How to optimize your case airflow!

I've talked about fans recently most recently those really cheap antec fans that were am I say cheap I don't mean like build quality although they were kind of cheapish five fans for 20 bucks and I told you guys you need to put them in your case and fill in as many fan slots as possible and I also said in that video they need to start talking about airflow optimization which is something I don't think I've talked about since like 2015 or 2014 something like that so that's what we're gonna do today [Music] get amazing prices on the brands you love at micro center micro center has over 30 000 items in stock including desktops laptops computer components monitors TVs and more not sure which parts to choose for your next build then use microcenter's custom PC Builder to find compatible parts create your parts list add them to your cart and use same-day pickup at one of Micro Center's 25 locations nationwide and if you're not comfortable building it one of Micro Center's professional Builders can build it for you as fast the same day for a fee and if you need ideas for a build then head to Micro Center's build showcase for great build inspiration or submit your build for others to see to see everything that Micro Center has to offer click the link in the description below there shouldn't be very long video since uh it's a fairly simple topic but it's one that I get people all the time that will email me little hand-drawn diagrams of like where they're putting the fans and the direction they're blowing and asking me will that work and in most instances just about any fan configuration is going to work I I would I'd rather have a poorly optimized fan configuration than no fans at all because any sort of air movement whether efficient or inefficient is still better than no air movement at all especially when it comes to cooling your stuff so I'm going to use this case right here and I need to take the side panel off which I should have done before the start of this video to kind of demonstrate the idea of not just positive pressure negative pressure and neutral pressure which is a lot harder to achieve these days than you might think just because of the amount of ventilation that's built into different cases and stuff now but about how you can optimize positive negative and neutral if your fan layout doesn't necessarily support it so what do I mean by that first positive pressure positive pressure means we have more air pressure inside the case than we have outside of it so what's going to happen is as the air is moving in it's going to escape through every cracking crevice that it can that that means is the fans are moving the air out of the chassis are not moving the air as fast as it's entering now when we say move the air referring to cubic foot per minute kind of funny people don't like feet they're like meters but apparently the official fan measurement is cubic foot per minute let that one sink in world we can you guys can write me your hate mail to Nick jsonsense.com it's Nic jcsense.com anyway moving forward you can optimize your airflow in a couple of different ways ideally equal exchange of air pressure air in air out is good because what's going to happen is that means your fans are actually directing the air that you want them to go so like we talked about positive pressure means that the fans that are bringing air in which are referred to as intake fans the exhaust fans and I'm I'm highlighting the word exhaust and we're writing it across the screen exhaust because the amount of people I get writing me saying how many outtake fans should I have it's not an outtake it's an exhaust but the exhaust fans are obviously responsible for moving the air out of the chassis but if you have more air coming in then you have airflow for exhaust CFM as I already were on a side rant about then you get what's called positive pressure so where'd that extra air go well it's gonna go anywhere there's extra places for it to escape so in this case you can see our little i o covers here are ventilated not a lot but ventilation some air will escape out there um if you don't have all the fans say in the top of your case occupied so you can see in the top here we have a full vent on top but if we only had say one exhaust fan on the top anywhere that there's not a fan or just a gap is also a place where air will escape that's not necessarily a bad thing because of the fact that positive pressure means you know you're bringing in more air than the case can get rid of in a certain amount of time so you know you fully like just crammed as much air in your system as you can now for optimized cooling you want to be able to exchange the air as fast as possible which means however whatever the volume is of your case you want to take that full volume of air and replace it with cool air as fast as possible if your fans are moving extra slow whether it's positive pressure negative pressure neutral pressure if they're moving extra slow the air that's in here has time to heat up as the air heats up your components will heat up with it in a one-to-one ratio so one C of ambient and ambient in this case being what is the air outside of the component so outside of the CPU outside the GPU outside of the cooler if it comes up one degree inside this case your components and their cooling capacity will also increase 1C it's a one-to-one ratio it's kind of neat how that works out so we want to be able to exchange that air as quick