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Carbide AIR 540 Airflow


knives88

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I ask you for help with the airflow of my Carbide AIR 540.

My configuration is as follows:

- Front H150i PRO intake

- Top 120mm + 140mm exhaust

- Back 140mm exhaust

 

I spent a few days at a RTX 2080 Ti AMP and it throw a lot of hot air inside the case

Even with all exhaust fans at 100%, inside the case is always very hot and all temperatures (RAM, wather AIO, Chipset, VRM) have worsened considerably.

According to you, if i remove AIO from the front and install a 280mm AIO on top, in order to have a continuous flow of fresh air coming in from the front

will I have improvements?

My concern is that with AIO on the top, I will have a worsening of the cpu temperature, because it will take hot air inside the case.

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The new GPU is going to produce heat, regardless of the your fan configuration. You cannot reduce the wattage output (without lowering GPU load) nor can you "cool it" by blowing air from the front. What 3x120 unrestricted intake in the front might get you is better direct cooling on any m.2 drivers, RAM, and chipset. So are any of those temps critical right now? How much have they gone up?

 

You need to compare the increase of the entire case temperature to the increase in RAM, chipset, etc. If the motherboard sensor has gone up +5C and so has the RAM and chipset, then moving the radiator to the top isn't going to change anything. Potentially it could be worse. With a 280mm up top, you now have less exhaust capability than before with the radiator restricted fans only moving about half their listed volume of air at maximum. So the trade off is better direct cooling for RAM/Chipset (maybe 3-4C less) and potentially warmer case temps overall. The coolant is going to be warmer. Even excluding the Ti heat for a moment, the top few inches of the case are warmer than the front, usually by 2-3C even in a well ventilated case. If you combine that with GPU waste heat now also passing through the radiator out the top, the coolant is likely to be warmer when gaming. I think at worst it might be +5C, but you would have to decide if that is a critical increase for CPU temp.

 

I am a little surprised your H150i coolant temp has increased with the Ti. There really should not be much heat transfer in that direction. If it is a proximity transfer, you could try putting the fans on the interior side of the radiator creating another buffer of space between the GPU and the radiator. Heat is not going to flow against the fan.

 

If you have a 280mm cooler lying around, you can absolutely give this a try and there is no harm other than the install time. However, if you have to buy a 280mm, I would be very cautious in recommending this path. With a H115i Pro around $140, you are basically in the same price range as a new case. I love my Air 540s and it took a lot to move me off them. However, what really got me going on my Air 740 was the two bottom intake fans. That is the missing piece from your puzzle. It would provide additional upward airflow from the bottom for most of those components and keep things moving in the right direction (out of the case). There are certainly other cases that might work as well and it is probably possible to modify your 540 to turn those HDD drive "holes" at the bottom into the working fan slots, but it would take a little doing.

 

I think for now, keep collecting data and make sure the increases you see are genuine and potentially whether they occur in CPU only loads, GPU heavy loads, or mixed loads.

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The temperature of the ram has increased a lot, yesterday I recorded 53 ° C with an ambient temperature of 25 ° C, even in the summer when I was 32 ° C in the room had reached such a high temperature.

The chipset settles at around 65 ° C.

The coolant temperature is increased because the video card blows hot air on a part of the radiator, unfortunately there is not enough space to place the fans inside the case.

Last night I mounted my old H110i on the top, the temperatures of the various components decreased by 5 ° C, instead the coolant temperature reached 37 ° C (before it was 33 ° C) and the part in plexiglass is no longer incandescent like before.

The case is placed under a fully enclosed desk on the back / top / left side and there is a 10cm gap between the top case and the desk (it definitely does not help with the temperature)

In the coming days I will do some further proof.

 

 

Eventually since all the hot air stagnates between the back of the case and the desk, with the risk that it falls into the case, if i invert the front and rear fans, the flow can improve?

Back 1 x 140 intake / front 3 x 120 exhaust / top AIO 2 x 140 exhaust.

With negative pressure the air at ambient temperature should enter from the rear louvers and from the HDD drive.

if it works I'll have to get dust filters.

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50s on the RAM isn't too bad and still leaves you with more than 30C headroom. I would not make changes over a few degrees either way on that value. The increase in coolant temp of +4C means your CPU temp will always be +4C as well. You probably can absorb that unless you are already at your limit and it should not have any effect on longevity or performance.

 

However, the 65C chipset/PCH temp seems really high to me. Even when I was running SLI on a X99 with heavy loads, I never got past 50C even in hot room conditions. VRM might get to 60C every once in a while, but not the chipset. Frankly, I don't keep up to date on the Ryzen boards like everything else, so if someone else comes back and says this is completely normal -- then great. Surely your chipset is shielded, so I can only think that one of the fans on the Ti must vent right into the spot on the shield over the temp sensor. This is something that should be better with 3x120 unrestricted on the front. What does the chipset reach now with the H110i up top?

