Cooler Master HAF-XB Build Air flow

[Trun187]

I am getting ready to build a new machine with the following specs: 2700x (frac design 240mm rad, 2xVega 64 (Ref blower cooler). I was wondering if i place fans in all spots (1 200mm for top, 120 for back, 240mm rad for front, 2 80mm for bottom) Now if i was to make those ALL intakes except for the front (240mm rad push pull out of case) would it make sense? The 2 vega 64s blower style coolers would act as exhaust and im assuming with all those fans as intakes it should be more than capable of keeping the system cool as well as helping the Vegas out. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Frag Maniac]

That is not advisable. Typically cases with good airflow bring cool air in the front, and sometimes bottom and side as well, and exhaust it out the back and top. You also want it to flow mostly one direction, front to back. This is why I have my two top 140mm fans set to a much slower speed. They are merely there to slowly remove any residual pooled warm air. I also have three 120mm front filtered intake fans, and one 120mm filtered side intake.

I place my 4 HDDs so there are none behind the middle front fan. This is so the middle fan has no obstruction blowing cool air through to the CPU cooler. The side fan blows air onto the GPU. The back has two 120mm exhaust fans.

The bottom of my case has no vent, and I prefer it that way. Counting the PSU fan, I have 5 exhaust fans, and 4 intakes, but due to being able to regulate all but the side and PSU fan speed, I can set it up so there's a slight positive air pressure in the case (slightly more intake flow), which resists dust sucking in through crevices.

 

[Trun187]

i have decided to instead get a i7 9700k with a 2080 by asus. So the cooling issues with GPU im not worried about. The vegas just run to hot and are to noisy i shouldnt have to undervolt whatever with something out of the box. So in regards to what u said, the fractal design 24 i have up front with push/pull i should have as a intake, the 200mm pulling out, the back 140mm pulling out, the 2 80mm pushing in?

 

[Frag Maniac]

Rad fans should always be set up as intakes, because otherwise you're blowing warm air from inside the case on the rad. Also, with decent case flow you don't need push/pull, and it's definitely higher maintenance. They are harder to take apart and clean, and if you don't do it often enough, a lot of dust will get trapped between the fans and inside the rad, and can cause the fan bearings to seize up prematurely.

If you want a low temp system, don't use a 9700k. They run excessively hot and aren't much better on performance than a 8700k for games.

I also recommend balanced power setting in W10, because otherwise your CPU runs full speed all the time. I set my 8700k up for Balanced, and my EVGA 1080 SC's fans don't even kick on until it hits 55c, yet it still stays under 65c while gaming.

If there's any games that happen to benefit from High Performance power, it's better to set the Power Management Mode for that game's profile in Nvidia Inspector to Prefer Maximum Performance. That way when you exit to desktop your system automatically goes back to Balanced power mode.