Question Using top Air Fans in case as intake: Should I change after upgrading to the 5800X3D with Noctua NH-U12A Chromax Black?

[sw3000]

Hello all, this is a follow up to my recent post regarding upgrading to the 5800X3D (motherboard: B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC) and suggesting a adequate Air cooler. Well, personally I think the Noctua NH-U12A chromax black is FAR more than "adequate" without going into all of the TDP specs, so I'm going to purchase it soon. Question: with 3 intake fans at the front, 1 at the back (140mm), I have 2 at the top (140mm Be Quiet Pure Wings 2) as intake because I currently use a crappy (lol) wraith prism, which has 1 of the top fans over it (for the 5700X cpu), literally blows down into the fin arrays and heat pipes, as well as the VRMS and components of the motherboard. Believe it or not, this works well in my current configuration as far as overall temps. Considering that the new Noctua has a "right to left" push-pull set-up, which would be more in the natural direction of airflow of the 3 in-takes at front, couldn't I leave the top 2 fans as intake, seeing as how if I reverse them to exhaust, it would dissipate the front intake fans fresh air, thus affecting temps? Anyone using a CPU with a TDP of 105 or higher and is all air, what is your suggestion/configuration? Thank you

 

[Lafong]

Considering that the new Noctua has a "right to left" push-pull set-up, which would be more in the natural direction of airflow of the 3 in-takes at front, shouldn't I reverse the 2 top fans (Be Quiet 140mm pure wings 2) to exhaust? Should I eliminate them all together after the upgrade?

Experiment when you get the Noctua.

Tentative best guess would be the tops as exhausts or maybe not even used at all.

If 55 degrees rather than 58 is a big deal to you, then you may experiment a lot. If not a big deal, live happily without much testing.

 

[sw3000]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzTnUZR_0Vs
This video on YouTube comes very well in the ball-park of answering my question, though the front intake fans are 200mm in the video. I think I'm going to keep the top fans as intake, unless anyone can present information to the contrary.

 

[sw3000]

Experiment when you get the Noctua.

Tentative best guess would be the tops as exhausts or maybe not even used at all.

If 55 degrees rather than 58 is a big deal to you, then you may experiment a lot. If not a big deal, live happily without much testing.

I'm going to keep them as intake. Currently my system temps are hover around 30 to 35c. I really like that! With the Noctua acting as a premium cooling solution for the 5800X3D, overall thermals on air should be fine. And since I'm not concerned with overclocking the 5800X3D, because technically one can't, except for memory tunings (could you imagine 2 years ago, an AMD Ryzen CPU being faster than the 12900k in gaming WITHOUT overclocking!?) then yeah, keeping the top fans as they are...no overclocking thermals unless I go rogue in tech and push the limits of the chip like I've seen recently...lol. No, not me. My PC is a daily driver, internet browsing/YouTube Streaming, paying my bills, and GAMING!