as possible now when we talk about airflow optimization realistically if we were able to hook like two leaf blowers up to this that didn't blow warm air because they're compressed air that would be the best because of the fact that you'd have a huge exchange of air the problem is it would also be the noisiest so you're gonna have to balance based on your noise taste as well that's why more often than not having as many fans in your system but turning at a slower speed will reduce noise but keep the airflow volume or the CFM or the exchange of air rate higher than if they were running less fans at a higher RPM or even the same what is neutral neutral is in between first and second of Escape so neutral is when the air that's coming in is entering the system at the same rate the air is able to be exhausted what you get with neutral usually is uh that's kind of the preferred method either positive or neutral now negative pressure is the opposite of positive pressure and that's not just a polarity joke if you have less air entering the case then you have fans removing or exhausting air from the case the air has to still be brought in somewhere those fans can't just say well we're not going to pull air from anywhere I guess we don't have enough to exhaust you would then create a vacuum and that's not going to happen so what we're going to end up doing here is pulling air in through all those same cracks and crevices at which positive pressure would have pushed the air out negative pressure will pull the air in because it is a slight vacuum that's the only way it can pull air in what you're also going to pull in with that is dust unless your chassis has a filter over every single gap which isn't the case you're gonna find a higher dust buildup with negative pressure in your case than positive not only that depending on where those gaps are negative pressure could lead to overall higher temperatures in your volume the Delta is going to be depending on many many factors how big is the case how many fans are in the case how negative is it how big are the gaps that are in there where is that negative error entering and exiting again here's an example you can see this fan right here does not cover all of these gaps so we have this honeycomb Grille down here which means this fan ideally actually right now it says an intake fan I don't remember how or when we did that but it said it's an intake fan so if it was an exhaust we could potentially be blowing air out pulling it right back in through this vent on below it and just having the air circulate in a circle like this now if the air is doing this right if it's just sitting there going out and back in like this in a circle that air is not touching any of the components so that means it's not benefiting you at all all it's doing is uh supplying air from wherever it can get it because of physics some other things to note when it comes to airflow optimization this chassis as you can see can fit two fans on top either two 120s or two 140s and it can fit a 120 on the back now that's three fans so let's say we put two 140s on the top and this 120 on the back well we've got two 140 intakes now just looking at the fan sizes alone that would mean that potentially this could be a negative pressure setup now even though we do have ventilation on the front we have no ventilation or not ventilation but mesh on the front we do have mesh which is going to slow down the airflow because it's got to overcome the pressure of going and the the pressure drop of going through all these tiny holes and this is why mesh size has been such a discussion point over the last few years when it comes to case design you take this off the top now you have a lot more airflow versus the giant slats and you do this micro fit or this micro mesh leading to a negative uh pressure situation just because you have more fans and more open airflow people often forget about RPM RPM is the true way to balance your airflow in your system not just the number of fans so we know that 140 millimeter fans move more volume of air their their higher CFM fan RPM per RPM with a 120 just because it's a bigger blade which means a bigger surface area to be able to move the air but we also know about 140s is the fact that they are lesser pressure optimized so what you can do in a situation like this take your fans get fan Splitters if you need them or if you're running any sort of fan that has a controller like lean Lee fans NZXT fans Corsair fans and start playing with the volume optimization through RPM you would want your intake fans running at a higher RPM than your exhaust fans if they're having to overcome all of this mesh and stuff and there's less of them or even the same amount that you have exhaust fans because your exhaust fans are pulling air from this open area inside the chassis the intake fans are always going to be under the most resistance some cases are just poorly optimized with airflow at all when it comes to the front of the case solid tempered glass front panels have become a thing with small gaps around them to pull area and if you think about all the directional changes the air has to make it slows down the flow rate you've got the micro mesh like stuff like this which you you blow on it you can barely feel any air going through it my lungs can push a lot more pressure than any of these fans can so you're gonna have to start playing around with the optimization of your airflow based solely on RPM now Jay how how can I do