Gadgetory

what's up guys welcome back to the channel today we're taking a look at radiators specifically those found on liquid cooled a i/os for your CPU and the best place to mount them in your case whether that be at the top as an exhaust or at the front of your case as an intake those are the two main schools of thoughts are the two main methods on where to put your radiator in the majority of modern-day mid-tower chassis so there are pros and cons to both and today we're actually going to test both options to see which one reigns supreme now the great thing about having your radiator mounted at the top of your case as an exhaust is that you're exhausting all the hot air from within your case outside of it so it's actually going to be good for the rest of your internal components because you're ejecting all that hot air far away from them however you're also taking all that hot air and you're permeating your fin stack in that radiator with it so that could potentially be hazardous for your cpu temps when you actually have things like your GPU generating lots of heat under load and that that that warm air gets circulated inside your case and then pass through that thin array that could potentially lead to higher CPU temperatures we're going to find out whether or not it makes a difference today on the other side of the argument if you have a front mounted radiator set to intake you're pulling a lot of cool fresh air from your ambient surrounding environment which is generally cooler than the warm air circulating inside of your case so that's good for CPU temperatures at the same time once that cool fresh air permeates the fin stack it carries away all the heat that was absorbed in that array and it basically ejects it inside of your case and they are getting potentially warmer components apart from your CPU such as your your graphics card which in most mid-tower chassis these days is mounted right in front of where a front mounted radiator would be so is this going to pose a problem for your GPU temperatures we're going to find all that out today and as you can already probably tell there's an additional layer of consideration here when it comes to your graphics card are we are we talking about an open-air shroud or an enclosed blower style card because that could also play a difference or play a role on how your CPU temperatures are affected whether it's the radiators mounted at the top or front your case so we're actually will be analyzing four different scenarios today top mounted radiator with an open-air shroud as well as a blow of style card and frontmen with both both of those same two video card options and the school of thought behind video card being an open-air Shroud is that it's going to be ejecting and circulating a lot of that hot air that's being dissipated from the GPU into your case so if you were to have a top mounted radiator and an open-air shroud is that going to pose an issue for your CPU now because you're generating more heat inside of your chassis that's going to now be funneled through that radiator at the top of your case conversely if you're dealing with a blower style card you don't have to worry so much about hot air being spewed out from your GPU into your case because all that hot air is being ejected out the back that's just how blower style cards are designed for the most part at the same time you generally get higher temperatures on your GPU with a design of that style because you don't have as many exit points for hot air to just be dissipated all around it it's more considered it takes one for the team so to speak for your other internal components by harboring all of the hot air to itself and having a smaller exit window to eject it out of so we're going to be taking a look at those four scenarios today to see which one is the most optimal what you should be looking out for if it really makes any difference at all and at the end of the day which solution works best for your needs so I already have all the hardware set up here I guess we'll just go over everything so as far as the processor we're using we've got the core i7 7700 K so we are dealing with the KB Lake Architecture the latest seventh generation core processors from Intel that will be overclocked quite heavily to 5 gigahertz and I wanted to really dial in an aggressive overclock for this test because I feel like if we were to run everything at moderate to low speeds we wouldn't see as much variable difference between our thermals from test to test so to really get an idea of how fingers are being affected I wanted to crank up the speeds quite a bit so 5 gigahertz is where we're at I believe at one point for something volts don't quote me it's a little bit over 1.4 but it is running stable of instability tests and all that so that's going to be cooled by the corsair h 100 GTX v2 which is a 240 millimeter radiator attached to that units we're also going to be using the stock fans that came with that liquid cooled i/o which are 120 millimeter fans of course plugged directly into the wires coming off of the water block those are three pin connectors there's no fancy fan curve that we're setting up here it's just going to be running at the default balanced rpm seeds that come right out of the box additionally for our motherboard we've got the msi Zi 270 gaming Pro carbon and that's going to be paired with 16 gigs of Corsair Vengeance lpx memory at 3000 megahertz we've also got two gtx 1070 s that will be tested separately of course the first of which is the zotac amp Edition which is going to represent our open air shroud and then we've got the founders of from Nvidia representing our blower style card both of these cards will be running with a 100 mega Hertz offset on the core clock as well as a 350 megahertz offset on the memory clock as well as power and temperature sliders maxed 211 to take full advantage of GPU boost 3.0 some to bear in mind however is that the zotac amp Edition card does come factory overclocked so we'll be running slightly faster than the founders Edition but any kind of big thermal difference that we see between these two cards under load is most likely going to be due to the cooler design and Rainier orientation as opposed to running at slightly different frequencies so bear that in mind additionally we've also got a power supply in here a fractal design Integra 650 watt units and a 240 gig SanDisk Ultra 2 SSD which is going to have our operating system Windows 10 64 bits and all of our applications loaded up on there last but not least we've got our case that we're rocking the case is very important here it's probably going to be one of the biggest differential factors if you guys were to test this at home you might get completely different results than I am today based on the hardware you're using particularly your chassis and how good the air flow is within that so we've got the define as from fractal design we are using some aftermarket fans here noting the stock ones that came with the unit so we've got a rear exhaust 140 millimeter fractal design venturi fan that is the case fan not the static pressure one that's going to be again our rear exhaust and we've got two NZXT case fans that came off of the Manta either the Manta or the s3 40mm but they might actually be the exact same model fans but we've got two of those which are going to their positions are going to vary based on where the radiator is so when our test where the radiators at the top of the case those two fans