The Big Air Cooling Investigation

Item: The Big Air Cooling Investigation
Author: Paul Goodhead

Written by Paul Goodhead

February 10, 2012 | 08:13

Tags: #air-cooling #case #case-fans #fan #investigation #temperatures

Companies: #bit-tech

Cooling with Four Fans

Firstly we should say that the benefits of adding a fourth fan are less cut and dried. We did again see a general trend towards lower temperatures but the differences here were smaller - only in the region of 2-3^oC. This reduction also wasn’t applied uniformly across all the setups as it was when stepping up from one to two, or two to three fans - it was mainly the poorer setups that benefited most from adding a fourth fan.

What this means is that if you look at the graph below you’ll see far less variation than in the previous four graphs. Essentially if you’ve got four fans strapped to your case then there is going to be enough air whistling through it to offer decent cooling no matter how you position them.

Rear, Roof (B), Side, Floor
Front (U), Front (L), Rear, Roof (B)
Front (U), Rear, Side, Floor
Front (U), Front (L), Rear, Side
Front (U), Front (L), Rear, Floor
Front (U), Rear, Roof (B), Floor
Front (U), Front (L), Roof (B), Side

- 45
- 48
- 20
- 45
- 50
- 21
- 46
- 46
- 19
- 47
- 48
- 20
- 47
- 50
- 21
- 47
- 49
- 23
- 48
- 48
- 21

0

10

20

30

40

50

°C, lower is better

CPU
GPU
Chipset

Four fans is also when the influence of the side panel fan begins to diminish; yes it was still used in the top performing layout, but it didn’t automatically put a setup to the top of the pile like it did when only using one or two other fans. Part of the reason for this is because, as we mentioned earlier, four fans is enough to drive a fair amount of air through a case. As a result there is far less of a need for the side panel fan to act as a bridge between the front intakes and the rear exhausts.

What this means is that the more traditional front to back cooling model with two front intakes and a rear and roof exhaust has chance to reassert itself, scoring some very respectable results. This is because now the front and rear fans can link up and complement each other as with two of them on either end they finally have the punch to interact - something that was lacking with fewer fans.

The Big Air Cooling Investigation Cooling with Four Fans

We couldn't find an interesting picture for this page so instead we're putting a picture of a fan here. It's red.

Another advantage to using four fans was chipset temperatures. With fewer fans the big items inside the case (the CPU cooler and the graphics card) tended to hoover up all the airflow. Four fans however seems to be the tipping point at which there becomes enough airflow through the case to ensure that the motherboard is cooled effectively, even without any fans (side or floor) pointed directly at it.