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fan orientation

silk186

silk186

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 26, 2008
Messages
1,628
I know that there should be some post here about fan orientation but I'm just not finding them.

I have a CM storm enforcer arriving this week, I have an extra 200mm fan and a hyper 212 plus. I have an ATI 5770 GPU and with moderately overclock my i5-2500k.

What is the best orientation for my fans and do I have enough of them?
 
Not sure why no one else has touched your question yet, but I wonder if it might be because the answer is fairly self-evident. Is there any reason not to set them up like this?:

Blowing inward:
  • The fan(s) in the front of the case

Blowing outward:
  • The fan atop the case
  • The fan(s) in the back of the case

The CPU cooler would be blowing toward the back of the case.

I don't have any idea as to what to do with the extra 200mm fan.
 
In one side and out the other. You will not have heat problems, so more fans are optional.
 
I remember many others posting diagrams before describing airflow so I wasn't sure it it made a difference. Also something about positive and negative air pressure.
 
Positive pressure is when you have more airflow going in than out.
Negative pressure is when you have more airflow going out than in.

I personally use negative pressure. (1x140mm in front bottom brings air in + 2x120mm fans exhausting air in top rear and side and 1x92mm cpu fan exhausting out the side) I don't count the PSU fan in my setup since it's on the bottom and sucks fresh air in and exhausts it itself.
 
Ah, that is what I was reading about, it there a benefit to either positive or negative pressure or is it just preference, intuitively negative pressure would make more sense.
 
I think you can't make a big mistake as long as you follow a few common-sensical principles, such as:

  • Never have all outward-facing case fans blow in the same direction (i.e., all into the case or all outward from the case)
  • It's probably not a good idea to have two fans closely facing each other to blow into each other (e.g., the fan of the CPU cooler and the case back fan that's right against it)

To these, I might perhaps also add the suggestion that, if you have an internal component prone to heating up that's close to one of the case fans (e.g., a stack of hard drives, highly overclocked memory modules, etc.), it would probably help cool that component better if the fan is blowing onto that component rather than away from it.
 
thanks for the suggestions, I should be get my case and putting it all together tomorrow
 
Usually, front, side, and bottom fans are intakes. Top and rear fans are exhaust.

Positive vs negative airflow depends much more on the design of your case and how many fans they allot for each position. Of course, you can change it to some degree with different speed fans, but for the most part it is set when you buy the case.
 
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