which direction should the fan flow?

okay on my heatsink for my CPU right now the fan is blowing down onto it ... would it make any difference having the fan sucking air out of it? ... or would that cause a rise in the temp?

i am working on getting my temps down ... but am having to wait till fedex can find my house to get some more fans...

running 55c CPU under a load (hitting a max of 57 on rare occasions) .. and a consistant case temp of 37 - 39.

right now i have 1 intake fan on the side of the computer and one exhaust fan near the cpu ... and then the fan on the heatsink ...

i have on order more fans to increase the airflow within the case ... 2 80's for exhaust and 2 80's for intake ...

my current fan on the heatsink flows 32 cfm @ 2500 rpm... should i get one that has a higher cfm?

I would go to a higher cfm on the hs. As far as which way the fan blows goes, most are designed to blow in on the hs like you have it now. I have however seen people saw that they get better results with it sucking the air out of the hs. Im sure your cooling woes will settle down a bit when you get the new fans in the case.
BTW what case do you have?

i might go ahead and turn it around just to see if i get a benefit ... right now my case is a generic atx mid tower case that is partially stripped down ... (IE doesnt have the restrictive plastic front peice on it) ...

using it till i either find a better case that i am happy with or i decide to pull out the fiberglass and custom make a front peice that i like ...

Now that I think about it, Im guessing that it will be worse since you dont have any cool air in the case to begin with.

Definitely get a higher cfm fan on your heatsink. The smartfan II is a great fan for high, or low noise level.

would This fan be a decent choice? .. it flows much more then the current one .. and can be setup to adjust on it's own if i wanted to ... not to bad of a price...

A fan blowing onto the HS uses the fan's turbulance to produce the most efficient cooling with case air. However, sucking is better if you add a duct over the HS to blow the hot air out of the case. Sucking itself is less efficient, but the added benefit of immediate hot air removal more than compensates for the lower efficiency. With an exit duct you don't push hot air onto your mobo components and you don't need multiple fans to cool the case.

overXposure said:

would This fan be a decent choice? .. it flows much more then the current one .. and can be setup to adjust on it's own if i wanted to ... not to bad of a price...

Click to expand...

That is the same fan I am using on my SP97 and it works just fine.

Huh, I don't think that I've ever seen that fan before. I think that it would do what you want though, it pushes out a good amount of air.

To continue on the sucking/blowing subject, you could get the TT ducting mod (I'm sorry alt. modding, I've suggested buying a duct :shudder: ) anyway, get the TT duct( or mod your own out of cardboard, plexi, or anything else) and mount it so that your fan ( which is sucking at this point) is pointing towards your rear exhausts... you'll probably see a good temp drop in a setup like that, where the heat is pumped immediately out of the case.( not that setup specifically, but using that general principle.) You could use the blowing method and make a cool air duct by cutting a fan hole in your side panel or running dryer vent from a powerful front fan to your HSF, there's all kinds of mods that you can do to lower your temps. Good Luck

thanks for the suggestions ... going to order that fan and see how my temps are with it and the case fans .. if they are still a little to high then i will try out the ducting mods and see if they offer any added benefits for me ... my room is fairly cool (about 68f all year long .. cooler in winter) ...

Dubbin1 said:

That is the same fan I am using on my SP97 and it works just fine.

Click to expand...

Hey Dubbin1, I don't know if you are aware.........butt!!