How bad is it to use H115i PRO 280 as an outtake?

Hello,

 

I was wondering if I can get a second (or third, fourth etc..) opinion please. I'm under the process of building my personal computer. I recently bought the Obsidian 500D SE, the CPU cooler H115i (280mm) and an extra fan LL120.

 

Currently the way I'm setting it up is the three 120 fans at the front, that came with the case, are intake. The extra LL120 is on the rear is an outtake and finally the two large fans of the H115i are mounted at the top of the case and work as outtake as well, along with the radiator attached to them.

 

Now, I'm ever so slightly doubtful about my airflow setup because Corsair suggests that ideally the radiator is used with intake fans. I can't connect the radiator to the 3 front intake fans as they are 120 and the radiator is for 140. So I'm stuck with using the radiator with 2 large outtake fans.

 

The primary use of the PC will be for rendering and simulation which can be heavy both on the GPU and the CPU. I'm not planning on overclocking the CPU, at least not yet.

 

What do you think?

 

Thank you

That is a completely appropriate set up and how most people would set up the case. Using it on the front might get you 1-2C lower coolant/cpu temps, but it then also limits how much air you can put in the case and thus total case temperature may be higher. Usually it’s small margins either way unless there is a case specific restriction or you are running multiple GPUs.

Thank you for your reply, simple and straight to the point. Good to hear I shouldn't have doubts!

That is a completely appropriate set up and how most people would set up the case. Using it on the front might get you 1-2C lower coolant/cpu temps, but it then also limits how much air you can put in the case and thus total case temperature may be higher. Usually it’s small margins either way unless there is a case specific restriction or you are running multiple GPUs.

 

I feel this is a very difficult question people will have different opinions on? Not sure if there is right or wrong answer and it also depends a lot on the case?

 

Pushing air from outside through rad will give CPU slightly lower temps, using a push pull setup the difference may be even larger.

 

If I understand this correctly the drawback is slightly warmer air inside case.

 

There has to be ways fighting this warmer air flow depending on size of case. If it's the h115i model in front you could put a 140mm fan above or below the rad blowing cold air into the case. In addition you may have two fans in the bottom of case blowing air up in the case below GPU.

 

One thing I dislike with radiator exhausting air at top of case is when pushing the GPU hard. The GPU will then dispose hot air in radiator direction, logically this should lead to higher CPU temps when pushing the GPU?

 

To make this even more complicated we also have to consider dust...... for dust it's probably best having radiator at top exhausting air.

I've been using an h110 since 2014 as a top exhaust. Gaming, 3d rendering, video transcoding, video rendering. With my current 1080 and 8700Krunning an aida 64 stress test i'm running around 65-66c.