fan directions on the Carbide 500R and H110 CPU cooler

Hi All!

I am putting together a new system with an Asus SabertoothZ87 TUF MB with an I7 4770k CPU, with a Corsair H110 CPU cooler. I know that the two front fans on the case are cold air in, the back case fan is hot air out, and the PSU puts it's own hot air out. Out of the box, does the big side fan bring cold air in or push hot air out? I noticed that the CPU cooler documentation recommends setting up the radiator fans on top to bring cold air in. Seems to me that that big side fan should bring air in since it sits directly over the mother board and the radiator fans should exhaust hot air out the top - especially since there is a lot of fanless overflow leakage built into the case to equal things out. I took the upper hard drive cage out and have one tiny 512GB SSD in the lower cage, and a huge PNY GeForce GTX 680 2GB video board sitting right in the middle of everything else. The rest of the case is pretty much empty.

Any info would be appreciated on the out of the box direction of the big side fan and whether it would be better to exhaust air out over the CPU radiator. Makes sense to me, but there may be good reasons to do it otherwise.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

Gordon

I found another thread that referred another poster to this web site (see below) for a fan filter for the side fan. It attaches magnetically to the side of the case. That would lead me to believe that the side fan is set up to intake air, which makes sense. If so, I would want to set the CPU radiator to exhaust rather than intake. I would like somebody to please verify that this is the case before I finish my system. Anybody got any experience reversing the fans on the radiators, and if so, How did it work?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Gordon

http://www.frozencpu.com/products/14950/ffi-94/DEMCiflex_Corsair_500R_Magnetic_Dust_Fan_Filter_-_Side_Piece.html

Found the answer to the fan direction question. The side of the fan that has the struts from the frame to the central housing for the fan indicates the side toward which the air flow travels.

Also, I found a good thread in the cooling forum by Speed that has a very good discussion of air flow and fan placement that covered all of my concerns and questions, and probably covers the most most common situations that would come up. Thanks, Speed.

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=117122

Found the answer to the fan direction question. The side of the fan that has the struts from the frame to the central housing for the fan indicates the side toward which the air flow travels.

 

Also, I found a good thread in the cooling forum by Speed that has a very good discussion of air flow and fan placement that covered all of my concerns and questions, and probably covers the most most common situations that would come up. Thanks, Speed.

 

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=117122

yes speed prides himself on proper fan placement and rightfully so,he has spent an enormous amount of time on this subject and most fan questions can be found within his posts