How much does a shroud help

Currently I my settup includes:
Dtek Whitewater block
Danner Mag 3
Dtek Procore rad
120mm Smartfan


How its setup is I have the Pump in the Front of the Case the Rad on top of the case with the case roof getting sandwhiched between the fan and the Rad

Currently there is no shroud, the main reason i havent put one on is I was concerent it would stick up to much above the top of my case

How much performance would adding a Shroud help?

Roughly about 1 to 3c. After all only thing a shroud does it make it so all the air from the fan goes through the rad.

a shroud gets rid of the dead spot from the fan hub allowing more cooling space on the rad and makes the fans quieter. i consider a shroud a must.

For a single 120 core it is around a 35-40% increase in the heat dumping ability of the core. 40% may sound high but that is accurate -- when a fan is mounted directly to a core, you lose cooling surface area in two ways:
1. The fins that are outside the coverage of the fan have basically no cooling as there is little to no airflow over them. A shroud will result in air being moved over all of the fin rows on the core.
2. All fans have a dead air spot under the center hub on the fan. Usually, the larger the fan, the larger the hub, hence, the larger the dead spot. A shroud sets the fan further off the face of the core and greatly minimizes the size of the hub's dead air zone.

Other than performance increases, moving the fan off the face of the core with a shroud will normally reduce air turbulance noise considerably.

shroud = more performance, less noise.

I don't know much about airflow but in my previous setup i went without a shroud. Last night i made a shoud of out cardboard and trying testing it out for noise. There was a tremendous decrease in noise when using the shroud. Tried it with a Sanyo Denki 120mm fan @ both 7V and 12V. I will never not use a shoud again just for that reason.

lowfat said:

I don't know much about airflow but in my previous setup i went without a shroud. Last night i made a shoud of out cardboard and trying testing it out for noise. There was a tremendous decrease in noise when using the shroud. Tried it with a Sanyo Denki 120mm fan @ both 7V and 12V. I will never not use a shoud again just for that reason.

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yep - the decrease in air noise is more than you would expect. Shrouded cores can be half as loud as ones used with the same fans bolted to the face of the core. I dunno how tall you made your shroud but around 1.5" of standoff is a good balance between performance and the amount of space it takes up inside the case. For the best overall performance and less noise, a shroud is a definite go.

With the procore (or chevette heatercore) a shroud is definitely worthwhile for all of the reasons mentioned. You can get nice looking pre-built shrouds that wouldn't hurt the aethetics of the computer while increasing the cooling potential.

gungeek said:

With the procore (or chevette heatercore) a shroud is definitely worthwhile for all of the reasons mentioned. You can get nice looking pre-built shrouds that wouldn't hurt the aethetics of the computer while increasing the cooling potential.

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or you can make a cardboard one, cover it in tape, and spray paint it blue like me.

lowfat said:

or you can make a cardboard one, cover it in tape, and spray paint it blue like me.

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My Chevette core is on its way from the US and should be here this week or next, I want pics! And a template would be good as well.
Thanks