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Which way is the fan on my hsf blowing? (optimizing airflow)

H

Haunter9X

Member
I'm optimizing the airflow in my case (an inwin q500, older model with the fan mounts above the power supply sadly). I have a thermaltake volcano 7+ hsf, came with a 70mm fan i think that spins at 6500rpm. I haven't tinkered with the fan on it yet, and i think that in stock configuration the fan blows onto the heat sink. Anyone know if this is correct? I looked on the manufacturers website but couldn't find anything about this. I ask because I have a pair of exhaust vents right by the processor (one is literally almost right above it. Wouldn't I want the hsf to be sucking air off of the heat sink than, rather than try and blow with the exhaust fans sucking right above it? It seems like my current configuration could be stagnating things. I say this because my temps seem a bit high for having the volcano 7+, the enermax active cooling power supply, and as3 on the processor. Even with all this though, my temperature seems to be around 47C. At first I thought the as3 just needed to cure, so I gave it three days of continuous running at the same speed to let it set. I only saw a temperature drop of 1-2 degrees C thought. Maybe this is normal, but it doesn't seem like it. I'd appreciate any help I can get on this as I'm just going off of intuition here.

Oh ya, and if I take the hsf off of the processor, I don't need to reapply the as3 right?

-Haunter9x
(p41.6a @ 2.5Ghz w/ 1.65V)
Trapped at 155MHz bus speed!!!!

 
Cool air in from the bottom, hot air sucked up and out the back. Thats the airflow golden rule. You might even want to pull some air in from the side with a 120mm monster parallel t0o the HSF.
 
ya, this I know ... So that there are no more confusions about how the airflow currently is setup....
Fan1= Front bottom, intake
Fan2= Mid back, exhaust
Fan3= Mid back, exhaust
Fan4= Bottom of power supply, exhaust
Fan5= Back of power supply, exhaust
Fan6= Top back, exhaust
Fan7= Top, exhaust

And then there is the fan on the heatsink
I'm going to be adding another intake fan, but I need to bust out the dremel to mount it so that's going to come later.
So the question remains.... does the hsf suck or blow??? And if it is blowing onto the heatsink with the exhaust vents right by there, am I stagnating the air around the cpu???
-Haunter9x
 
d'oh! I totally misunderstood you. Sorry about that.

You should have it blowing. Honestly, you have plenty of exhaust right there around the cpu... perfect for sucking out the hot air blown off your heatsink. (Not that its going to even be that hot, with your Northwood.) But the heat that is expelled will be pushed right into your gauntlet of exhaust, never to bother ye' olden cpu again.
 
heh, this is a fun little conversation the two of us are having...🙂
Right... so I busted out the dremel and put in another intake fan, this one at the bottom of the left side panel. I think the intake to exhaust ratio was hurting it, because just by adding this one fan (it's not blowing on anything except the raid controller chip on the mobo that i disabled), the temp has dropped 2 degrees C. Oh, and I investigated this hsf thing myself and found that it's sucking air to blow onto the hsf. How did I test this? With a small piece of paper placed on the fan. When I let go of the piece of paper, it stayed stuck to the fan (the fan is of course mounted vertically). If it was sucking air off the heatsink (as opposed to sucking air from the system) then I think the paper should've taken off or fallen. Therefore, I believe I need to reverse the direction of the hsf's airflow as it's trying to suck air right next to the exhaust vents which are also sucking. Heh, this is pretty confusing...

Lemme sum this up then. It seems that I would want the hsf to be sucking air off the heatsink and blowing it into the exhaust vents. To do this, I'm going to need to flip the fan on top of the heatsink? If i need to take the hsf off the processor, is this gonna screw with the as3?
-Haunter9x
 
I dont agree with you on the direction of the air off the HS... but hey... its your fan. I would reapply the Arctic Silver if I were you.
 
Oh ya, and if I take the hsf off of the processor, I don't need to reapply the as3 right?
Click to expand...

I would disagree w/ that, each time you remove/replace the HSF, you should reapply AS3, unless of course you're mounting the HSF and haven't powered up yet, just my 2 cents 🙂
 
When you try to cool off your hot food, do you blow on it, or try to suck the heat away?? 🙂 Common sense ya'll. There's a lot more turbulence when you blow on something, instantly dispelling the heat away.

..... all this talk about blowing/sucking is gettin me all worked up 😛
 
Need to know if I should also apply AS II to the surface of a new HSF when settting my P4 2.4B (new setup)?
 
Airflow direction varies from brand to brand that model blows air into the heatsink as manufacturers spec whereas my Alpha 8942 blows air away from heatsink .
 
hrmmm.... I can see your guys point about why blowing is better than sucking. Man, this thread is just riddled with inuendo left and right 🙂

rimshaker, what do you do when you have hot food in your mouth? Heh, wasn't there a tv commercial about that recently?? Regardless, this isn't pizza in the mouth we're dealing with here. It makes perfect sense that blowing on the processor seems to be more effective than sucking off the processor. However, in order to blow, you have to be blowing from somewhere. My point is that that somewhere is the location of an exhaust fan, and it doesn't seem like having an exhaust fan compete with the hs fan for air would be the most productive airflow option. In fact, it seems like the exhaust fan might be taking the cold air out of the system before it can reach the processor. So, I'm gonna try this and see what happens with the temperatures. Is there any way to reverse the direction of the fan without physically turning it upside down? I can't think of a way, but doesn't mean it can't be done...
-Haunter9x
 
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