Cooler master HAF X Question

[henwy]

Hey all,

I just upgraded to a Cooler master HAF X and I have a few questions. The air duct that comes with the case is supposed to help direct air to the video card right? For me, the air duct doesn't reach my video card? It seems my board is too short for it? Does that mean there is no point for me to use this air duct? Also for anyone else that has this case, were the your power supply cables too short to take advantage of the wire management feature (routing the cables behind the motherboard tray). Thanks guys!

 

[jockey]

The air duct is designed to direct air flow towards the GPU(s), instead of just blowing it into the case. No need for it to be close to work.
The HAF-X should come supplied with power supply cable extensions to allow for back panel cable management. 24-pin should be ok, but the 4+4 CPU will definitley need to be lengthened to reach behind the mobo panel and come back down from the top.

 

[henwy]

oh I see,

so its okay that that the fan is not even close to the gpu, the gpu is about half an inch above the air duct. Also should the fan in the air duct be blowing faster or slower than the fan that is in front of it bringing in air from the very front of the case. Thanks!

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

The GPU fan is on the underside of the board, so the side fan is still blowing cool outside air to the right area. You could test it out with some temp-monitoring software. Try it with the duct and without to see which gives you better GPU temps at idle and (more importantly) while gaming.

Individual fan speeds really don't matter, as long as cool air gets where it's needed.

 

[jockey]

Individual fan speeds really don't matter, as long as cool air gets where it's needed.[/quotemsg]

I also like to somewhat balance my fans out i.e. 1-120mm in, 1 out etc. Adding that extra side fan to the GPU in your style of a case is always a plus because the front lower fans airflow gets partially blocked by the HDD cages and the PSU does radiant some heat into that area. In my similarly designed Scout case, by adding a side fan (also just below my GPU) I get 2c-3c cooler temps on the GPU, and also notice more warm air venting out of the top case fan.

 

[Leaps-from-Shadows]

Tests have shown that the best cooling arrangement is to have more air blowing into the case than blowing out. In other words, more intake than exhaust or positive pressure.

You could do that by having more intake fans, or by having faster intake fans ... or both.

However, as long as the case is well-ventilated, the difference isn't really all that much -- a couple of degrees at most. As the HAF X is well-designed and already has the side fan, you can't do much to improve airflow. The Storm Scout case that jockey has didn't have the side fan, so adding one lowered temps a bit.