.
- To design adequate airflow, fans with more airflow (and possibly directed) perform better than those with higher static pressure.
Every hardware fan knows, more or less, that the ideal when designing the airflow is that the front fans (and even lower ones if there are any) should bring fresh air inside. of the housing, while those installed at the rear and on the roof of the trunk, it is they which must evacuate the hot air. You can see this depicted in the image above.
However, there is one detail that allows you to turn very finely to maximize performance; In many boxes, especially high-end, it is allowed to change the screw height of the rear fan, and some of you may wonder what is it for? Most users will perfectly align this fan with the CPU heat sink fan (if it’s air-cooled), and while it’s not that bad, it doesn’t actually give the best performance.
Take into account what we said previously: “hot air tends to rise”, and for this reason the ideal is for the rear fan to be a little above the radiator fan (depending on the distance, between 1 and 2 centimeters) because in this way the hot air which the radiator expels and which tends to rise adapts perfectly to the frame of the rear fan. Like we said before, it’s good spinning, but in the end it all adds up to get the maximum performance, right?
In the image above it can be seen clearly represented, although a bit of an exaggeration since the rear fan is 120mm and the last fan in the heatsink is 140mm, so they will never match. However, it can be seen that the rear fan is about 1cm above the radiator fan (as the distance between the two is close enough) to maximize hot air extraction.
The same happens with the alignment between the front fans and the heatsink fan: in the image above, you can see that the upper front fan is lower than the heatsink fan, which is ideal because the The air will rise, cooling the components you have in between and will go directly to the radiator fan, thus maximizing its efficiency since the air entering it is cool.
Likewise, the lower front fan is positioned so that its airflow reaches the lower area of the graphics card, where precisely the fans that cool its components are located, so again the situation is ideal. .
What’s not ideal about this benchmark image we put is that the top fan is blowing air, as it will literally interfere with the flow created by everyone else, causing the air to pass through in one. direction (from front to back), and although in fact its operation will not affect the overall performance of the box too much, as we have already said here, what we are looking for is to squeeze the maximum cooling potential.
What is the difference between designing it conscientiously or not?
As we have already told you, there is really not much difference, but between a “good” box with the fans of the series and the same box but with fans selected to have a good air flow. and that it is oriented and with the studied design therefore which is maximized, we can obtain a difference of up to 2-3 ºC in the processor and up to 5ºC in the graphics card, which is no small feat. truth to tell.
Now, if we compare the same material in a case of dubious quality and poorly ventilated and a good case with a well-designed airflow, we can have abysmal temperature differences (up to 10 ° C in the CPU, for example), and especially if you are using a liquid-cooled heatsink because, oddly enough, these are more dependent on the internal airflow of the case than air-cooled heatsinks.
