Is this good airflow to combat heat coming from video card?

[Stealth3si]

Do you think my case has good airflow to combat the heat that is dumped back into the case from the 560 Ti 448 Twin Frozr III?

I believe I do but it would be nice to have a second or third knowledgeable opinion because I just want to be sure. I don't know much about the physics of airflow dynamics, etc.

[Nelson37]

I have run this experiment many, many times.

First, get TWO temp monitoring programs. If they agree on all readings, then you only need one. If they don't agree, then you need to
figure out which one is most correct.

Second, run the box and induce a predictable load. I usually use a benchmark prog or the Hyperspace screen saver. No human activity,
run the prog and watch the temps.

Next, make SINGLE changes to the box and repeat the test. Airflow patterns inside a sealed box with multiple fans are a tricky thing.
I have REMOVED fans and PLUGGED holes and gotten LOWER temps. For instance, the open slot covers near the power supply are
most likely allowing the PS fan to pull cool air into the PS, which then exhausts it outside the case. OK for cooling the PS, but does little
or nothing to remove hot case air. Plug those holes, and hot case air is now blown outside.

IMO you currently may have TOO MANY fans. Each draws current and heats up the power supply. The upper exhaust fan may not be
necessary and I absolutely detest holes in the top of my case. It may be actually Slowing the airflow from the three 120mm's on the
CPU path. Consider having the fan on the hard drives blow OUT rather than in. Try putting some old CPU heat sinks on top of the drives.

Very light foam air filters can do wonders for dust build-up, which will seriously affect cooling over time. They must be easily accessible to
be removed, washed, and dried.

[Nelson37]

Move the hard drives further apart.

Remove the 80mm fans altogether.

Take the middle 120mm off the CPU heatsink.

Mount that fan, or the top 140, in the 5.25" drive bays behind mesh covers. Use a sheet of thin plastic or paper rolled into a large tube to
direct the cool air to a few inches short of the CPU intake fan, so as to also cool the memory.

Try completely blocking the upper vent.

The PS exhaust fan will be fighting the intakes on your video card. A two-fan, inline PS might be better.

[aedipuss]

nuts! may as well buy an ac and point it in the open side.

i prefer a case with the p.s. on the bottom with a cutout on the bottom. you mount the p.s. upside down and it draws it's own cool air in from outside and exhausts it out the back.

[hello_hello]

I'm no expert on PC cooling but I do wonder how necessary it is to have a hurricane running around the inside of a PC to keep it cool.

I have two Antec 80mm tri-cool fans in the front of the case blowing air in over the four hard drives, and another two in the rear sucking it out. None of them run very fast and they don't move a lot of air but the PC is very quiet. Air coming in at the front then exiting out the back seems to be reasonably efficient. My case has no side or top fan cutouts. Even the front fans aren't directly exposed to outside air.

Admittedly I'm not a gamer so I only run a fairly basic video card and the CPU isn't heavily overclocked (I was running two video cards for quite a while though), but if you find the card needs some additional assistance staying cool, maybe a PCI slot cooler helping it out might work more efficiently. Something which helps air flow through the case, rather than just moving it around.
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_2821.html
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3127373&CatId=804
Or maybe try removing the bracket thingy from an unused PCI slot next to the video card. You might find the existing fans will draw in enough air past the video card to keep it nice and cool. That's how some video cards with passive "heat pipe" type cooling work anyway. They rely on case fans or natural convection to draw cool air in past a heatsink.

I agree.... starting with a minimum of fans at a moderate speed is the way to go. I use SpeedFan to monitor/control fan speed as well as temperature. The motherboard will probably do the same for CPU or case fans. There's probably no need for massive airflow until things actually start to get hot. Before then, quiet is good. And I think sometimes when it comes to airflow once you achieve a certain amount, further increases offer fairly diminishing returns. For example a small CPU heatsink will cool a CPU up to a point, but eventually all the air flow in the world won't be enough. At some point more heat sink and less air removes the heat more efficiently.

[hello_hello]

i prefer a case with the p.s. on the bottom with a cutout on the bottom. you mount the p.s. upside down and it draws it's own cool air in from outside and exhausts it out the back.

I wondered something similar when I first saw the pic..... "isn't the PSU upside down"?

I'm still using old school cases with PSU's at the top (not sure I've seen a real need to put them on the bottom, although I understand the logic behind it), so I thought maybe I'd just been imagining they usually mount with the fan at the bottom.

Allowing the PSU to draw in and exhaust it's own air independently to the rest of the case would possibly also help stop it from getting into an airflow disagreements with other fans. I'm not sure drawing air out in multiple directions is the best idea, plus it'll also be fighting natural convection in order to draw air out down at the bottom of the case.

Are cases with PSU's which mount that way very common?

[redwudz]

The PS would be mounted 'upside down' when it's on the bottom of the case. But the large fan at the top of it in the photo is the intake. The exhaust would be to the left. If it were to be drawing
external air, it would normally be turned over with the intake on the bottom.

There are a few PC cases that use external intakes and exhausts for the power supply. They don't seem to have much affect on case cooling one way or the other.
Newer PS's are very efficient and run very cool. (Or should, unless there's a problem.) Using one for a exhaust fan isn't very efficient and will just increase the internal temps of the PS.

I would eliminate the case side fan and plug that hole. From your photo, it looks to mainly be blowing dust, lint and unfiltered air into your PC. If that junk plugs your heatsinks, more fans won't help.

The system I commonly use is two 120mm front intake fans with a filter on them. Then one of two 120mm exhausts. I plug all other case holes as they mostly just cause complications with air flow.
Easy test: Take a piece of paper and with the PC running, hold it against one of the holes in the case. If the paper sucks into the hole, you have unfiltered air coming in, usually from the wrong place.
If it blows out, then you have air leaking out and probably not picking up any internal heat.

Best practices are to use enough fans to pressure the case, then enough exhaust fans to vacuum out the air. That will get you faster airflow velocity and that should carry heat away quickly.

The top fan may work fine, but I would try turning off the rear exhaust fan and temporarily plugging it and see if the temps improve. You could do the same with the top fan. For checking exhaust temps, your hand works well enough. I use a infrared temperature meter that works well.

I only have one PC that has a proper setup for air cooling. The front intake fans are in line with the CPU fans and those are in line with the rear exhaust fans. Works well enough.
But over the years, I've seen quite a few different setups. Even with optimizing airflow, some cases and CPU/cooler combinations just aren't efficient and can run hot.
My newest PC uses water cooling (Corsair H-50) and runs very much cooler than any of my air cooled PCs.

Your title referred to heat from a video card. GPUs seem to be the biggest heat producers in newer PCs. Apparently no one has been able to design a high performance GPU that runs cool.
What I had to do with a couple of my GPUs was to mount a 80mm fan to blow directly on to the GPU. Normal case cooling doesn't to be designed to deal with GPU heat. And far too many GPUs mount their heatsink and fan on the bottom of the card, making it very difficult to get rid of heat. (Heat rises. Why put a cooler on the bottom?

[aedipuss]

I wondered something similar when I first saw the pic..... "isn't the PSU upside down"?

i probably used the words badly. in a normal case the fan does point down and draws air from within the case into the psu to cool it. in newer cases with the fan on the bottom the case should have a cutout in the base and the psu is mounted with the fan down drawing cool air in from outside to cool the psu. so it only looks weird or "upside down" because you can't see the large psu fan. you're right it would be in it's normal case orientation with the fan on the bottom though.

[RabidDog]

YOU'VE GONE FAN FICKING MAD! get rid of the two 80's and one f the top or rear exhaust. Keep the disks at least one slot apart ass they will re-inforce each others heat and stop any airflow between them.

[hello_hello]

In my case (pardon the pun), I've got six hard drive slots and five hard drives so there's no separating them, but a fan in front of them (mine mounts close enough to the drives to only miss touching them by a millimeter or so), there's still enough air finding it's way between the drives to stop them getting overly hot, and my front fan's running at a slow speed.

[themaster1]

In my case i've put the psu fan down rather than up sucking in case's air this way the temp inside the psu is cooler (~35°C) especially in summer time.
You got too many fans in there (= noisy, no doubt) if you ask me, one big lateral one (250mm) like i have on my other case plus one inside to extract and you're good imo