 

"Reverse Flow Set-ups" - Well, I am running one now in the 740 with dual 280mm radiators for GPU and CPU. It is effective, but perhaps not quite as cool in the corners as the traditional set-up. For me, this would not be viable without the bottom intake fans and all Summer long I plotted and planned alternative arrangements to put it back into standard front in/top+rear out. However, doing so to reduce the corner of my case temp by 3C is a bit silly and my component temps are outstanding. The problem I have with doing this in a 540 is the lack of additional intake. Every time I tried an alternative fan arrangement other than Front In/Top and Rear Out on the 540, the results were terrible. Typically +10C worse on major statistics like coolant, VRM, PCH, etc. So much of the cooling effectiveness of the 540 is blowing that extra hot air out those back ventilation holes. It would be a shame to loose it. Hmmm.. you already have me thinking about redoing the 740 again -- for next Summer.

 

I think perhaps the easier thing to try first is take a standard small or desktop size house fan (or whatever is available) and blow air at the front of the case. This is not put more air into the case, but even at the lowest speed the fan should push the hot air surrounding it to the wall and displace it. As long as you have a little gap between the desk and wall, the heat is going to out and up. I have a few 8" round ones that were designed to do this (from a house circulation perspective) and it is extremely effective and moving the hot air away from me and off into a corner I don't care about.

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Last night I did a quick test with the H110i top exhaust, front 3x120 exhaust and rear 1x140 intake.

The heat is ejected almost completely from the two upper fans (very hot radiator coolant temperature 38 ° C) and from the central one in front (where there is the heatsink of the video card that protrudes beyond the pcb)

The ram dropped to 44 ° C, the HD / SSD located below the video card have excellent temperatures 30 ° C / 28 ° C, the temperature of the PSU has dropped by a few degrees (most likely there was hot air expelled from the rear fans), even the temperature of the video card is lower than 2 ° C.

In a hurry I forgot to check the temperature of the VRM / PCH, this evening I have more time I will verify them.

Eventually before deciding my configuration, as a last test I can try to refit the H150i Pro on the front with the external fans in pull exhaust, in this way the upper fans (1x120x15mm + 1x140) should more easily expel the heat.

I will keep you informed.

In any case I will have to change my current H110i because it does not work very well, sometimes I do not read the fans and sometimes it does not work properly even the commander pro.

 

 

EDIT:

 

Finally I found my configuration.

Front exhaust 3x120 (H150i PRO) + Rear 1x140mm intake + top 1x140 / 1x120 exhaust.

Coolant temperature 34 ° C

CPU 48 ° C

RAM 43 ° C

VRM 41 ° C

PCH 56 ° C

GPU 63 ° C

Ambient temperature 26°C

 

To have a better airflow I removed the grids on the top and front, it will not be nice but it works :D:

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  • 4 months later...
Last night I did a quick test with the H110i top exhaust, front 3x120 exhaust and rear 1x140 intake.

The heat is ejected almost completely from the two upper fans (very hot radiator coolant temperature 38 ° C) and from the central one in front (where there is the heatsink of the video card that protrudes beyond the pcb)

The ram dropped to 44 ° C, the HD / SSD located below the video card have excellent temperatures 30 ° C / 28 ° C, the temperature of the PSU has dropped by a few degrees (most likely there was hot air expelled from the rear fans), even the temperature of the video card is lower than 2 ° C.

In a hurry I forgot to check the temperature of the VRM / PCH, this evening I have more time I will verify them.

Eventually before deciding my configuration, as a last test I can try to refit the H150i Pro on the front with the external fans in pull exhaust, in this way the upper fans (1x120x15mm + 1x140) should more easily expel the heat.

I will keep you informed.

In any case I will have to change my current H110i because it does not work very well, sometimes I do not read the fans and sometimes it does not work properly even the commander pro.

 

 

EDIT:

 

Finally I found my configuration.

Front exhaust 3x120 (H150i PRO) + Rear 1x140mm intake + top 1x140 / 1x120 exhaust.

Coolant temperature 34 ° C

CPU 48 ° C

RAM 43 ° C

VRM 41 ° C

PCH 56 ° C

GPU 63 ° C

Ambient temperature 26°C

 

To have a better airflow I removed the grids on the top and front, it will not be nice but it works :D:

 

 

Hey knives, I am very curious as to what you feel about your setup currently, or how you would improve on it? you were the only person gutsy enough on the internet, who was willing to fit the h150i pro into the 540 air case, something that I wanted to do as well. I'm looking into getting an i9 9900k and a 2070/2080 GPU. As a plan B for a new case, I was looking at the enthoo pro M, or even the air 740 (although I slightly disagree with the front face look) I appreciate any input, thank you!

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For both the 540 and 740, the front rail is the only place for a 360mm radiator, something you probably want with the 9900K. A 280mm can handle it, but will require borderline noisy fan speeds. You can keep the coolant temp low with moderate 120mm fan speed on a 360.

 

Yes, I can understand your feelings on the 740, although I actually grew to really like it in time. One clear advantage the 740 has on the 540 is the addition of two bottom 120/140 fan mounts. This makes the front rail radiator mount decision trivial. You can set the front rail fans to run at only coolant temp speeds without the need to worry about total case intake airflow. Then the bottom fans push up from the bottom. All that GPU + CPU heat goes out the back and top - away from the front radiator. I had tiny little +4C coolant deltas when running this way. 740 is a pretty versatile case and I am still using it. You could put 2x120 or in the bottom of the 540, but it will require modification.

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