Up front; first gaming rig that I "built". Buddy gave me his old PC when he upgraded, and I fixed it up for about $300 which was nice. I had to replace an existing fan on the case that was broken, which long story short, led me to realizing and then questioning something about the airflow that might be happening in this case.
I bought a BeQuiet CPU Cooler that many people said would be great for noise, but was fairly large so to make sure it fit. After getting the mobo and such to replace, I ended up only being able to mount the CPU Fan in one direction that it would fit, that being the fan is blowing INTO the case across the fins from the back. The RAM that I already had (Ripjaws V 16G DDR4) was too tall to enable the cooler to be placed any other way. This was all before I did research and realized which way a CPU fan blows, so I assumed it was fine.
View: https://imgur.com/a/IUBZ7wU
Image for reference [mobo and fan are not screwed in since I'm moving stuff around]. I guess my question is, knowing this is how it has to be mounted due to the RAM being in the way, what should I do about the other two fans? The case has two front fans blowing in over the drives, and then it also has a 230mm side intake fan as well for reference. I'm more-so looking for direction on the remaining to (the black 120mm on the back, and the clear 200mm on the top).
Another option that I'm looking into is removing the heat-sink from the RAM sticks which should (hopefully) allow the CPU cooler to be mounted the correct way. Would this just be the better current solution? I'm trying to avoid having the purchase anything else at the moment, but it's something I can/will likely do in the future to fix the issue. Assuming a slightly more slim CPU cooler would be the best idea, but I was still trying to prioritize quietness.
I bought a BeQuiet CPU Cooler that many people said would be great for noise, but was fairly large so to make sure it fit. After getting the mobo and such to replace, I ended up only being able to mount the CPU Fan in one direction that it would fit, that being the fan is blowing INTO the case across the fins from the back. The RAM that I already had (Ripjaws V 16G DDR4) was too tall to enable the cooler to be placed any other way. This was all before I did research and realized which way a CPU fan blows, so I assumed it was fine.
View: https://imgur.com/a/IUBZ7wU
Image for reference [mobo and fan are not screwed in since I'm moving stuff around]. I guess my question is, knowing this is how it has to be mounted due to the RAM being in the way, what should I do about the other two fans? The case has two front fans blowing in over the drives, and then it also has a 230mm side intake fan as well for reference. I'm more-so looking for direction on the remaining to (the black 120mm on the back, and the clear 200mm on the top).
- The back fan is the one I just replaced. I put it on backwards accidently the first time, and when I went to fix that, is when this all came to my mind. Should I still have the back fan blowing out even though it will be less than an inch from the CPU intake side? Will that be removing unnecessary colder air away from the CPU intake? Making this fan an intake however seems like it'd be bad since then I'd only have the top fan as an exhaust along with any natural airflow.
- The top fan is a second question then. Right now it's towards the back and set as an exhaust out the top. Assuming this should be kept as such, but do you think I should move it back to the other mounting area [right in the photo] so that it'll be more directly over where the CPU air is coming out? Or would it be fine where it is towards the back?
Another option that I'm looking into is removing the heat-sink from the RAM sticks which should (hopefully) allow the CPU cooler to be mounted the correct way. Would this just be the better current solution? I'm trying to avoid having the purchase anything else at the moment, but it's something I can/will likely do in the future to fix the issue. Assuming a slightly more slim CPU cooler would be the best idea, but I was still trying to prioritize quietness.