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Push, Pull and Push / Pull setups for Radiators | How to setup your fans

2015-07-27
something appears to have changed Nik we need help it be what we need back up with me like right now dude what we need back up at me right now there's nothing wrong on my knee I'm not asking about your knees I just need help it be I don't need any tea I need help and pee oh that's what you're saying my bad don't let loud fans ruin your friendships quiet things down with the new venturi airflow and static pressure fans from fractal design click the link below for more details hey what's up guys Jase $0.02 here and just having a little fun with my friends over at tech syndicate because they sent me some swag as you can see I've always loved this shirt I just never bought one because I was drinking too fast and anything I was buying wasn't fitting anyway so here we are wearing my brand new text into kit shirt which is very very comfortable I might add I might actually have to get some shirts made myself one of these days the music that you have hearing was called Valley Honda and it's available here then the link in the description anyway no they did not ask me to do that guys do not go and start flaming Logan I'm doing this all on my own because I like the music I bought the album so anyway let's go and move on today's topic so I told you guys I felt like we were lacking at a lot of how to's and educational stuff when it comes to water cooling and as you can see I've made no progress on the build behind me but I did say I was going to talk about some more how to's and some educational stuff using this build as kind of a guideline and a reference on some of the I guess the theories and the practical applications when it comes to water cooling now today we are going to specifically be talking about push pull push pull and push pull configurations where they apply where you should put them in which one you should actually consider using now push pull is sometimes people get very confused on where to use push pull now let's go ahead and talk about the radiator here this is a radiator if you didn't know that then you're already well behind the curve and you might want to start back at the beginning anyway this is 120 millimeter radiator here from hardware labs it's a perfect example for what we're going to be doing here now in order for this to do anything you have to move air through the radiator if air is not moving through the radiator it will just heat soak and get hotter and hotter and the fins can't do anything because air has to move across these fins to actually dissipate the heat now when it comes to moving the air obviously you're going to be attaching fan so we've got two Vardar fans here from ek water blocks yes these are black ones and these are available now in black and white in varying rpms hooray for that because the black and the gray just didn't suit a lot of people's builds aesthetics now typically what people will do kind of like I've done back here on on the system behind me at least what I prefer to do personally is use a push configuration now push is where you have the radiator here and then you have the fan that is actually pushing air through the fins so the direction of travel is going to be from fan through the fan through the radiator that's a push you are pushing the air through the radiator it's amazing how many people don't get that concept but that's what it's doing now a pull configuration if you're astute you might have already realized is just the opposite you have got the fan on the outside of the radiator pulling air through where it is going to be drawing air through the side that has nothing on it through the fins and then exhaust it out the other side now push-pull I don't know if you guys know to follow along you might not get this one this one's actually kind of hard push pull is when you have a fan on either side of the radiator one side pushing the other side pulling now that we've got all three of those different types of applications out of the way let's go ahead and talk about where these apply inside of your case because believe it or not where the radiator is inside of your case matters just as much than the type of fans and fan configuration that you use now I'll go ahead and slide this guy closer to me here and actually you guys can get a really good sense of just how small this case really is I am using a pole configurations on the front and a push configuration on the top how can you tell well because the fans are inside of the radiator pulling air in from the front rather than pushing on the top here I've got a push configuration pushing air out of the top now when it comes to the efficiency and the airflow of these two types of configurations there's a lot of debate out there on which is better and believe it or not push versus pull makes negligible difference when it comes to the amount of cooling and or air pressure because the fan itself is still having to overcome the same amount of resistance that is inside the radiator so it doesn't matter if the fan is on this side and it doesn't matter if the fan is on this side pulling air or pushing air the amount of resistance allow the radiator is the same now when this is going to become a little bit more complicated is when you have more resistance now what makes more resistance well more fins in this case we have a high fin density radiator because we're running a thinner radiator or having a thicker radiator with the same fin density but typically as radiators get thicker the fin density gets less so airflow is actually improved otherwise if you had a a 60 or even an 80 millimeter radiator having one fan in push or pool on either side of it is going to have a lot of pressure to overcome in terms of resistance and static pressure that's going to be needed with high rpms or high static pressure fans now I know that that might have just gone really quickly and confused a lot of people so let me just go ahead and kind of give you my recommendations now let's go ahead and start with 30 millimeter thick radiators which is what I've got in here right now now one might be asking themselves Jay why are you pulling air in and pushing air out this has nothing to do with anything more than aesthetics I wanted the fans to be visible but remember what I said earlier when it comes to push-pull the amount of pressure needed and the amount of resistance isn't changing between either of these two configurations so the difference in cooling is negligible in fact a lot of people have done tons and tons and tons of benchmarking on this type of data and have found that it's only one or two degrees Celsius difference between E there in any situation which is usually accounted for by margin of error or difference of ambient temperatures when the tests were performed so it really doesn't matter so in this case if I had done push on the top and push on the front you would have had the radiator showing here and the fans showing here which would have looked incredibly imbalanced so if you're going with a single set of fans like this it's okay to switch around push in this case the air at the top or pull air in the front with the fans on either side if I had wanted the radiators to show and not the fans I would have done just the opposite I would have taken these fans that are under the radiator mounted them between the radiator in the case the radiator would be sitting right here