Reversing the airflow in a case?

Here are some pics of my setup (yep, its still messy, havent gotten around to wire management yet). My watercooling setup The pics for Rev 4 are the current ones.

If you notice the 'booster rocket' at the back of my case its my push/pull heater core setup. Due to the size of the setup internal placement just doesnt seem to be the premium option for me since it would force me into doing some weird stuff to get the pump mounted in a spot that wouldnt interfere with my peripheral cards.

Is it possible for me to simply reverse the direction of airflow through the case? In other words my heater core assembly would blow air into the case and my front panel fans would be reversed to become exhaust fans. The two side panel fans would remain as intakes while the top panel fan would remain as an exhaust. You cant see it but I also have a Bay-Cool III hard-drive cooler which can easily have its fan reversed as well. The biggest downside would be my power supply fan which I would prefer not to change if possible.

Thoughts?

I had posted earlier and the main suggestion most people had was to change the setup so I would be using ambient air to cool the heater core instead of the air inside the case. Since I like the current 'rocket booster' setup of my system I am thinking of reversing airflow. Any particular reasons this wouldnt work?

***EDIT***
You may also notice I have both a DangerDen fillport and a Typhoon Res in my system. I originally only had the res but upon shortening my tubing runs getting the res in and out is a wee bit of a challenge without dismounting the CPU block. The fillport has made things much easier for fill-n-bleed'ing but I still like the idea of keeping the res for visual confirmation of no coolant loss as well as having a backup volume of coolant in case a leak does develope to avoid running the system too low on coolant.

The problem is the PSU it will be exhausting and reversing it would put extra heat into the case that you dont want. The psu might not make much of a difference, worth a try.

Yeah, if possible I would leave the PSU as it currently stands. The intakes would be at the back of the case via the heater core assembly and the 2 in the side panel of the case. The exhausts would be the PSU, the fan at the top of the case, and the two fans at the front of the case.

Intakes = 1 double 120mm assembly, 2 80mm
Exhausts = 1 PSU, 3 80mm fans


They should roughly balance leaving no pressure problems I *think*

Will see and report back on how it effects the temps in the case and for the CPU.

I reversed the airflow in my case

the back 120mm blows in, and there's a 120mm on the top blowing out

Excellent!

Since I have had to do some .....interesting modding since taking up WCing I think I am also going to break out the old Beige monster and see what I can do with it. I have more experience and tools now with modding so I doubt it should be too difficult. The nice part being it was destined for the trash dump fairly soon anyway so even if I really bugger it up its no great problem. Its a rather large old full tower with loads of space.

I really like my Chenming but for some of the things I would like to do like NB and vid card cooling I would like a bit more space.

Thanks for the help and suggestions all!

I found better case AND cpu temps when reversing the flow of my front bezel fans.

Two 120s in the top (intake).
Two 80s in the front (exhaust).
One 80 in the rear (exhaust).
One 120 (PSU with its own intake and exhaust fans) (Exhaust)

The only downside, is any beverage placed infront of my pc will warm up more quickly than normal.

Giblet Plus! said:

I reversed the airflow in my case

the back 120mm blows in, and there's a 120mm on the top blowing out

Click to expand...

where do the fans separate from the heatercore? between the fan and shroud, or between the shroud and heatercore?

Guderian said:

The only downside, is any beverage placed infront of my pc will warm up more quickly than normal.

Click to expand...

Lol, used to have one of those old CD roms that I turned into a drink holder. I guess that nice lil mod will be out then