The Fundamentals of Air Cooling: A Beginners Guide *Updated 12/25* - Overclock.net

Behemoth777 · 11-17-09

Hello everyone, I'm creating this thread because I believe that the cooler your system stays, the better. I have been doing a lot of research on how to get the best out of air cooling. Here are some solutions I found:

These pictures are of my old case and are used as examples. Your system will not look exactly like this, but it gives you a general idea of what it should look like.

1. Always use high quality fans with a good noise to performance ratio for your system. Using fans that have good noise to performance ratios will usually guarantee that they are high quality fans(unless the company lies about its specifications). Do not buy off brand fans, go with the best(refer to the tip #7 for good fans to use). I personally use Noctua(The fan pictured here is an antec tricool on my old case).

2. Make sure that you use a fan either on your side panel, bottom of the case, or at back of the hdd bays. This helps tremendously to cool down the GPU and give you better performance and more stability for overclocking.

3. Make sure that you always put your hard drives on either side of your front intake fan(not in the middle of the fan). This will allow the front intake fan to blow away any hot air that your hard drive emits.

4. Always remember to clean out any dust and/or filters you may have in your system. As dust builds in your case or on your filters, it allows less and less air to pass through your case/filters. I just use a can of compressed air to clean them when they need it.

5. Make sure you have good cable management. Tuck all those cables and junk behind your motherboard tray to promote better airflow. The less resistance, the better.

(This is a look at the backside of my motherboard tray. If you are OCD, then you can do some cable management back here also using zipties and anchors. It doesn't bother me because I don't see it and it doesn't disrupt my airflow.)

6. Put a 120mm fan in 3 of your empty 5.25" drive bay if you don't have a dual front intake. This will bring fresh, cool air into your system to cool down your memory and north bridge. Most importantly it provides your cpu cooler with airflow directly to it. I used a fan mount from Mountainmods.com and a FilterRight filter from Frozencpu.com or performancepcs.com.

7. If you are going to be doing some overclocking, make sure to have a good cpu, gpu, memory, or chipset cooler to keep those temps down.

Here are some of the best CPU coolers around:
Noctua NH-U12P SE2 or NH-D14(Current King)
Prolimatech Megahalems or Mega Shadow
Thermalright TRUE or IFX-14
Xigmatek Dark Knight(Budget) or Thor's Hammer
Scythe Mugen-2(Budget King)

Some of the best GPU coolers around are:
Thermalright HR-03 GT or GTX
Arctic Cooling's Xtreme series coolers or ACCELS1 Rev 2 w/ 120mm fan mounted(Budget)
Zalman VF1000
Scythe Musashi(Budget)

Best kind of memory heatsinks:
Thermalright HR-07 memory heatsinks

Best kind of chipset heatsinks:
Thermalright HR-05 chipset heatsinks

Best kind of CPU or GPU fans Include:
Any Sanyo Denki San Ace
Any Panaflo
Any Delta
Sythe S-flex or Gentle Typhoon
Noctua Fans with the impeller design for higher static pressure
(If you go with any of the first three choices, I recommend a fan controller to keep the noise down)

I have recommended these fans for cpu and/or gpu applications because they have high static pressure which is important for pushing air through the fins of the heatsink. They are also very high quality fans and when used with a fan controller can be made nearly silent.

Best kind of Case fans:
Noctua(Best there is)
Scythe S-flex or Gentle Typhoon
Yate Loon(Budget)
[LED Fans] Antec tricool or Cooler Master R4(Budget)
Xigmatek(Budget)

These fans are good for case applications because they all offer good noise to performance ratios and they perform very well as case fans.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that I do not endorse any of these companies, I am merely suggesting products that have been widely viewed as good performers.

8. Have a good Intake/Exhaust ratio. When choosing fans for your system, always make sure that the fans you are buying will provide you a good balance of pressure between intake and exhaust.

Fans are rated by how many cfm's(or cubic feet per minute) they produce and how many rpm's it takes to produce this amount of airflow. When deciding which fans to get for your system, keep in mind that whatever goes in, must come out. In other words, the amount of cfm's going into your case should be the amount of cfm's leaving your case. If you have one 120mm fan as an intake and two 120mm fans as exhaust, your going to have an imbalance of pressure(assuming that all the fans are rated for the same amount of cfm's).

For well balanced performance, a 1:1 cfm ratio is recommended. Meaning if you have two intake fans rated at 60 cfm, you should have any combination of fans that add up to 120 cfm for exhaust (be it one fan that outputs 120 cfm, two fans that output 60 cfm, three fans that output 40 cfm, or any different combination of fans as long as they add up to the 120 cfm needed to exhaust air out of the case).

Also, don't forget that if you have a gpu that exhausts air out the back of the case, that counts as an exhaust fan so don't forget to compensate for that as well.

Well, there you have it. Eight different ways to improve your system cooling. Hope this helps!

I am open to suggestions of how to make this thread better so if you have any let me know!