1. #1

    Question Positive air pressure & question surrounding cooling etc.

    Greetings fellow MMO-Championeers!

    First time poster, but very long time reader, don't know what kept me...

    Anyway, I am currently in the process of upgrading my rig and as such I need the community's view and thoughts on some particular aspects that I am not very familiar with or have extensive knowledge about which surrounds the cooling of the case.

    I built my rig a few years ago and back then I landed on the Obsidian 800d as a starting point case, however I admittedly did not do my research well enough as this case is better designed for water cooling and not air cooling, which several reviews have pointed out.

    So in order to rectify my previous shortcomings I have decided to "upgrade" the case with proper cooling and some new parts which basically involves what the title indicates, cooling with positive air flow/pressure inside the case, a thing I was completely clueless about before reading up on it just recently.
    Hopefully this will fix my dust and heat problems.

    Complete water cooling is not an option for now.

    (cant post links or pictures yet)
    forums.evga.com/download.axd?file=0;1183635&where=&f=Corsair%20800D%20AirFlow%20Plan.jpg

    The picture is just to show a potential setup, but the thing I am most curious about is whether or not a Noctua NH-D14 cpu cooler will be just as good, or will this monster of a cooler have a negative effect on the air flow through the case considering its size?

    I'm strongly considering a 120 or 240 rad cpu cooler which will free more "space" in the case and as such ease the air flow substantially. Am I way off in my thinking here or will the use of the Noctua cooler be just as good?
    A point to note is that the Noctua cooler itself is set up with 2 120mm fans which will assist on the air flow out back as indicated on the picture.

    The thought is if I land on the Noctua as a cpu cooler I will use 3 120mm fans to pull air from the top instead of using a 120 or 240 rad with 1 or 2 fans respectively.
    I have a Noctua in my possession so I will save money landing on that setup, not having to invest in the cpu water cooling.

    I've probably left something out, but I reckon you understand my situation and questions.

    Thoughts or comments?

    Thanks in advance!

  2. #2
    Old God Vash The Stampede's Avatar
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    It would be nice to know what your setup is, as it's important. Keep in mind that a proper CPU cooler blows air down towards the motherboard, but most aftermarket coolers blow air side to side. With water cooling you're eliminating the that air flow, and your motherboards VRM's and chipset won't get the proper cooling that they need. You can fix that with the Antec Spot Cool but would need to know more about your setup.


  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukenukemx View Post
    It would be nice to know what your setup is, as it's important. Keep in mind that a proper CPU cooler blows air down towards the motherboard, but most aftermarket coolers blow air side to side. With water cooling you're eliminating the that air flow, and your motherboards VRM's and chipset won't get the proper cooling that they need. You can fix that with the Antec Spot Cool but would need to know more about your setup.

    Snip...
    Hi Dukenukemx,

    Thanks for your reply!

    My setup will be as follows;

    Motherboard : Asus P8P67 Deluxe
    CPU : i7 2600k
    Ram : Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 1866 16gb
    PSU : Corsair AX850
    GPU : Evga Nvidia 770 GTX
    SSD : OCZ Vertex 3 120gb
    HDD : WD Desktop Black 3tb

    Anything I've missed?

    So will the VRM and chipset be so heavily affected by the difference between the cpu water- and air cooling as mentioned in my original post?

  4. #4
    Old God Vash The Stampede's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Etyriel View Post
    Hi Dukenukemx,

    Thanks for your reply!

    My setup will be as follows;

    Motherboard : Asus P8P67 Deluxe
    CPU : i7 2600k
    Ram : Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 1866 16gb
    PSU : Corsair AX850
    GPU : Evga Nvidia 770 GTX
    SSD : OCZ Vertex 3 120gb
    HDD : WD Desktop Black 3tb

    Anything I've missed?

    So will the VRM and chipset be so heavily affected by the difference between the cpu water- and air cooling as mentioned in my original post?
    Being an Intel setup this will be less of a problem for you then a AMD setup. And the motherboard looks good as the VRMs are well sinked. They even have a heatpipe. But still keep an eye on their temps. One way to see how they're effected by the water cooling setup is to run Prime95 and touch the heatsinks with your hands. If possible, carefully touch directly underneath the motherboard where the VRMs tend to sit. If its too hot to keep your hand there then you need a way to direct air over those heatsinks, like using the Antec Spot cool fan. BTW this is why so many people run into issues with water cooling, cause they don't realize that air flow from the cpu fan cooler was cooling more then just the CPU.

    As for the case cooling I'm going by your picture. If the blue arrows are inlets and red is outlet then you have too many inlets and not enough outlets. You generally want the fans at the top of the case to exhaust hot air cause hot air tends to rise. You don't need two inlets at the bottom of the case cause air will get sucked into the case so long as the outlet fans are working. It doesn't hurt except for the added noise you may hear with the computer running. You will certainly want a cooling fan on those hard drives, but another piece of advice is buy Hitachi hard drives. They are considered far more reliable than any other brand. You don't want to deal with failure rates when it comes to mechanical drives.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Dukenukemx View Post
    Being an Intel setup this will be less of a problem for you then a AMD setup. And the motherboard looks good as the VRMs are well sinked. They even have a heatpipe. But still keep an eye on their temps. One way to see how they're effected by the water cooling setup is to run Prime95 and touch the heatsinks with your hands. If possible, carefully touch directly underneath the motherboard where the VRMs tend to sit. If its too hot to keep your hand there then you need a way to direct air over those heatsinks, like using the Antec Spot cool fan. BTW this is why so many people run into issues with water cooling, cause they don't realize that air flow from the cpu fan cooler was cooling more then just the CPU.

    As for the case cooling I'm going by your picture. If the blue arrows are inlets and red is outlet then you have too many inlets and not enough outlets. You generally want the fans at the top of the case to exhaust hot air cause hot air tends to rise. You don't need two inlets at the bottom of the case cause air will get sucked into the case so long as the outlet fans are working. It doesn't hurt except for the added noise you may hear with the computer running. You will certainly want a cooling fan on those hard drives, but another piece of advice is buy Hitachi hard drives. They are considered far more reliable than any other brand. You don't want to deal with failure rates when it comes to mechanical drives.
    You don't seem to grasp the concept of positive air pressure, hence my question in the original post. The VRM and chipset heat are viable concerns I'd reckon, but I would think with a proper fan setup as indicated on the picture the chipset and VRM would not be an issue.

    Anyone else?

  6. #6
    Old God Vash The Stampede's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Etyriel View Post
    You don't seem to grasp the concept of positive air pressure, hence my question in the original post. The VRM and chipset heat are viable concerns I'd reckon, but I would think with a proper fan setup as indicated on the picture the chipset and VRM would not be an issue.

    Anyone else?
    I get it. Positive pressure means more air pressure from the intake fans than the exhaust fans. This is some silly game people do to try and keep their PC from collecting dust and increase cooling. Good intake filters solve that problem. The whole positive vs negative pressure is kinda urban legend in PCs.

    You want your PC to cool better then you want more airflow in and out the computer case. The faster you do this, the better the cooling. You want the PC pressure as neutral as possible cause otherwise air flow is impeded somewhere. Also positive pressure will create more fan noise. If you want more info visit Overclock.net. That's the place to go for PC building and cooling advice.

    If you really want to keep your PC cool then place the radiator outside the case. This is what I do to keep the heat at a minimum. A 120mm radiator will do fine for a single CPU, but if you plan to cool other components with water cooling then start off with a larger radiator.


    Last edited by Vash The Stampede; 2014-08-28 at 05:00 PM.

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