Doh!!!

Well, last night i got to thinking about my water setup and was hit in the head with one obvious mistake that came out of left field. Radiator fans should pull through the radiator not push through it. By switching to a fan pulling instead of pushing i have dropped my temps by 7 c! The case temp has also dropped dramatically around 8-9c. One question i do have is how do you guys accuratly measure the ambient temp?

I measure the ambient room temp with an extra compu nurse.

Good old fashioned mercury thermometer on the wall.

my digiDoc 5 has room for 8 temp sensors, so i have one that hangs under my computer about 3 inches, with my tower on the desk, this works for amtiant air temp, pust i have an mercury thermometer on the wall about 3 feet away also

Ok, color me stupid

But why does pulling through make such a huge difference over pushing through?

When a fan blows air on a radiator, a posative air pressure is created between the radiator and the fan. the way the posative pressure equals out is to pass air through the Radiator, or bounce it off the fins. When a fan draws air throught the radiator, there is a negative pressure between the two. The only way this can be equaled out is to pull air from inside the radiator, which in turn pulls air from the opposing side of the rad.

So basicly when pulling through there is less restriction from the fins than when pushing through.

what about a push pull configuration?

a push pull has an even non restricted flow it is basicly and assisted pull system where in a car it would be fuel injected.(i think thats a decent way to explain it) like instead of just pullingm, there is already air being blown back in to the core at the same rate is ait is being pulled this also lowers the work effort of the pull fan and visa versa. its more efficient and less work on the fans. just eats a lil more power. i think that wonderboy may have also kicked a buble out from somewhere when doing this because 8 c is a lot to loose from just that. i have heard of 2 maybe 3 c difference but never 8... or maybe he could have had a combination of that and resently laid on AS that settled at the same time...

I think alot of the extra drop came from more airflow over the whole system. The rad fan is now pushing more air than before and therefore the sys temp drops.


A touch of good news though. I was playing around with the cold air last night and i hit an all time low for my system temp and an all time high overclock. The ambient temp was around 39f.

Coldest (large pic)

Overclock (large pic)


This is all on an old williamette(sp) chip so the overclocks arent as great as the northwood overclocks