I am prepping for my building of this project and in my planning I have a little dilemma, I have no idea how cooling works in a case, I did buy 4 x 120mm fans and I know the mobo has enough fan headers for them. The question is, where do I put them and which way should they be blowing/sucking? The case has 3 spots on the front gril, 3 spots along the top and comes with 1 120mm fan at the back.
Here is my case:
There have been endless debates about this. In my experience, the best results are achieved by balanced airflow. Try and keep you intake and exhaust airflow the same. My case has two intake (front and bottom) and two exhaust (top and rear). This creates a nice airflow, and has the added benefit of helping to keep the case dust-free.
In a nutshellā¦hot air rises. Get cold air coming from the front/bottom partā¦exhaust at the top rear partā¦
Front-to-back and bottom-to-top
Again, amazing advice from this forum!!
Thank you so much
To add to this, understand that not all fans are created equally. Understanding the relationship between air flow rate and air pressure can ultimately become a maths exercise.
Every fan features a cubic feet per minute (CFM) rating, which measures of the volume of air it moves in a minute. The greater the CFM, the more air a fan moves.
a computer case can either have positive pressure (The case fans push more air into the case than then pull out), Neutral pressure (Air pressure in the case is equal to air pressure outside of the case - which is almost a pipe dream) or Negative pressure (More air is being pulled out of the case than being pushed in)
In a perfect scenario, youād have neutral pressure with an enclosed case because no dust would be sucked in. Negative pressure would mean that air is being sucked into your case from all the tiny gaps you canāt control and donāt have filters on, which means less efficient cooling over time. Aim for slightly positive pressure, with slightly higher intake CFM than exhaust CFM. This way, the air that enters your case goes through a filter first.
Ok, some more in depth questions on airflow based on your comments and some ready I been doing. I have space for 3 fans in the top (top has a removable) filter, space for 3 fans on the front (has a permanent filter in the grill, not very fine) and space for 2 at the back, no filter.
Should I put 3 on the top as intake, since it has a good filter and then 1 in the front as exhaust and one on the back as exhaust? This will make it slightly more positive but then the 2 exhausts are pulling in different directions. Can you do 3 on top intake and 2 exhaust with no back fan?
Iāve always stuck to the front in, top and rear out setup.
I would imagine in general, there may only be a slight variation in temp between the various configurations. Setting up fans is pretty simple though so you could try out the configs and see what works best for your setup.
I like the top as exhaust because it seems logical that heat rises so directing airflow that way would be better? I could be wrong though.
Gotta say I agree with front (and bottom, donāt forget, some case have bottom slots too!) = clean air coming in, hot and ādirtyā (like F1 dirty) air out the back and top, altho personally since I tend to use top of my tower for actual storage space, I moved those fans to have pure āin from front, out at backā setup. my dual cpu fans help move air within the case in the same direction too, so Iām pretty content with my setup 
So the filter on the top is actually a bad design, damn. Having a filter on exhaust is pointless. I can always jury rig the finer filter on the inside of the front panel but this will mean that the front has a rough filter and then about 10mm behind it a finer filter but I will then put 3 fans on the front for intake, then 1 exhaust on top and one on back. The CPU cooler is a stock wraith spire, which means its airflow is perpendicular to the airflow in the case.
Wow , so many options
Iād put 3 fans in the front for intake,1 rear exhaust plus one top exhaust.
Remember you ideally want a slightly positive airflow
Front (and bottom if you have them) for intake, top and rear for exhaust. Any other setup will not play well with the natural flow of air through your case. You need to create airflow that moves across the various heatsinks and components in your case. Intake fans at the front bring in cold air that move across your drives, and then towards the GPU and CPU. The hot components typically sit at the top or rear of the case, so warm air will be rising from that position. Hence, you want exhaust fans at the top and rear to pull said hot air out of your case.
Well, its built and working, I slotted in an old GPU to see the CMOS and to see if it all works. Just waiting for the radeon to arrive on Thursday to complete the build and do the reinstall of windows and all my apps.
I will tell you this, it is the last time I am EVER building a PC again. The stress of trying to fit miniscule little jumpers on the mobo in tight corners is too much, even had to use a magnifying glass to see! I will gladly pay someone to do that for me next time ;-P. My sausage fingers and failing eyesight are not up to the task.
I was a little pissed when the CMOS showed my RAM only working at 2100MHZ when I know I spent extra to get 3200MHZ. I then read that I have to OC the RAM to get that potential out of it, which I did!
Yeah, it will default to 2133. You need to select one of the XMP profiles in BIOS to get it to the proper speed. Glad itās working!
It did! the CPU runs solidly, the x470 msi gaming pro works great! The Radeon arrived and my games are rocking.
There is only one issue I am trying to work out: the GPU runs HOT and that is with a cold winter ambient. It gets to about 73c under full load with the stock settings on its fans working. I use software to set a manual curve so that it blows at 100% fan speed when it gets to 70 and I can keep it below 70 with that. I also push up the fan speeds on the casing to maintain it. The GPU fans also run very loudly!
My concern is once summer hits, I am going to have a tough time playing games for any extended period of time as the ambient temp will make the GPU go even higher, no matter what I do. I read that it will start throttling the GPU back at 90c but I am not comfortable with that temp, it just seems so dangerous for the GPU! I might have to resort to the open case/desk fan setup to keep playing in summer.
Should I look at liquid cooling for the GPU?
The CPU doesnāt even break 50c at full load.
73C should be fine I would have thought Iām sure GPUs are able to take that temperature. My GPU old as it is sits at 86C.
RTX 2080 regularly hits 85Ā°C under load; Donāt stress about it.
The vanilla Gigabyte cooler tends to be on the loud side (the Gaming series especially; the Aorus cards are a bit better). 100% fan speed is earbending and I would not recommend it. Try and set the fan curve to keep the card below 75C, and you should be fine. Also, given that you are now pushing way more frames than before, you can turn on VSync or frame rate limiting via the AMD driver to keep frame rates under control, especially in older titles. Otherwise the GPU will push 200fps in the main menu with a corresponding rise in temp and fan speed, when itās not required.
@Shrike I had a reference AMD R9 290 that would hit 94 degrees all the time, and so there would be thermal throttling in that case but there was no damage at all to the card. Itās still going strong after all these years.
Good news! Thanks all!