Evil Empire Gaming

A Little Experiment With Fans

Got my Zalman Cooler yesterday as you know but I just wasn't happy with how I installed the fan and bracket. So I started fiddling with things. Read on for some surprising results!

Here's what it looked like when first installed:

I just wasn't satisfied. I kept looking at it thinking those 2 case exhaust fans are probably just bringing warm exhaust air across the Zalman fan and where does the hot air go after it's been over the heatsink?

I have to admit when I got this new PC I got a little exited and just started adding fans to each position on the case. It was clear it just didn't have good air flow.

So I experimented and came up with this:

I moved the Zalman bracket lower so that most of the fan covered the center of the heatsink, there's even a bit overlapping the motherboard heatsink for good measure. Then I removed the bottom exhaust fan and added it to the front as an intake. There's much more room now between the Zalman fan and the exhaust fan.

My theory was the Zalman would actually draw cooler air from the bottom case fan grill and the top fan would be able to draw out warm air from around the CPU heatsink better. I also thought having 2 intakes would increase the amount of fresh air in the case.

It appears to work as expected too! After a quick check it's about 3-4 degrees cooler accoring to the Asus motherboard utility. Not too bad for playing musical fans!

So I guess the lesson is... oh I dunno... f*ck around with stuff and see what happens?

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