Conflicting Air Flow questions

[CalypsoArt]

I built a mATX machine a year ago with in a very tight Silverstone case and with an Asus Rampage III Gene mobo. 1366.

I replaced the stock intel cooler with a low profile Scythe Shuriken. At any rate, it never ran that cool. Recently the fan on the cooler began to make a lot of noise and I figured I might try replacing it to fix the noise and maybe get it to run cooler. I decided to replace it with a Zalman 8900.
Something I always wondered after the build was whether the fan on the PS was in conflict with the fan on the cooler (see diagram) Should not the airflow go in one direction? If so, how do I tell if the flow is indeed as diagrammed or not. And if it is, should I reverse the fan on the Zalman, and how would I do that?

 

[Theocnoob]

How far apart are the two fans? It shouldn't really be a major issue I don't think.

 

[CalypsoArt]

How far apart are the two fans? It shouldn't really be a major issue I don't think.

About 3/4-1" The Shuriken was a lot closer. I haven't closed up the case, but at idle with the Shuriken temps were 45°. With the new Zalman it's at 38° (i7 930 1366)

 

[awktane]

In my experience the power supply doesn't actually blow enough air on a tight build to make much of a difference. I had one build I had to get a new cpu cooler for because the two fans were blowing as yours are and it created an odd hum. I've only seen that once though.

 

[CalypsoArt]

So new problem. When the Shuriken fan began to go, at times on boot I'd get the "CPU fan error. Press F1 to continue." message. Eventually, I got it on every start up. I thought the new Zalman would fix that. It did not, at start up I get that error every time even though the fan is spinning. The ASUS Fan Expert shows the fan at 100%, but the BIOS has N/A for CPU & Power fans. Though is shows speed for case fans. Could the ASUS AI Suite II be affecting things?
Any thought to one of these to the left of the Zalman and below the PS. http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=123&area=en

Would another fan make a difference? There are already a total of 6 in this tiny case. CPU, HD, GPU, PS, and 2 case fans.

 

[doyll]

Try turning the fan over so it's pulling out of cooler.

I've found these coolers often perform better with fan reversed so it pulls air out of cooler.. have seen 5c cooler temps with fan pulling instead of pushing in open bench tests.

What happens with the fan pushing down is the hot air coming out of cooler turns when it hits the motherboard, turns again hitting the RAM, GPU, I/O connection housings, comes back up around the fan and fan sucks the this heated air back into cooler.

Turning the cooler fan over with the PSU intake directly above means cool air flows over motherboard under cooler, up through cooler, to fan, into PSU and exhausts out of case.

 

[Conumdrum]

Fan pinouts? PWM vs non PWM etc?

 

[CalypsoArt]

Try turning the fan over so it's pulling out of cooler.

I've found these coolers often perform better with fan reversed so it pulls air out of cooler.. have seen 5c cooler temps with fan pulling instead of pushing in open bench tests.

What happens with the fan pushing down is the hot air coming out of cooler turns when it hits the motherboard, turns again hitting the RAM, GPU, I/O connection housings, comes back up around the fan and fan sucks the this heated air back into cooler.

Turning the cooler fan over with the PSU intake directly above means cool air flows over motherboard under cooler, up through cooler, to fan, into PSU and exhausts out of case.

Kinda what I was thinking. However, I don't think it's possible with this cooler.

 

[doyll]

My bad.
Do you still have the Scythe? Assume it's the one with 100mm fan but I think you could put a 120mm fan on it.. which would pull a lot more air through it so would probably cool better than with stock 100mm fan. Could hold fan on with rubber bands.