Water Cooling Radiator Fan Placement

Today we address the subject of push pull push pull fan setups and how they affect different radiators and performance.

Water cooling radiator fan placement.

Best 120mm 140mm static pressure fans for radiators heatsinks and restricted spaces in pc case. Fans move air through the radiator assisting in cooling the engine. Water cooling systems. You have the reservoir the pump the radiator the fans some tubing a block for either the cpu gpu or both and the water itself.

It s a little hard to see but there is a radiator behind the two front fans and this is the system with a top mounted radiator. These high static pressure fans can deliver air at great force to the heat source and cools them down at a faster pace compared to standard fans. But consider this at idle or cruising speeds you need the entire cooling system working at its optimum. That said some basic tests on these high static pressure models show that their benefit is questionable in standard air cooled builds.

Placement of the fans. The fan blades of high static pressure fans are more curved and are directed towards the heat source. In the very least we can look at liquid cooler placement performance in a few different cases. Also there is a lesser gap between the adjacent.

One thing i did differently to the other tests i have seen is not locking any fan speeds in the system so the gpu radiator case fans were set to the default quiet curves. We hope to help you decide what kind of setup is right for you and to show the benefits of each. If you mount the radiator with the fans on the bottom then it might be easiest to mount the fans to the radiator before installing the radiator into the case which is what i did for this installation. With the fans mounted below the radiator you will want to use the 8x 10mm screws the shorter set of screws to secure the radiator to the case.

A fan without a shroud is better than no fan. An unshrouded fan is moving air through only the portion of the radiator equal to the surface area of the fan. Static pressure fans are designed to pull or push air with extra force which is ideal for areas with more restricted airflow like a water cooling radiator or a large cpu cooler with lots of fins.