without the fans showing and then I would have swapped the front just like that it was had the radiator here where the fans are fans in front and all you have had was white white radiator showing and it would have made no difference whatsoever to the cooling now push pool since you're going to have a fan on either side of it like this it's really not going to matter how you install it because it's going to look the same so let's say I was putting this radiator in the bottom right down here and I was going for a push-pull configuration it would end up looking something like that but as you can see that adds a ton of thickness to even just a 30 millimeter radiator because on average fans are only 25 millimeters thick so that's 50 millimeters of fan thickness before you even account for a radiator so if you're going to be using a thick radiator like a 60 mil or even an 80 millimeter radiator then you're going to find that you're going to have to have a lot of clearance to be able to clear that amount of height that's one of the reasons why I don't do push-pull I think it's very difficult to make something like this look clean all around the case even if it's a big case but there are benefits to doing push-pull versus push or pull I've already told you I recommend and personally like one fan that's high static pressure at a moderate rpm on thinner radiators were capable in fact on skunkworks if you guys recall I went from 45 millimeter thick radiators down to 30 millimeter thick radiators and saw absolutely no difference in cooling dissipation it didn't gain any additional temperature and I'm actually cooling hotter graphics cards thinner ads yeah of course I added the 280 in there but that was pretty much because I wanted some extra insurance in terms of cooling it's really hot where I live push pull can overcome thick radiators and you can slow down the fans so that they run really really quiet and we'll talk about the cons to that in a second now if you want to make it as quiet as possible having a fan like this running at say fifty percent or something like 800 rpm on one side is going to dramatically reduce its performance because remember when it comes to the fan specifications the amount of static pressure and airflow that you're seeing is pretty much always measured at maximum rpms so in this case if this is a 2200 rpm fan and I'm running at 800 rpm or a thousand rpms I'm not going to be getting anywhere near the static pressure that's being advertised on the box so if I want to slow this down for the sake of silence and put it on either side push or pull I am dramatically reducing the amount of air that I'm moving through this radiator and not only that the amount of air I'm helping flow through the case in this instance here I've got most of the airflow in the case being handled by fans with radiators on them - the one right here in the rear which is why I'm considering putting this radiator in the bottom so that I could actually get more airflow inside of this case more intake to match the exhaust so what you're able to do is you can put two very slow speed fans on either side maintain good static pressure and good air flow evenly across the radiator and run them much lower rpms for much much less acoustics but the downside to that is you've got twice as many fans going in your system so on a small case like this with only two 240 millimeter radiators if I was to do a push pool I would end up with four eight ten eleven fans in this tiny little case the would have made it very crowded it would have also made controlling those fans very very difficult there's no way I could have done it without some sort of fan controller now I like to run my fans off the motherboard and use software where possible and splitters on motherboards that have headers that can handle at least one amp of power draw that's not the case on this guy right here we we don't have enough fan headers pill to control 11 fans so that's why I'm going with two four five maybe six depending on which configuration that I go with I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up with this this radiator down here in the bottom I just haven't decided where I'm going to put my reservoir and stuff because I kind of only have a space right here but as you can see the fittings are right there unless I turn you know this guy around and I have a lot of crazy bands I don't know we'll figure it out but anyway when it comes to push-pull the most important things to take away from this video is one push or pull it's the same thing it people are going to argue this I don't really care what people argue the bottom line is it's negligible difference between the two push-pull is really good for high density and thick radiators that need to have static pressure maintained across a lot of resistance or smaller radiators or thinner radiators or even thick radiators that you want to keep the acoustics low and spin the fans really really slow so that's really it when it comes to push-pull there seems to be a lot of confusion in the community about which is better where to use it and why really the bottom line is it's more important to maintain balanced airflow across your case than it is to balance the airflow across your radiator last example of that and we'll talk about case balancing here and again in the future I've done one of these videos already about case pressure but I talked about that more in an open air flow environment and not something with radiators and this is something to also keep in mind on skunk works I have three 120 millimeter air flow fans on the front but I've got one two three four five fans exhausting air so a lot of people ask me well Jay why do you have three intake fans and five exhaust fans isn't that going to be negative air flow or air pressure in the case which means one you're reducing cooling to the radiator and two you're pulling in dust through all the cracks well remember what I said about resistance just because this fan could flow let's say 60 CFM at high rpm the moment you put resistance in front of or behind that fan you have cut down the amount of airflow so air balancing is where you have the same amount of airflow coming in as you do going out or greater air flow coming in than you do going out for positive pressure you've got to account for the amount resistance in front of those fans that are exhausting which is why in skunk works I still have positive pressure with three wide-open fans on the front and four radiator fans in one case ven exhausting well if you guys want to see more about that let me know maybe we'll do some demonstrations with like smoke and incense and stuff so you guys can see how three intake fans can create positive pressure over more exhaust fans that are either spinning slower or have more resistance when it comes to the radiators let me know guys - if you thought I threw too much information at you on this one I know it might have gone really quickly I hope you guys understand what I said I really don't know of any other way to explain it it's it's just the way it works so guys thanks for watching today's video hope you guys have enjoyed it hope you guys have learned something that's most important and again thanks to the guys over at tech syndicate for sending me the swag I think I I think I rep text in the kit pretty well all right guys time to get on out of here as always we will see you in the next one you
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