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rad in or out of case

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creepy

Member
Joined
Feb 15, 2003
Location
tn
I have been deciding weather I should keep my rad on the inside or outside of my case. Has anyone tried both and gotten a big improvement. Reason im trying to decide this is because my water temps are crap.
 
Measure temps inside and outside of your case. On my new case I've been trying to match temps w/ the rad inside and outside. Closest I've gotten so far is a 2c difference but as most things go with watercooling YMMV ;)
 
well, its the same for me. when my rad was outside, had only one 120mm fan pushing air, and considering its pretty cold here right now, i got very good temps. right now my rad is inside my case with 2 120mm fans push/pull config, I still got the same temps, except now my Case temp is up by a degree or two.
 
well in a theoretically having the radiator outside will get you lower temps because you'll need more tubing, which decreasing your water flow. With the radiator inside your case, the idea is to get fresh air from outside your case. In many cases, the radiator or fan is not completly sealed to take air from only the outside of the case, and this will result in air already inside the case, which which is more like to be warmer then outside air, to flow through the radiator.
So in essences, if you can completly seal up your rad/fan and get outside air through only, you'll get better temps.
 
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