Is this a reasonable cooling solution?

[Matt26]

i have a game rig set up with a stock cooling system (stock case fans and motherboard/video cards cooling systems) that i want to begin overclocking and i am considering taking the side panel off the case and placing a household fan in place of the side panel- the slim models with dual fans that can be mounted on the inside of a window. i want to do this in order to get my hardware as cool possible because i don't have the money for the real solution.

would this be an effective solution?

here is what i am working with:
- AMD Athlon64 4000+ CPU
- ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard
- 3GB DDR PC3200 SDRAM (2 x 1GB Netlist, 2 x 512MB Kingston)
- 2 x BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB GDDR3 Overclocked Video cards (SLI)
- Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB SATA150 7200RPM hard drive
- Enermax FMAII 535W PSU
- Aspire X-Cruiser Tower case

thanks.

 

[rubix_1011]

This would work, but only if you had poor case airflow to begin with. If you have poor cooling solutions in place, then you won't see a lot of difference if you had good flow to begin with. I would say its worth a try, even if you have a regular box fan or something to test with first, and see what your results are before you go buy the additional fan. Good DIY idea for low budget...nice idea.

 

[arthurh]

I'd have to agree with rubix on this. Like he says, if you have good airflow you really won't see a difference in real world computing.

However, if your case doesn't flow so good and your graphics card exhausts inside your case instead of out the back you will see GPU temps go down. It would be a toss up thou for your CPU. Might actually increase CPU temp because you'd be disturbing the natueral flow from the CPU HSF depending on how you position the fan. At least it did when I tried it.

 

[Matt26]

i have attached images of a case style that i have been looking at- would this setup make the addition of the house fan i described any more effective?

thanks.

 

[rubix_1011]

It would clear up any issues you have with flow, but you really want to spend that much on a case to cool components that might not have an adequate cooler on them to begin with? You still have a cool case with a ghetto cooling setup...instead of using the cash to actually buy what you need to make what you have, work.

Try the box fan test out, then tell us what your results are.