CPU Cooling

[RGraze]

This is probably a dumb no brainer question that I should know. Which way do I want the CPU fan to blow? Towards the chip or away from the chip. I just got my thermoengine in the mail but the delta fan was seperate. I am slowly recieving parts for my new system which should be up and running in a week so I might have more questions for you guys. Thanks.

Specs:
AMD Tbird 1.33/266
256 CL2 pc133 crucial ram
2 WD 40 gig 7200rpm drives
Creative Platinum 5.1 sound
Fong Kai Black 320 Tower
DVD Drive
couple of big fans 1 in front 1 in back
GeForce 3 video card
am I missing anything?

[RGraze]

Oh yah, an ASUS A7V133 MBoard

[Hellmund]

Depends how air flows in your case. If there's good ventilation near the fan then blow cold air on the HS. If there's isn't then pull hot-air from around the HS. That's what I think anyway.

[Tron]

On my old CPU(amdk6-2_550) i was using
2x little Papst coolers on a big HS,
one blowing air in and one sucking air out!
make shure you put some paper
with a little gap in the middle
of the coolers= O/O
so the air is not
going in and rigth out again!
experiment with it

[Tron]

P.S.: do you like Creative?
I had the sb live but sold it

>---------\w/olF<<---------<

[RGraze]

Thanks for the info. The heatsink does come with a shroud around the top of it. Yes I do like SB.

[Bovon]

To answer the original question, in order to use a cpu heat sink fan reversed to suck air over the fins, you will need a shroud covering about 1/2 to 2/3rds of the fins. If this is not done, the airflow will come in from the very top, and never cool the sink near the base...where the heat is.

This has been experimented with by several ppl, an there are HSFs made with a shroud for this purpose. The general reviews do not indicate much if any improvement one way or the other.

[Fingers]

Heatsink fans generally blow toward the heatsink. Unless it has a shroud that prevents the air from simply entering the heatsink near the top (directly under the fan) and then exhausting through the fan, I wouldn't install it to "suck" the air off of the heatsink.

Here's a quote taken from a review (http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/cooling/themosonic/v604210/) of the ThermoEngine at [H]ard/OCP The fan blows down directly towards the CPU

[Fingers]

hehe Bovon, looks like we were thinking the same thing... at the same time. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif