Can you place a CPU fan a alternate way?

[yazzy11]

Hi,

Basically I couldn't fit the heat sink and CPU fan without attaching it the opposite way. The reason I couldn't attach it is because I would need to sacrifice two RAM slots, which I don't want to do.

Here's how I placed it (please excuse the poor quality photo):

Hopefully you can see how I placed it and how it was meant to be placed. Do you think they'll be any problems running it like this?

 

[Marco Washa]

As i can see is the right mode to put it.
Fan on the heatsink disperse heat and trow the hot flow against the "trasparent" fan you have. Obviusly "trasparent" fan must be in estraction from the chassis

 

[yazzy11]

You sure? From what I've seen when people install this cooler(artic cooling freezer 7 pro rev 2) they have the fan facing the ram slots.

 

[inzone]

There is no set rule for placing the Heat Sink, you can place it any way that fits. You can even place it so that the fan is on the side of the video card (if there is room) and have it blowing towards the top fan.
It's more important to have the fans direction of blowing air since for example in the way you have it now the air wants to be blowing towards the rear fan so the fan would actually be pulling air through the heat sink fins.

If you have low profile ram sticks then the fan should actually fit over the ram sticks if you were to put the fan on the other side and on some heat sinks there is an adjustment that can be made to raise the fan up a bit to clear the ram sticks.

 

[Calculatron]

Arctic Cooling did a pretty cool thing with their coolers; they can be mounted any of the four directions.

Right now, you do have the fan blowing in direction that is not optimized. (It is blowing the air through the heatsink, towards the right.) Your back case fan is blowing air the opposite (left) direction, outside of the case, and your top fan should be blowing air outside as well.

If you can mount your heatsink to blow upwards, hopefully that will help you get back into the optimum airflow for your case, without interfering with your ram. If that doesn't work, well, on the bright side, I think you're only shaving off a couple degrees difference for your CPU. *shrugs*