My Cooling - Antec P182

Hey guys,



I would like some advice on changing my cooling system.



My current system looks like this:







Currently there is a fan on the Thermalright Ultra 120, blowing air onto the heatsink (shown as a blue circle)



There is a fan above and to the left taking warm air out away from the CPU (Shown by fans - blue boxes and airflow - blue arrows)



Then at the bottom is the psu shown by a blue box which takes air out away from the psu and there is a blue box infront of the psu flowing cold air onto the psu.



There is also my graphics card in the PCI slot taking warm air away from the graphics card.



Finally the 2 red boxes is where I can fit 2 more fans.



I will be buying 2 more fans and was thinking of setting it up like this:







1 and 2 are now blowing cold air onto the cpu keeping it cool and 3 can blow the cold air directly onto the heatsink / cpu.



4 is taking warm air away from the graphics card.



5 is taking warm air through the front, so cold air comes in through the top near the cpu and out at the bottom near the graphics card (4) and through the front (5), a decent air flow me thinks.



In the bottom compartment 8 is blowing cold air onto the hard drive, 7 is blowing cold air onto the psu and the psu (8) is taking the warm air out of the back.



The only problem I feel is fan 8 bringing cold air in as the front of the Antec P182 is blocked off by the front panel and air can only travel in through the sides as show below:

I have a zalman CNPS 9700 on my Q6600,

My fans are such that 1 and 2 on your picture are exhausts taking the hot air out, 7 as shown is the same blowing air over the PSU

The only other fan I have is number 5 as an intake bringing air into the system. Temps are nice and low in the case at the moment with that, bear in mind there are 5 hard drives in this system so its got plenty it needs to cool. The air vents on the side of the front panel are enough to allow to flow just fine

So any ideas?

I see nothign wrong iwth your fan setup and wouldnt change anything, apart from you could get a sycthe kama bay for your 5 inch drive bays with a high CFM fan to put at the front and take your door off.

Fan 8 and 7 in my opinion arent doing anything, blowing a small amount of air onto that side of the psu wont do anything

My Raptor HD is inbetween fans 7 and 8.



So this setup is better?

Id have the top as exhaust, turn your heatsink round so it blows air through the heatsink and out the back of the case not up the top.

Ya, all top-mount fans should be exhaust. Heat flows up, trying to push air in that way just messes everything up. Front should always be intake, and the air should flow from the front to the back and out the top.



You could also just yank the side cover off the case, but this is a ghetto-nerd solution, and sometimes can be counterproductive. Your case has a lot of internal structure to it, so I think it might be.