CPU Cooler: Suck or Blow??

[mgpaulus]

I have a PAL6035 (Ordered that early, before I decided on thunderbird or duron...), that I am putting on a Thunderbird 1GHz/MSI Pro2-A, in an Antec SX830 w/all 4 fans installed. I also have an old nvidia TNT card with a Lasagna X cooler on it. My question is, should the sunon fan suck heat/air off the HS (up), or blow air into(down) the HS??

Thanks.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

blow

 

[RabeaticSquirrel]

blow (down) to effectively cool the HS....

 

[dakost]

You can easuly test which is the better configuration by testing the two different options yourself. Theoretically speaking, when the fan is sucking, air from the region around the heatsink enters the heatsink and then exhausts from the top of the fan away from the heatsink towards the case, right infront of the place where usually one can mount the exhaust fan in the case rear, and then it directly goes out of the case. Moreover, when air is sucked in from around the heatsink, it forces the air surrounding the capacitors close to the cpu socket and the air around the chipset to move towards the heatsink, thus cooling the capacitors. On the other hand if you set up the fan to blow, it takes colder air from a region that usually the exhaust fan pulls out, i.e the two fans almost work against each other. Then the air is blown on the heatsink, then some of the heated up air ends up flowing around the capasitors and the chipset and heating them up. Of course all of the above is purely theoretical.

 

[Viperoni]

It's an Alpha people's
Sucking will work better 99% of the time because the pins are designed to have air sucked through the them. Blowing air into it would just cause a lot of useless turbulence + noise = lost airflow

 

[jsbush]

Yeah the Heatsink is designed to have air sucked through it!

 

[Maximus96]

what about a taisol 742?? stock is to blow...would it be better to switch the fan around and have it suck the air? and the taisol fan is sitting right next to the 80mm blowing out of the case in a sx1030

 

[JimMc]

Alpha's suck, many others are designed to blow. There is a slight but significant difference in the performance of an Alpha if you don't install the fan properly.

 

[dethman]

bart: "i didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks AND blows."

(watching springfield elementary teacher stage production)

 

[Confused]

so u peeps are saying that if the fan sucks air through the hs, then expells it, it'll work better...????

if so, me is turning me fan round!!

 

[WindBoy2000]

suck

 

[Regalk]

Hop on over to 3DFXcool - they will show that they tested a lot of Alphas and found it was better to blow than suck. These are 2 real nice terms in the computer world heheh

 

[Gringo]

alphas' suck...but your particular rig might be different, try it both ways. (there, hows that for a non-answer?)

g.

 

[Renob]

If you have blowholes blowing onto your mobo and vidcard then blow and suck with no blow holes.....

 

[lsd]

wowzers.... after I read this thread I set my black label fan to suck off my pal6035 and the temps dropped 14F and 18F. Before it was 116F at idle and 125 at full load now its 102F at idle and 107F full load.
BTW: the computer is in the attic so the temps are higher than it would be if it was on a lower floor.