[SOLVED] Is this same/hot air emitting from my case normal or is there anything I can do to help make the situation better?

Nov 5, 2020
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Hello everyone,

I recently installed a new CPU cooler on my R9 3900X, and I'm getting way better temps than with the stock cooler. It usually idles around 35-40°C, before I used to get 47-50°C on idle. I'm using a Noctua NH-U12A and the cooler is properly seated and the fans should be on correctly as I've checked the instructions that came with the manual. This cooler is very silent and seems to work very well according to hwmonitor.

I'm using a Sapphire RX 590 Nitro SE and I'm playing Doom (2016) at 1440p Ultra settings. I get above 100fps on my monitor and the game runs really well on this GPU (I will be upgrading later to an RX 6000 series GPU). I can run the game for like an hour or two and then I start feeling warm, almost hot air coming out from my PC under my desk.

Is this a case fan issue, is it my CPU cooler heating up my tempered glass panel, or is it the GPU emitting most of the hot air? I'm sitting not too far from my PC, because it's under my desk but it's not locked in any cupboard or anything there's pretty much open air under the desk and I have 4 case fans inside the PC, two in the front for intake, one on the back to exhaust hot air, and one on top to exhaust hot air. There's room on top for two fans but I only have one on top, is that a problem because my case is a mid tower ATX with a lot of space inside. I'm also wondering if it's the power supply heating up stuff, it's a 700W PSU and I have it's fan pointing downwards because the power supply shroud is closed on the top but has a ventilation grill on the bottom of the case.

I'm asking because under load from the game, the CPU and GPU max out at 60°C, and I'm thinking it shouldn't be that hot? I'm wondering if it's just because the fans are doing their job properly and that the PC is obviously going to emit heat? On my previous build from early 2019, I used the same case and case fans on my R7 2700X, but the only difference is I used the stock wraith cooler with that CPU and it worked great under load, only the R9 3900X didn't work as silent and cool as the R7 2700X, hence why I upgraded the CPU cooler.

Thanks for reading and please give me your thoughts.

Here's a list of upgrades I made to my PC:

  • Upgraded Motherboard (MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk)
  • Upgraded CPU (Ryzen 9 3900X)
  • Upgraded PSU (SeaSonic Focus 750W Fully Modular)
  • Upgraded RAM (HyperX Fury 32GB 3466MHz)
  • Added M.2 (Kingston A2000 1TB)
 
Solution
Your Noctua is one of the top air coolers you can buy and removes more heat than nearly all 240 mm water radiators and more than some 360 mm water radiators. But this heat remains in the cabinet unless you have an intake airflow and exhaust airflow that removes all that heat from the ambient air inside the cabinet.

If the video card is exhausting out the back, you are good there, They are notoriously hot under load but designed to take care of it. 60 C (140F) is typical under load, But keep in mind that the ambient temp inside the case is all that the video card has to cool itself. Drop the ambient temperature by 10 degrees and the video card temps will drop in proportion, Same thing is true with the CPU. Get the heat out of the case...
Cooling throughout the system is working as expected and temps across the board are normal.

What you're experiencing is eventually heat build up, stagnant warm air, under your desk because it doesn't seem like the room you're in isn't getting a lot of fresh air. Open a Window / door or have a pedestal fan blowing slowly down there to move air around.
 
"I'm wondering if it's just because the fans are doing their job properly and that the PC is obviously going to emit heat? "

Yes.

The components are creating that "heat". Primarily, CPU and GPU.
The fan situation is moving that hot air from inside the case to outside the case.
 
Cooling throughout the system is working as expected and temps across the board are normal.

What you're experiencing is eventually heat build up, stagnant warm air, under your desk because it doesn't seem like the room you're in isn't getting a lot of fresh air. Open a Window / door or have a pedestal fan blowing slowly down there to move air around.
Okay thanks for the help, it doesn't seem too hot like you said it just seems stagnant that's all. Also the title was supposed to say warm/hot air lol, auto correct changed it to "same"
 
Your Noctua is one of the top air coolers you can buy and removes more heat than nearly all 240 mm water radiators and more than some 360 mm water radiators. But this heat remains in the cabinet unless you have an intake airflow and exhaust airflow that removes all that heat from the ambient air inside the cabinet.

If the video card is exhausting out the back, you are good there, They are notoriously hot under load but designed to take care of it. 60 C (140F) is typical under load, But keep in mind that the ambient temp inside the case is all that the video card has to cool itself. Drop the ambient temperature by 10 degrees and the video card temps will drop in proportion, Same thing is true with the CPU. Get the heat out of the case and everything will run cooler.

Have you tried running with a side cover off and see what your temperatures are then? I assume you are using software that is reading the sensors that are all over the motherboard as well as hard drives, power supply, ram, north and south bridge. Where the temperatures are the hottest is the source of the heat. Power supplies produce heat when they convert AC to DC. You can figure at least a 15-20% conversion factor of the total watts being used when gaming under load. That means if your system is pulling 400 watts, the power supply is providing 80 watts of pure heat. Much of it is in the air exhaust but some of it is infra red heat. The same goes foe the MB. CPU, and GPU's. Infra red can also heat up the ambient air in the cabinet.

