Ok, so I've been thinking about a rant on this topic for a while anyway, but a good friend's predicament made me decide to go ahead and do it. For the sake of this post, we'll call him "Thomas", to avoid any potential embarrassment.
If you've ever seen a high end Enterprise workstation, or an older PC, you might remember something being vaguely different from a lot of PC's these days. If you can guess what I'm talking about, raise your hand. Then feel like a moron, since nobody can see your hand. The thing I'm talking about, of course, is the fact that those computers don't move enough air to achieve escape velocity. Holy shit, crazy talk, I know. No turbofan sitting next to your desk? How dare I blaspheme the pantheon of PC case manufacturers that way?
Don't get me wrong, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a case with a decent amount of airflow. But a decent amount of airflow and a decent amount of moving air that doesn't do a damn thing are entirely different animals. My friend "Thomas" is a great example of this. He has some cheap-ass gamer case that Ali-Baba and the CyberPower Thieves stuck him with. It has two front 120mm intakes, top-mounted isolated PSU intake, optional (in this case installed) 140mm top exhaust, the radiator for his (ugh) Corsair H50 mounted as an exhaust in the back, and one or two side 120mm fans. That's a metric asston of air moving around, in case you hadn't noticed. Somehow, though, he can't keep SLI GTX460's very cool. Granted, that's not always easy, but it's not insanely difficult, either, and he's hitting dangerous temps under load.
So. why am I bringing this up? Well, airflow is complicated, and I'm not going to claim to know everything (or even close) about aerodynamics. What I do know, though, is that a lot of things people think they know about PC cooling are very very wrong. A popular myth: "Get a bigger case to keep things cooler." Horribly wrong. Get a case that's got room for your components. Large amounts of dead airspace with no components create a path of least resistance for airflow that doesn't serve a purpose.
There's a couple of (general) rules to follow when trying to figure out your airflow.
1: Know your components. Nothing more important than knowing your configuration's needs. Granted, these can change later on with upgrades and whatnot, but it's still good to know.
2: Keep dead air space to a minimum within reason. Don't cramp your components, trapping heat is bad. But once your components fit reasonably, too much more space makes for bad airflow to where you need it.
3: No competing airflow. Avoid cases where your PSU is going to be fighting your CPU cooler or GPU airflow.
Here's the thing. Air follows the path of least resistance. Hot air rises, and heat is bad stuff. Because of this, if you can stand the slightly higher noise, External Exhaust graphics cards are good stuff, since they blow the hot air out of the case, unlike radial coolers that just get the heat away from the GPU and let it rise up through the CPU cooler. Negative pressure cases are ok for systems with limited restriction on airflow, but if there's a lot of stuff in there, actively directing the airflow with a positive pressure system is frequently better.
Don't forget to prioritize cooling. RAM doesn't need cooling as much as your CPU, so don't stick some retarded fan over your memory that thrashes airflow for your CPU. If you have a side panel, push air into your GPU if it's external exhaust, or pull air away before it can rise if it's radial cooling. If you're using a closed loop liquid cooler, I don't care how much it helps your CPU temps to use the radiator as an intake, just say no to pulling heat into your case.
Above all, apply common sense. The more directly cool air gets to your components, and hot air gets away from them, the better. Always. Avoid dead air, and avoid competing airflow. Avoid pointless restriction.
Remember, a lot of moving air doesn't mean good cooling. A space shuttle launch moves a shitload of air, and that's not cold at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment