power supply on bottom

[davel]

So I have been out of hardware for several years, and I noticed a lot of newer cases have the power supply on the bottom.

What is the reasoning they are doing this? I am sure there must be one, better cooling?

Do you need to find power supplies specifically for cases like this?

I have this ps currently:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817139006

Can it go in any of these new cases? Or do i need to change PS? If so thinking of going modular

 

[PCTC2]

Your PSU will work fine. The mounts for the PSU on the bottom are still standard ATX screw mounts. The difference will be the fan will be on the top of the PSU rather than the bottom (when top mounted), pulling from the case air rather than straight out of the CPU exhaust.

 

[Slugbait]

The difference will be the fan will be on the top of the PSU rather than the bottom (when top mounted), pulling from the case air rather than straight out of the CPU exhaust.

More often than not, the fan will still be oriented toward the bottom, pulling from the room air rather than from case air. My Silverstone LC17 is oriented this way as well, although it's not a tower.

There could be a couple of issues with bottom-mounted. For example, shag carpeting would likely cause at least some loss of airflow (or blocks airflow) to the PSU fan. Another issue is noise, since the fan will be exposed externally instead of being muffled inside the case. A third is cable length, some PSUs have shorter cables...as a result, it might be a stretch for the mobo connector and/or top 5.25 bay which can hamper cable management.

The design makes sense, however. Most PSUs use 120 fans now, so airflow isn't as efficient, and top-mounted PSUs would just be pushing warm air directly on the internals. By bottom mounting the PSU, cool external air is pushed on the internals instead of warm internal air.