Top Mounted Intake Radiator

I have an Air 740 with a front mounted h115i radiator acting as an intake. Cooling of the case is boosted by two fans at the base of case that directly blast the graphics card when it starts to get hot. All in all the configuration works very well indeed.

There is one problem.

The front mounted h115i leaves about 300mm room for a graphics card, but the latest graphics cards can be up to 328mm in length.

I am considering moving the h115i, but am reluctant to because the current setup works so well. The only other place it can go is the top of the case.

Problem is that the obvious way to do that is to change the h115i so it's configured as an output. But, I know if that radiator is configured as an output that it will pump the graphics card heat through the CPU. This I would really like to avoid. So an option I was mulling over was configuring the h115i as an intake instead. This would ensure that basically the thermal properties of the system stays as is, but the radiator has moved. Great. But in my mullings I thought I would just put it out there and see what other people think.

So.... what do you think?

It works fine. I got into the same mess when I picked up my 2080 Ti and realized too late it was going to be 5mm too long with my front/top mounted 280mm radiators.

Initially separate cooling for GPU and CPU, but later combined into a single custom cooling loop. I've run that case every way possible.

Top mounted you could run top/bottom intake, front/rear exhaust. This is plenty of exhaust power and won't need much speed. Could easily take out 550W from my two radiators without heating up the case. It also pushes the VRM + RAM heat away from the radiator and then out versus the inevitable warming effect when top exhaust.

That said, you may not like your RGB fan orientation with the above. I don't think the reverse (top/bottom exhaust, front/rear intake) works with air cooled GPUs. You may want to start with the traditional front/bottom intake, top/rear exhaust with the CPU radiator as exhaust. Your coolant will probably be about +2C because the top layer of the case is usually 2-3C warmer than the front. However, you still have a rear exhaust fan and a lot of mesh in back. It is unlikely the top fans will overpower the existing flow and suck all the GPU waste heat out the top. Most of it will go out the back. The top is warmer than the bottom even with no GPU activity so there will be a difference, but giving up 2C in CPU temp may be preferable to crazy fan orientations. To my surprise, this worked well even with my config, front/bottom (radiator) in, top (radiator)/rear out. The short distances between intake and exhaust regardless of set-up keep things moving.

Thanks!

My fans aren't RGB so everything will be fine.