Side fan intake or exhaust

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nelis

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Hi there

Have 2x Twin frozr II cards and sound card in between them. Should I rather have my side fan as exhaust or intake. Seeing as the twin frozr III also exhaust heat from the gpu won't that make sense getting that heat away from the cards.

My case is cooler master sniper
 
Experiment and see what works for you.. Try both and run a stress test and check Temps. On my set up I have the rear fan exhausting and the side pulling in as well as a front intake. I found after some testing it gave me the best results.
Have a look at Basics of fan placement for some more info on this hotly debated topic.
 
I have a big intake fan in the front of my case and 3 exhaust fans - side, back and top of case. The idea is to maintain a steady single directional flow of air.
 
Try both. I would say intake. Heat rises, so I generally have my top fans as exhaust. But the only way to know which works better will be to test your own setup. There isn't really a formula for it.
 
bromster said:
Try both. I would say intake. Heat rises, so I generally have my top fans as exhaust. But the only way to know which works better will be to test your own setup. There isn't really a formula for it.
Click to expand...

I have the same thing. 4 210mm fans for intake on the front. 200mm fan on top/ 120mm fan on back for exhaust. Two 120mm sides for intake. For me the fans on the side were to far away from the cards to pull the bulk on the hot air that was rising so the best I could do was to disperse the hot air away from the components and let it rise to the exhausts.

Test it though. You may find that because of your gcards fans they are dispersing the air to the sides so exhausts there may work
 
Per CM: Intake - front/side: Exhaust back/top.

image_93.jpg
 
Intake, you ideally want positive pressure.

Edit: exhaust if your gpu's are twinfrozr style, don't fight the action of the axial fans.
 
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is there another way of cooling the gpus. Already removed the hard drive cage
 
nelis said:
is there another way of cooling the gpus. Already removed the hard drive cage
Click to expand...

Your biggest issue is the sound card between them provided your side panel fan is intake. I can imagine both your gpu's are struggling to get cool air, small gap to the psu and small gap to vga card limit the cooling effect of the side fan.

Can you mount another fan on the side panel? have two 200mm fans blowing air onto the gpu's. I know even with my 932 when i have two 6970's i struggled because the sound card and then the psu was bottom. So both cards were effectively sucking is poor air, the fix was too sell my 6970's and buy a 6990.

The only obvious way to cool them more is too run the gpu fan higher when you game. Most gamers wear phones so noise shouldn't be an issue.
 
killadoob said:
Your biggest issue is the sound card between them provided your side panel fan is intake. I can imagine both your gpu's are struggling to get cool air, small gap to the psu and small gap to vga card limit the cooling effect of the side fan.

Can you mount another fan on the side panel? have two 200mm fans blowing air onto the gpu's. I know even with my 932 when i have two 6970's i struggled because the sound card and then the psu was bottom. So both cards were effectively sucking is poor air, the fix was too sell my 6970's and buy a 6990.
Click to expand...

no not possible without doing a mod. maybe I should get the drawing board out and start planning. Maybe I can mod the case for either another fan or some sort of air duct
 
nelis said:
no not possible without doing a mod. maybe I should get the drawing board out and start planning. Maybe I can mod the case for either another fan or some sort of air duct
Click to expand...

How big is the gap between the sound card and your first gpu and the psu and the second gpu?

You can use fingers as a measurement.
 
The gap between the sound card and gpu is not much I barley got it to fit and the psu and second GPU I have 1-2 slots. I know that might be the problem and this is the reason I'm never buying 2 graphics cards ever again until I can afford watercooling. but sureley I can do some sort of mod to make it a little bit cooler.
 
Well you would need to feel your psu and whether it's putting out heat, sadly as i learned with my setup is a sound card plus bottom psu is very bad for sli/crossfire. Sound card was right up against my 6970 and the psu had maybe one slot between it but i ran my fans at 70-80% it was ok but not ideal on a hot summer day when the room temp was 30+.

Pretty sure the 5 series also ran hot which would not be helping. What temps are you getting though?
 
when playing metro everything max on 2x SSAA my GPU will run 90-92C hottest fan on top gpu 100%. Bottom GPU about 75C. I'm 100% sure my sound card is causing this. Now I don't want to upgrade my GPUs just yet. waiting for 880 or 870 to be released next year and in the mean time I can try to fix this issue.
 
nelis said:
when playing metro everything max on 2x SSAA my GPU will run 90-92C hottest fan on top gpu 100%. Bottom GPU about 75C. I'm 100% sure my sound card is causing this. Now I don't want to upgrade my GPUs just yet. waiting for 880 or 870 to be released next year and in the mean time I can try to fix this issue.
Click to expand...

gees that is bloody hot... :eek:
 
So I installed a fan hanging where the hdd cage is suppose to be and it works but not much. Temps now 83-85C. Must also admit my cards both running at 97-99+%. So guess cards will run hot unless I take one out or get watercooler and that's expensive. Also intake for side fan is better by about 1-2C.
 
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