Rear Exhaust Fan

Do I need one? With a 360 rad (intake) in front and a 240 (exhaust) up top, would it be necessary to have a rear exhaust fan? I'm looking for a way to mount my pump/res where I can see it and since I'm using rigid tubing in my build, I'd rather not try it and have it be a terrible idea. I figure I should be fine, but I was looking for someone who may have done this already.

"It depends".

The air will find its way out of your case one way or another. It'll follow the path of least resistance. A rear fan can be useful if you want to direct the air in a specific path as it goes through your case. It can help get air moving over the VRM MOSFETs for the CPU if all your inlet fans are the bottom, for instance.

It seems to me that the rear case fans simply take the place of the power supply in the ATX specification since most cases have moved the power supply to the bottom. There's supposed to be something in that top rear location pulling air out of the case according to the ATX spec. Whether you actually need it is up to you. Most setups work fine without it. As long as the air isn't completely stagnant anywhere in your case, you'll probably be fine.

Exactly, I'm considering doing the same since I need the reservoir over my water pump (which is integrated with the cpu block). I'm using a Glacer 240l all in one loop by Coolermaster (based on the Swiftech H220 but with a better pump and fans) and the reservoir is in the radiator, which is a headache to mount it the way you want, really limits you if you leave it like it came stock.

I was thinking of doing just that, have the rest mounted up top, in the rear fan port but you have to make sure you have some airflow over your ram and vrm (or watercool them heh).

Your board will benefit from vrm water cooling, for extra overclocking headroom and no throttling, since Piledriver and Bulldozer are pretty intense so to speak.

Depending on the case, I have the bottom, front and top filtered air as intake so it causes positive pressure out the unfiltered open 1 fan exhaust back otherwise i'd be pulling some air and dust from the back if I had my top as exhaust.

I didn't think it would be a big deal. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't some major problem I was missing.

Isn't VRM cooling not recommended? I was under the impression it created a lot of back-pressure on the loop?

bamato said:

Isn't VRM cooling not recommended? I was under the impression it created a lot of back-pressure on the loop?

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It's typically not needed. It doesn't take a lot of airflow over modern CPU VRMs to keep them happy on a modern board. Most of the higher end boards have nice heat sinks on them already.

bamato said:

I didn't think it would be a big deal. Just wanted to make sure there wasn't some major problem I was missing.

Isn't VRM cooling not recommended? I was under the impression it created a lot of back-pressure on the loop?

Click to expand...

As long as the air is passing through it should be fine. We say no to adding the VRMs to the loop since it won't make much of a difference as all it will add is alot of restriction to the loop. Some of those that do it do it for looks.

JeremyCT said:

It's typically not needed. It doesn't take a lot of airflow over modern CPU VRMs to keep them happy on a modern board. Most of the higher end boards have nice heat sinks on them already.

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GTXJackBauer said:

As long as the air is passing through it should be fine. We say no to adding the VRMs to the loop since it won't make much of a difference as all it will add is alot of restriction to the loop. Some of those that do it do it for looks.

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Yeah air is fine, but it's definitely a must on the am3+/FX platform, similar vein to Sandy-e hexa cores which really make board's vrms suffer.

I really don't see people liquid cooling VRM's much. I'd almost think with no large heat-sink over the VRM section for the CPU that more air would reach them.