When you have temperature problems in your PC, it is because something is not working as it should, or simply because you have not optimized the airflow of your case fans to maximize their performance . In this article we are going to give you a series of tips and recommendations to design the perfect air flow inside your PC, so that you can optimize the temperature to the maximum.
We always insist on the importance of choosing a suitable case for your PC, since the air flow depends largely on it and with it the temperature of the components. No matter how good the heatsink you have put on your CPU is, you would be surprised how bad it can work if the case and its airflow do not collaborate in the extraction of heat, so we are going to review a series of considerations that you should have consider.
If you don’t design the airflow, you will never have the best performance
It is quite possible that, if your PC has a box with the fans that came standard, you already have a level of thermal performance with which you are satisfied. However, you should know that although many boxes do not really need a redesign of the internal flow because it is already quite decent with what they come standard, you cannot aspire to have the maximum performance if you do not design it yourself.
This is so because the manufacturer cannot know what hardware you are going to put inside the box, in what arrangement or if there will be cables or other components interfering with the flow during assembly. For this reason, you can have a good thermal performance but it is hardly the best possible, so what you should know is that if you design it yourself you can gain several integers in temperature, which in turn will mean a better overall performance of the equipment and a lower sound level, in addition to extending the useful life of all your hardware.
In short, if you are an average user who has bought a good case for the PC, the airflow is generally not something you should worry about, but if you are an enthusiast (or a maniac of silence) who wants to squeeze the most The possibilities of the PC, as you will see below, in carrying out this preliminary task is something that is worth it and very much worth it.
How to design the best airflow for your PC
When designing the internal cash flow you must take into account several factors:
- The hot air tends to rise, so it is always better that the fans that draw the hot air out of the box should be located in high positions, while those that bring in fresh air from the outside in should be in lower positions.
- You must take special care when mounting and channeling the cables of the box so that there are no components or cables in between blocking the passage of air.
- To design adequate airflow, fans with more airflow (and possibly directed) perform better than those with higher static pressure.
Every hardware fan knows, even more or less, that the ideal when designing the airflow is that the front fans (and even lower ones if there are any) should bring fresh air to the interior of the case, while those that They are installed at the rear and on the roof of the box, they are the ones that must take the hot air out. You can see this represented in the image above.
However, there is a detail that allows you to spin very fine to maximize performance; In many boxes, especially in the high-end ones, it is allowed to modify the height at which the rear fan is screwed, and some of you may wonder, what is this for? Most users will perfectly align this fan with the CPU heatsink (if air) fan, and while this isn’t all bad, it doesn’t actually give the best performance.
Take into account what we have said before: “hot air tends to rise”, and for this reason the ideal is that the rear fan is a little above the heatsink fan (depending on the distance, between 1 and 2 centimeters) because in this way the hot air that the heatsink expels and that tends to rise fits perfectly with the frame of the rear fan. As we have said before, this is fine spinning, but in the end it all adds up to obtain the maximum performance, right?
In the image above it can be seen clearly represented, albeit a bit exaggerated since the rear fan is 120mm and the last heatsink fan is 140mm, so they will never match. However, it can be seen that the rear fan is around 1cm above the heatsink fan (as the distance between the two is quite close) to maximize the extraction of hot air.
The same happens with the alignment between the front fans and the heatsink fan: in the image above you can see that the upper front fan is lower than the heatsink fan, and this is ideal since the air will rise, cooling the components you have in between and will go directly to the heatsink fan, thus maximizing its efficiency since the air that enters it is fresh.
In the same way, the lower front fan is positioned so that its air flow reaches the lower area of the graphics card, which is precisely where it has the fans that cool its components, so again the situation is ideal. .
What is not ideal in this reference image that we have put is that top fan blowing air, as it will literally hinder the flow created by all the others, making the air go only in one direction (front to back), and although In fact, its operation is not going to alter the overall performance of the box too much, as we have said before here, what we are looking for is to squeeze the maximum cooling potential.
How much difference is there between designing it conscientiously or not?
As we have told you before, there really is not much difference, but between a “good” box with the series fans and the same box but with fans selected to have a good air flow and that it is directed and with the design studied so that is maximized we can obtain a difference of up to 2-3 ºC in the CPU and up to 5ºC in the graphics card, which is not a small thing to tell the truth.
Now, if we compare the same hardware in a case of doubtful quality and poorly ventilated and a good case with well-designed airflow, we can have abysmal temperature differences (of up to 10ºC in the CPU, for example), and especially if you are using a liquid cooling heatsink since, oddly enough, these are more dependent on the internal air flow of the case than air heatsinks.