are going to be mounted at the front did I say there were 120 there 120 millimeter fans if I didn't mention that they're going to be mad at the front of the case when the radiators on top and they're going to be mounted at the top of the case when the radiators at the front hope that makes sense and that's also going to play a huge role if you we have if you have zero or one case van in your setup and everything else is identical here you might see drastically different results so bear that in mind this is a very specific use case scenario but I did try my best to pick some components that reflect a modern-day high-end mid tower that is going to be primed for overclocking which hopefully is somewhat representative of some of you out there so I think on that note ladies and gentleman we're ready to fire up some tests with image in heaven 4.0 back here we're gonna be doing 30 minute runs so all four of the scenarios that we're testing are going to get 30 minutes a piece under load in this particular application we're going to go ahead and circle back with the results and we're going to see once and for all how the temperatures both on our CPU and or GPU might be affected by radiator orientation as well as the type of video card shroud that we'll be using in this chassis should be interesting don't go anywhere we'll be right back I'll be right back I'm alone I'm always alone all right shell so we have run the tests and I have the results here and very very telling numbers actually um you guys are going to find this very interesting so we're going to start off with the top mounted radiator tests first so both of those with the blower style fan and the open air shroud and see how those compared so with the top mounted radiator set to exhaust our blower style card saw CPU temperatures all the way up to 77 degrees Celsius on the package and our GPU God is hot as any 3 degrees Celsius now 83 degrees C on an overclocked founder's Edition gtx 1070 is perfectly normal especially since we crank the temperature slider all the way up with an msi afterburner so that's not too big of a concern 77 degrees Celsius on the package of our CPU is pretty warm I mean granted we are overclocked pretty heavily to 5 gigahertz but I wouldn't want to see any temperatures go beyond that so let's see how we fared with an open-air shroud with our ZOTAC card also overclocked with the same top mounted radiator configuration 86 degrees Celsius on our CPU we went up what what is that nine nine degree Celsius just from going from a blower style card to an open-air shroud our CPU rose nine degrees Celsius just because we changed the type of video card shroud we were using with a top mounted radiator in the mix our GPU of course with a ZOTAC to market a danboard partner cooler is going to be a lot cooler than founder position which is expected so we had 71 degrees Celsius on that on the GPU which is going to allow us to hit higher boost clock frequencies as well so that's good so a great first our GPU not so hot or actually very hot in a bad way for our CPU nothing's get really interesting when we switch to the front mounted radiator so with the blower style card and front radiator we saw a CPU temperature of 76 degree Celsius on the package and a GPU temp of 84 degrees C now that's not the interesting part because that's pretty much exactly what we saw almost identical to what we saw with a top mounted radiator and that same blower card so we went from 77 to 76 on the package so we went down a degree for CPU which makes sense if we're going to be dealing with a front mounted radiator this time pulling fresh air again from the outside ambient environment and then one degree higher on our GPU which also makes sense because now we've got slightly warmer air coming in after it permeates that CPU radiator that's that's headed straight for our graphics card so overall there's a little bit of a change on both sides but not huge not it's not it's not that very marginal it could be subject to a margin of error as well so nothing too big to fret on that end however this is where it gets crazy is when we switch to an open air shroud on our video card like the zotac amp Edition and we have a front mounted radiator again 76 degrees Celsius on the CPU package so remember with with an open air shroud on when it was a top mounted radiator using the same video card we were at 86 degrees C on the CPU package so we just dropped 10 degrees on our on our overclocked 7700 K by simply switching the radiator from top to front that is huge that is completely massive that's the only thing that we changed on the GPU front we got 71 degree Celsius which is pretty much staying in in tune and consistent with what the zotac amp card has been delivering throughout today's testing so that's nice to see and you can see there that that actually brings up another huge point the graphics card is hardly affected actually whether it's blower or open air it's hardly affected it does not care where the radiator is it might go up a degree or down a degree but for the most part your CPU temperatures your CPU is not going to be emitting nearly as much heat inside your case as the video card is if you're dealing with an open-air shroud that's why the CPU went up ten degrees as soon as we had the radiate the top radiator ingesting all the hot air through its through its pin stack so that's really interesting if you guys are rocking a open air shroud on your video card which these days most of us are and you have a liquid-cooled AIO for your CPU inside of your case if you have the option to mount it to the front I would very much do so and I'd be curious to hear what your guys's results are if you were to test it yourselves at home have your met your radiator mounted at the front do some do a half hour of image in heaven there and then have it at the top and do another half hour and just compare the CPU temperatures to see if you're getting consistent results with what I am because that would be very very very enlightening and very insightful not enlightening be insightful I'm using the wrong words now but at the end of the day there you guys have it I already sort of anticipated that the CPU temperatures would be higher with an open-air shroud if we were to mount the radiator at the top of the case but I did not foresee it being a 10 degree difference simply from moving the radiator from one position to another so that's very interesting I thought this was a fascinating test despite my hypothesis already being correct it just kind of took it to the extreme and went a bit further than that blew my expectations out of the water but let me know what you guys think which which orientation you have your radiators mounted in your chassis assuming you have liquid cooled AOS on those CPUs of yours and if it seems to make much of a difference whether it's mounted to the top or the front or you know if you're going to be doing any further testing feel free to also share your results in the comments so that we can all see it but that's pretty much going to do it for this little test guys let me know what you thought in the comments below feel free to like the video if you enjoyed this type of experimental content and that is pretty much we want to do it for now thank you all so much for watching subscribe to the channel as always if you don't want to miss any more tech stuff coming up in the future very soon and until next time I guess I'll see you guys in the next video have a go and guys back