Offhand, you need two 120 mm fans exhausting cabinet heat and two 120 mm fans intaking cool air just to get rid of the heat left in the cabinet from the CPU. and motherboard. You are short one exhaust fan so I would start there. If you have places to put them, adding still another intake fan and another exhaust fan would not be excessive.

For a basis of comparison, my Cooler Master case with RIVE and i7-3930k was built by Cyberpower with a 140 mm intake front , 2 x120 mm intakes side blowing at the motherboard and 3 x120 mm exhaust fans., one out the back and two out the top. The 1200 W power supply draws from the bottom and exhausts out the back and the dual GTX 780 cards draw ambient air and exhaust out the back. That is 6 fans to clear ambient air when the power supply and video cards already exhaust their heat. The computer is nearly silent and always cool. The "ambient air temp" inside was essentially the same as the room where the computer was placed. Years past, when having purchased mainstream computers from Compaq and HP I always found they had marginal cooling....just not enough fans to keep the cabinets from building heat. I've shoe glued a 140 mm fan in the bottom front of a few cases where there was no mounting screws and they made quite a difference....quietly.

Congratulations on your choice of CPU cooler. May be the best in the world and it definitely is putting heat inside the case. Get it to where the exiting air barely feels warm. not hot. It is safe to assume that the air exchange is marginal at best and some additional case fans will lower ambient temperatures. Fans are cheap and they last longer than the current state of the technology they cool.
 
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Solution
Cooling throughout the system is working as expected and temps across the board are normal.

What you're experiencing is eventually heat build up, stagnant warm air, under your desk because it doesn't seem like the room you're in isn't getting a lot of fresh air. Open a Window / door or have a pedestal fan blowing slowly down there to move air around.
Okay thanks for the help, it doesn't seem too hot like you said it just seems stagnant that's all. Also the title was supposed to say warm/hot air lol, auto correct changed it to "same"
 
Your Noctua is one of the top air coolers you can buy and removes more heat than nearly all 240 mm water radiators and more than some 360 mm water radiators. But this heat remains in the cabinet unless you have an intake airflow and exhaust airflow that removes all that heat from the ambient air inside the cabinet.

If the video card is exhausting out the back, you are good there, They are notoriously hot under load but designed to take care of it. 60 C (140F) is typical under load, But keep in mind that the ambient temp inside the case is all that the video card has to cool itself. Drop the ambient temperature by 10 degrees and the video card temps will drop in proportion, Same thing is true with the CPU. Get the heat out of the case and everything will run cooler.

Have you tried running with a side cover off and see what your temperatures are then? I assume you are using software that is reading the sensors that are all over the motherboard as well as hard drives, power supply, ram, north and south bridge. Where the temperatures are the hottest is the source of the heat. Power supplies produce heat when they convert AC to DC. You can figure at least a 15-20% conversion factor of the total watts being used when gaming under load. That means if your system is pulling 400 watts, the power supply is providing 80 watts of pure heat. Much of it is in the air exhaust but some of it is infra red heat. The same goes foe the MB. CPU, and GPU's. Infra red can also heat up the ambient air in the cabinet.

Offhand, you need two 120 mm fans exhausting cabinet heat and two 120 mm fans intaking cool air just to get rid of the heat left in the cabinet from the CPU. and motherboard. You are short one exhaust fan so I would start there. If you have places to put them, adding still another intake fan and another exhaust fan would not be excessive.

For a basis of comparison, my Cooler Master case with RIVE and i7-3930k was built by Cyberpower with a 140 mm intake front , 2 x120 mm intakes side blowing at the motherboard and 3 x120 mm exhaust fans., one out the back and two out the top. The 1200 W power supply draws from the bottom and exhausts out the back and the dual GTX 780 cards draw ambient air and exhaust out the back. That is 6 fans to clear ambient air when the power supply and video cards already exhaust their heat. The computer is nearly silent and always cool. The "ambient air temp" inside was essentially the same as the room where the computer was placed. Years past, when having purchased mainstream computers from Compaq and HP I always found they had marginal cooling....just not enough fans to keep the cabinets from building heat. I've shoe glued a 140 mm fan in the bottom front of a few cases where there was no mounting screws and they made quite a difference....quietly.

Congratulations on your choice of CPU cooler. May be the best in the world and it definitely is putting heat inside the case. Get it to where the exiting air barely feels warm. not hot. It is safe to assume that the air exchange is marginal at best and some additional case fans will lower ambient temperatures. Fans are cheap and they last longer than the current state of the technology they cool.
Yeah I'm probably going to replace my front and top fans with 140mm ones to get more efficient air flow out of this case. The back of the case only takes 120mm so I won't be able to change that lol.