Air cooling Antec P180

[Insomniator]

Hey does anyone have any advice on cooling the p180? I have an SLI setup, sound card, 4 gigs memory, e5200 @ 3.5... nothing major but there is a lot of crap in there.

I've read about negative and positive pressure but I'm sure someone here has this case or the 182 and have tried out different combinations of fans.

I currently have the middle 120mm fan bringing air from outside the front to directly over the video cards, and the HDD's are in the bottom cage in front of the bottom fan and PSU fan sucking air in from the front.

The TriCool fan that blows out the top just died and I have a feeling this affected temps as there is now half exhaust going out of the case...

any help appreciated.. thanks

 

[thilanliyan]

I used positive pressure for a bit but found there's too much dust buildup....went back to negative pressure.

 

[MStele]

Originally posted by: thilan29
I used positive pressure for a bit but found there's too much dust buildup....went back to negative pressure.

I'm confused. i thought positive pressure meant that the air pressure was greater on the inside than the outside, thus forcing air out and keeping dust from entering the case and negative pressure meaning that air was leaving the case faster than entering, thus creating a low pressure zone and pulling dust in.

 

[NYHoustonman]

I have a P180 and would love to have positive air pressure (which is as mentioned above), but with this case that's not easy to do. There's only one intake for the upper area of the case vs. up to two exhausts, and I'd rather not have that single intake doing the work of the other two as it would be too loud.

Probably the best example of positive pressure I've seen is the Silverstone Raven 2 - built a computer for a friend over the summer using this case, and with the three bottom fans going, I almost felt like there was no need for any exhaust.

 

[yh125d]

Positive, negative, it doesn't matter really. Amount of airflow and getting that airflow matters exponentially more than the miniscule pressure differences the relatively weak 120mm fans can produce.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: MStele
I'm confused. i thought positive pressure meant that the air pressure was greater on the inside than the outside, thus forcing air out and keeping dust from entering the case and negative pressure meaning that air was leaving the case faster than entering, thus creating a low pressure zone and pulling dust in.

It keeps air coming in from the little cracks but you have to bring in more air from the outside through fans to get the positive pressure and this led to having more dust.

In my case it was easier to clean the little cracks rather than the coating of dust on everything I got with positive pressure.