that how do I optimize it well there's a couple of ways that I've showed in the past that you can do this some folks like it some folks don't it can get messy it won't hurt anything with your system if you don't do this a lot but nothing will hurt using a stick of incense you can get it off of Amazon super super cheap a couple of bucks you burn it you hold it in front of your case and you'll see the air enter okay at that point you're seeing the air go in you know you're good sticking inside your case at that point doesn't do anything it doesn't matter the air is going to go where it's going to go what I start to do by checking which optimization I currently have with my fan airflow and I'll even show like an eight-year-old video clip here I start holding it around all the gaps I would hold it right here in the rear where I've got this ventilation if I put my incense stick in front of it and I see it pushing out then I know I have positive pressure if I see it pulling it in I know I have negative pressure if I see it just coming up normally like normal convection then I'll know I've got neutral pressure neutral is ideal slightly positive is best in my opinion but I would start going all over the case if I go underneath like if I hold it in front and I see it going up in there and the system isn't on that tells me we'd probably have negative and the reason why I say a system isn't on because the power supply fan facing the bottom would pull air in through there so that's something to keep in mind but I would have the case all sealed up by the way when I'm doing that side panel has to be on for obvious reasons this case right here would create no pressure it would just be straight up neutral at that point because of the fact that this air is just gonna go wherever this air is going to pull from there so incense is a cheap easy way one to make room smell nice for a little while and two there's not nearly enough of that burning fuel to get gunked up on your fans or making things sticky um just ask anyone that is like a habitual Vapor vaping in front of their system how often they replace their fans because believe it or not that Vape juice in the vapor alone will destroy fans pretty quickly but I just want to make this video kind of talking about airflow because of the fact that I I see a lot of discussions taking place whenever we talk about fans but people never talk about RPM RPM is King you can use RPM to overcome any of the issues that you have with your chassis maybe not being as airflow optimized so intake fan should be running as fast as you can audibly stand or come up with ramps fan curves obviously so that when they're idle they don't have to do much would you start putting the system under load they increase the air volume coming in then what you do is after you've set your intake fans where you want them that is where you start adjusting the RPM of your exhaust fans to whereas you're using your incense you can take it to some of these vents right here that have no fans in front of them and find them slightly pushed out so the smoke is barely moving away from it but still climbing through convection any airflow even the smallest amount of airflow overcomes convection convection is a very weak Force so if you have even the slightest amount of negative pressure in your case the smoke will go into the vent positive pressure a lot of positive pressure it'll blow out violently from that vent if the Smoke's going in you gotta you gotta turn up your intake RPM or slow down your exhaust RPM if it's blowing out hard slow down your intakes until it stops and leave your exhaust where they are just slow down your intake unless the exhaust aren't running at all or they're running really low RPM slow down your intake until it starts to become a bit more neutral something we haven't talked about in a while um but definitely Food For Thought now the same thing holds true if your chassis is one of those Lee and Lee vertical o11 Dynamic types where the intakes are on the bottom you're just gonna have an updraft type of airflow so it's going to pull into the bottom go up and exhaust out the top so it's the same exact principles that apply just it's just turned that's the only difference all right guys been a while since we've done a video like this I'm gonna go back to these kinds of topics I feel like they help a lot of people it's free stuff you can do with your system unless you have to add more case fans but there's lots of things you could probably do to optimize your overall performance that you may not even realize is unoptimized until you start playing around like this so I recommend get a stick of incense burn it responsibly be safe with it don't just go waving it around your house and give it to like your two-year-old brother to go start like dancing on furniture in your curtains with it that's bad don't do that um make room smell nice get your case full optimized you might even see some component temperature drop in the process alright guys thanks for watching any more topics like this you'd like to see make sure you comment down below or email me at jcsensei.com tweet me at Twitter jasonsense or heck you can even Tick Tock me at jcsense official alright guys we'll see in the next one [Music]

Channel: JayzTwoCents

Views: 655,586

Keywords: airflow, case flow, case fan, how to setup fans, how to setup case fans, how to, pc, gaming, pcmr, pc gaming

Id: Ba6w3QdnWBw

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2023