I agree the baffle is useful, but it covers nearly half the fan on the TX-750. Considering the baffle is pressed directly on the fan, there is no way for the airflow created by that half of the fan to find its way to the open half, which makes me think they went a bit overboard.
So, I opened mine up and trimmed the baffle. Considering I bought this PSU from Wolf a couple years ago, I wasn't concerned about the warranty, as it was a review unit for JonnyGuru.
I ended up trimming a touch more than 2/3rds the baffle away, trying to make sure the open areas of the baffle lined up with heatsink placement within the unit.
So far so good, but I have no means to test my alteration scientifically. I have loaded it down best I could, running furmark on my two 4870's, and orthos on my OCed CPU. My total power draw is around 500 watts according to various online calculators, and that doesn't take into account the rather steep graphics card over clocks. Even still, I estimate it was at least a 400 watt load on the psu, and my voltage drop on the 12v rail tends to confirm this (idle 12.22, full load 12.03). These were taken from Hardware monitor, so there is bound to be some error. I have a multimeter, so if I ever get really curious I could take physical measurements.
Regardless, the main point of interest was the exhaust temps out the back of the unit. After about 30 minutes of loading, with the above described benchmarks, the exhaust temps were 37-38c (varied across the grill) in my 28c room. My room actually got hotter by about 4c after the test...testament to how much heat was dumping out of this thing; in fact I was sweating by the end of the test.
I never took temp readings inside the case, but it had to have been at least 32c, as that’s what they are right now sitting idle in a 26c room.
Temps were taken with a LT300 IR temp gun (with probe)...made by Sixth Sense. This is a very nice unit, and is rather accurate.
Hardly scientific, but at least this confirms I didn't ruin the unit. I doubt I improved anything much either. It would be an interesting experiment to see a PSU loaded up on a tester before and after baffle surgery. If anything, it would most likely reduce noise, as there would be less fan turbulence, though I can't test for this as the rest of my rig is too loud.
In the end, baffles are obviously needed or they wouldn't be there. I simply wanted to know if you could optimize a baffle. This is something I doubt most any mfg would do, as it would cost time and money...so intead they simply place a large piece of plastic over half the fan. I trimmed up the baffle to make open areas where airflow could directly contact a heat sink. I should have snapped some pics when I was doing this, but alas I never intended to talk about it on the net. I may do a more controlled experiment next time, as once again I was not intending to post my results on the net, simply testing my PSU to make sure it was safe to us.
