fans in or out?

Wrend · 20 Jul 2013

For best cooling in general for air cooled computers with internal case heat sinks, you want the most amount of air moving through the computer. This means a well balanced intake and exhaust setup with a good general airflow direction. Generally I prefer top and rear exhaust and front and side intake.

If your case is more than cool enough, then you can have a reduced airflow to help prevent excess dust moving through and settling in the case.

In my case, most of my fans are 4-pin PWM fans which are speed controlled on custom curves I've setup based on CPU temps. My video card exhaust fans are speed controlled based on the GPU temps. My top 200mm exhaust fan isn't though, and it just has a resistance based three position switch. I usually have it set to "low" or "medium." Currently it's set to medium.

My computer is OCed and dynamically fully loaded and crunching for scientific research on the CPU and GPUs nearly 24/7.

Britton30 · 20 Jul 2013

Wrend what does this mean in your specs?
CPU Intel i7-3930K @ 1.2GHz to 4.6GHz (Dynamic)

kbrady1979 · 20 Jul 2013

I'm guessing it throttles down to 1200MHz when not under load and goes up to an OC'd speed of 4.6GHz when needed.

Britton30 · 20 Jul 2013

I think mine does that, but 1.6-4.4GHz.

Dude · 20 Jul 2013

Britton30 said:

I think mine does that, but 1.6-4.4GHz.

That's because you have a flux capacitor in your rig

Britton30 · 20 Jul 2013

Mr. Fusion generator too ya know.

kbrady1979 · 20 Jul 2013

Mine also goes from 1600MHz to 4.5GHz depending on CPU load.

DocBrown · 20 Jul 2013

My fans go both ways

Dude · 20 Jul 2013

Mine also goes 1.6 to my setting, so I wonder why the 1.2 for Wrend?

Wrend · 27 Jul 2013

Sorry for the late response. Yes, it clocks (and voltages) up or down based on load. 1.2GHz (1V) is just the default "idle" rate for me. I assume this is normal for my CPU (not sure though). I primarily use the Asus AI Suite II software to OC my CPU from within Windows.