Advice on Air flow & Case cooling

Hi Guys ... first ime poster so go easy

I have a Jeantech Luna Case with a mad huge 12" side fan
a Zalman 9500 CPU on the Phenom
Stock coolers on the SLI cards and the PSU in the usual position at the top of the case.

CPU Core Temp is usually about 50 C under gaming load, 40 idle
Actually need to look at teh GPU temps tonight as I've not really bothered about them.

the problem is the exhaust on those cards is pushing Hot air INTO the drive bay area and not out the back of the PCI slots .. TOTAL design failure on the part of BFG !!

Now I'm no genius with a hacksaw but I need to sort something out here, while still keeping it .. Quiet, Cool and in a low budget .. spent £600 this week on most of the components.


any help appreciated

OCD

is the 12" side fan blowing air in or air out? You could arrange it to blow out, then leave a few of the pci slots on the back of the PC open to allow for cool air to come in to the case near the vid cards. that 12" fan should be enough exhaust.

The other option is the same thing but with the fan blowing in, onto the mobo to help cool things like the ram, nb, and sb. Again leaving a few PCI slots open on the rear of the case to allow air to be forced out of the case near the vid cards.

It's blowing IN at present .. I've got some piccies actually

they may not show too well tho





It's not worrying me too badly but I want to make the GFX cards last as long as possible without burning them out .. and reduce the amount of heat that is rising up onto the CPU / RAM

I dont think its dumping heat backwards towards the drives, just into the case in general. The only thing I would do on that case is get some higher flow fans on the top/rear ports to help exhuast the warmer air inside the case.

Try it on exhaust and see what happens to your temps.

cheers, I'll try this at home tonight ...

on a similar note, what temp SHOULD my CPU be at for load /idle ? i'm seeing approx 39-52 deg C.

OCD

Depends on your ambient temps. But that sounds about right for that mediocre, but better than stock, cooler you have.

turned it inside out ... and to be honest ... I think I felt more draft pushed out when it was the other way round .. so .. 12" fan looks pretty with blue LED's .. in reality .. as much use as chocolate fireguard.

judge by the temps not by what you "feel"