top blowholes.....bad?

[mkosem]

well, since no one uses the other rooms on the forum I guess I'll post this here since it's in my water cooled system. Do Top Blowholes negate performance? According to 3dcool they do. This sounds ludicrous since heat rises. Is 3dcool full-o-sheit? I don't wanna kill my new case if they're bad since it is a full tower and is kinda expensive.

--Matt

[Joe]

Once it was funny, now its getting me really upset. USE THE PROPER FORUMS. I am moving this there.

[mkosem]

geez joe, I just want someone to see it. any ideas?

--Matt

[xy]

i think that air flow is only disrupted if the fans are blowing in to the case from the top, that way you create a circular motion of air trapping the heat. but if you make it blow out it should be fine.

[mkosem]

cool, just as I thought!! stupid 3dcool

--MAtt

adding a blowhole to pull hot air outta the top of your box is one of the single best things you can do to cool your rig. heat rises, and you want to be constantly replacing hot air with cool air... makes sense to pull the hot air out the top where it wants to go. My box has a blowhole, PS fan and rear exhaust by the CPU... the air out the blowhole is the warmest of all of them.

[Butcher]

Really? my top blowhole runs cool, it's the rear exhaust and psu outlets that feel like a small oven is running in there.

[Kevin]

3DCool is full of shit. I didn't know they were still around...
-kev

[OcPunK]

Heat rises so you want fans sucking the hot air to the top of the case and out! notice what the PSU's fan does it a standered ATX case layout...

[Mr. Thompson]

I have found that with full tower cases, a top blowhole produces higher motherboard and CPU temps. A blowhole pulls the cool intake air out the top before it gets a chance to cool the motherboard area. It's better to pull the heat out with a fan under the PSU and a dual fan PSU. Note that I have not done any experiments on mid tower cases.

[Brad]

Just have every fan blowing into your case, and have the only outlet as your radiator (without a fan on it). Tape every other hole up.

[beav]

yeah brad, that would do a good deal of help.....=\

I came accross this when i decided in wanted to put a blowhole at the top of my case. Stupid 3dcool. I still have yet to put one in, but i think i'm going to do it to my new little enlight box. Mr. Thompson does have an interesting point. I'll try it and see what the temps are plugged and unplugged.

[Brad]

actually beav, I do think that that idea would work really well. Some guy in the [H] did it first.

He had a liteon fs020. Cut a hole in the top of the case, and had a big momma there. He put 69cfm panaflo's in the 3x stock 120mm fan holes, and put another one at the bottom of the case (una style). He had the psu fan blowing in too. So the only outlet was through the radiator fins.

He got 2C cooler water temps than he did with a 108cfm sunon blowing onto the big momma (like what you have in a normal setup)

[Lonely Raven]

I don't like badmouthing anyone, especially someone trying
to make a living....but 3dcool screwed me over with some
half asses equipment and wouldn't even fess up to the error,
let alone try and work with me on trying to rectify it.

As for top blow holes, I think you have plenty of great advice
here. I'd like to add my own .02 if nobody minds.

First off, different cases will react to different cooling methods
differently. I had one case that I really loved, but for some odd
reason no matter how many fans I threw at it, it just had a
crazy high ambient temp. The solution was actually to REDUCE
the number of fans, and block off all the vents except one fan
inlet, and two fan outlets (120mm in pair of 80s + PSU out).
The results were astonishing! I dropped 7c ambients with LESS
fans, but a well sealed case. The drawback was that it was
sucking air (and dust) in through my floppy drive. I wound up
ditching the floppy drive all together since I only use the bastard
when I'm building or diagnosing a PC.

Remember, if you can, try everything once and document the
results as you go along. Keep a pad for notes and plenty of
writing impliments about (Note, this also helps for songwriting
and poetry as well) and jot down even the smallest detail. I find
that often, I'll go over all my mad notes much later and see
corilations I didn't (and wouldn't) have caught earlier, or while
I was concentrating on important things like not sticking my
fingers into fans or dropping screwdrivers on live system boards.

Me personally though, I don't like the blow hold on the top. I'll
do anything to avoid the "stove top" look. But that's just me.

[beav]

I think it would be nice to have a blowhole at the top, just to cool off those hot cd-rw dvd-r drives and psu. They get hot!

I'm still not sure what to believe. It does seem logical that a blowhole would draw the cool air to the top before it ever reaches the hot components....

[Brad]

there are probably a couple of case layouts and fan layouts where a top blowhole wouldn't help, but I still think for most people it is a good idea

[DodgeViper]

Yes I know I am new to this fourm, but not new to cooling. This is the direction I am going.

[Brad]

that looks to be quite a good setup, lots of intake air, with most of it going out through the top radiator. I can't see any reason why that wouldn't work well