[TheDayStalker]

My CPU cooler (Zalman Flower Cooler) fan, currently sucks air ONTO the heatsink, much like any other hs/fan combination-- If I want to stick an 80mm fan into the case fan areas by the cpu, does this need to suck air into the case or out of the case? I'm under the impression that having two fans doing opposite things effectively cancel each other out.

What's the general concensus on this?

[FthrJACK]

a case fan on the front or side of the case should suck air in really, exaust fans go at the back.

the fan on the heatsink is seperate, think of it as using the air in your case, so if the air in the case is clean and cool, so is the air going on the heatsink.

if you have a fan sucking air into the case you should idealy have one blowing out. if you dont its called a posative pressure setup.

eg, if i have a 120mm fan drawing air in i should have at least an 80mm blowing air out, im slightly posative pressure there, but its ok. or i could have two 60mm and be equaly pressure. dont forget fans all shift different amounts of air too.

you could go into detail with it, but just have a fan blowing out of the case for every one thats blowing in and its ok

[Snoop]

depends where the fan is if the fan holes are low down it should suck cool air in.
if the fan holes are high up on the case is should blow hot air out of the case.
but as tris says if the case has rear and front holes for fans the front holes should be lower down unless the case was designed by monkeys

[zipp51]

You can effectively use a fan to blow into the case from the side mounted low as Elite stated,provided you have two case fans (one in front blowing in and one exit fan in the rear)The power supply fan always is an exit fan in addition to the other.The Alienware cases are designed like that as well as other more expensive systems.This side fan cools the cards as well.It's cheap to do this.I have an Enlight 7237 and have added a 60mm exit fan and my 1.4GHZ TBIRD runs from 45c to 57c on a real hot day under a load.Before that my temps were much higher.I will buy a Zalman like FthrJack has when I get my XP 1900 chip.

Abit KG7 RAID 266FSB
1.4GHZ Athlon
256MB Micron PC2100
30GB Seagate Baracuda 7200Rpm
Radeon 64mb DDR vivo(latest drivers)
Philps Rythmic Edge
USB Sattellite Modem

45c CPU
21c Board
1.84v Core
+3.3v 3.56v actual
+5v 5.13v actual
+12v 12.61 average
CPU fan 5865 average
Front Case fan 3005 average
Rear Case fan 2933 average