Can someone explain to me why the instructions for my CPU cooler tell me to set the fan up like this?
Is that not just completely against the airflow? Shouldn't it be the other way around?
Sorry, I don't know much about computers.
It blows air into the heatsink, towards the rear exhaust. I see no problem with airflow.
>>51572718
The fan pulls air through the heatsink to displace hot air, the hot air is then expelled from the case via the exhaust fan right behind it.
>>51572801
>>51572818
But why would you not put it so it pushes the air upwards, in the direction hot air rises?
The case supports that configuration too.
>>51572801
>>51572818
So it's supposed to be intake?
Maybe they fucked up their instructions then because the way it shows is definitely exhaust.
>>51572895
Not all cases do. And wide enough sinks could easily block all the RAM slots that way.
>>51572895
Heat from GPU rises up, CPU fan sucks up that warm air and exhausts it through the CPU heatsink.
Besides, would it even fit? Would most likely be couple of millimeters away from the GPU backplate.
![350x700px-LL-96008a5b_fan[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/TuaR9eo.jpg "350x700px-LL-96008a5b_fan[1].jpg")
>>51572914
no, it's an exhaust. the fan pushes air towards the frame
>>51572937
if you don't use a blower style GPU, the heat will spread throughout the case regardless
>>51572895
because you are trying to channel the cold air coming from the front intakes, that way you create aiflow. Hot air rises true, but in a small enclosure with fans moving all the air, that becomes negligible.
>>51572895
Even if you're using a case with the motherboard rotated 90ยบ, the fan/cooler should always be positioned the same way on the motherboard regardless, with the fans above the RAM slots.
The top exhaust grill on most cases is usually reserved for radiators in case you're using a water loop.
>>51572948
Ah ok, thanks. I've got all my fans in the wrong way round then.
>>51572914
>So it's supposed to be intake?
no, the cpu cooler is supposed to blow air from the case directly to the exhaust fan (either on the back side of the case, or towards the top, but usually to the back of the case)
if the fans don't have an arrow showing which direction air flows, either use the face with the sticker for direction (blows towards sticker, not always) or take it out of the case and see which side has more suction with a piece of paper or something
>>51572895
airflow should be pic related
>But why would you not put it so it pushes the air upwards, in the direction hot air rises?
not every case has exhaust ports on the top, and the fact heat rises is almost irrelevant in a case with fans as the heat is going to go with the airflow 95% of the time
the issue with blowing the air from the cpu directly up is that it's going to suck even more hot air from the generally hot devices in the pci slots through the cpu cooler, where if the fans are vertical instead of horizontal it's going to grab more of the air from the generally cooler parts of the case i.e., towards the harddrives, optical drives, etc
I have my cpu heatsink mounted like pic related, and while the single 140mm top mounted fan gets pretty hot, the bulk of the heat is towards the rear (no surprises really), intake matters a lot more than exhaust so long as you have one or two exhausts
