Where to place 240mm radiator and what to do with extra fan spot

[Guest]

In my case I have spots for fans in the follow places: 1x 140mm on the front, 1x 120mm on the rear, and 3x 120mm spots on the top. The front is setup to intake and the rear is setup to exhaust. I'm wondering how i should setup my 240mm radiator for my cpu cooler. I have made sure it fits in either way but I wanna whether i should have an extra exhaust fan on top nearer the rear of my case or place the fan in the front. If moving the fan near the front, would making it an intake make a difference or have it be another exhaust?

I don't remember the case name or have a good enough camera to take a pic with so here's a drawing to help.
https://puu.sh/wViM8/09479eae5a.png

There would be a fan spot not being taken up by the radiator on top in either the rear-most or front-most spot.

some specs if it helps:

cpu: i5 7600k
mobo: MSI Z270M MORTAR
graphics card: EVGA GTX 960 internal exhaust (soon to upgrade)
I use a fan controller for all the case fans. (not radiator fans)

 

[Tamaskan]

"I have made sure it fits in either way but I wanna...." What do you mean it fits either way? Are you referring as to use it as intake or exhaust?

By looking at that diagram, I don't think u have a choice but to put it on the top since that is the only location it can fit. I would say use it as exhaust, since hot air moves up and no point blowing it back down. Since you will have 3 exhaust and 1 intake, so imo just leave the other spot empty since it would suck air in due to the negative pressure.

 

[photonboy]

Cooling the i5-7600K with a 240mm radiator isn't terribly difficult so it's not going to matter much what you do.

You should be fine with:
1) 2x front fans as INTAKE
2) 240mm on top as EXHAUST

Probably no need for any other case fans, even the top-rear one. The radiator fans should provide enough air flow to cool the CPU VRM's and system memory.

*You can of course EXPERIMENT though it gets quite difficult to do so but I'd set it up like this or add the top-rear fan if you want and observer the temperatures of CPU and motherboard sensors.

Adjust the fan profiles as needed (though case fans are rapidly diminishing returns).

At the end of the day we could discuss the OPTIMAL setup but again frankly this system is so easy to cool it's not complicated. I'd put the case fans to roughly the LOWEST RPM they can go, put the radiator on the QUIETEST profile and see if that's sufficient.

 

[Seanie280672]

The radiator itself will be bigger than 240mm, there will be overlap on either side, one side more than the other due to the barbs/tube inlet and outlet, so depending on your fan config, you wouldnt get another fan up there anyway, push I always find works better than pull, so the rad right at the top of the case with the fans pushing the air through it and out of the case top.