I am in the process of building a new system and has chosen a FD Define R4 for the case. As for the cooling this is what i am planning to do and i am looking to achieve positive air pressure/flow in the case.
Replace the front 140mm with 2xScythe GT 120mm 1850rpm fans
Top mounted H100 with stock fans in a pull setup as an exhaust
Remove the rear 140mm exhaust fan
Exhaust from GTX660 Ti
Filtered intake and exhaust from the power supply
Will this help me achieve what am i looking for in terms of cooling or will i need to alter the setp? I would like to keep H100 in the mentioned configuration and noise is really not an issue for me. Any help would be appreciated.
I would recommend a fairly different setup, your current setup sounds like you might wind up negative pressure.
2x 140mm intake fans in the front, high static pressure
1x 140mm intake fan in the floor.
H100/H100i mounted in the roof, fans as intake, mounted to pull air through the rad
1x 140mm exhaust fan, high CFM
And to explain the thoughts behind this setup, first, the front is extremely restricted airflow, by the lack of venting, the door, and the HDD cages, so you wat high static pressure fans here. Second, you will get better overall cooling for the CPU, and add some limited VRM cooling by using the H100 as an intake, and you're also creating positive pressure this way. The 140mm floor intake doesn't necessarilly need to be ultra-high pressure, or CFM, but is mostly to feed air up to the graphics card. Lastly, the 140mm exhaust needs to stay (or maybe even be replaced with a higher CFM fan) to exhaust as much as possible, while maintaining positive pressure in the case.
Don't forget that the best positive pressure cases on the market, the SilverStone FT02 and Raven RV02/RV03 series all use 2x or 3x 180mm intake fans, with only 1x 120mm exhaust, and while the "stacked cooling" is partly responsible for their awesome performance, positive pressure alone will help a lot. Worst case scenario with a Define R4 in the above setup, you might need to remove the side panel moduvent cover, and let it be a passive exhaust.
Top fans as intake? That H100 rad will be dusty as [censored]. Gravity plus intake on top is best way to get a lot of dust inside. Better to get the 2 fans at front as intake with the rear as intake also and get h100 ones as exhaust ones. Fresh air from both sides will collide and gets taken by h100 fans. Heat goes up soo its better way than making top fans as intake.
Also get rid of the unneeded drive cages and work on some proper grade-A cable tidy and you are all ok.
Uh, I'd put the H100 rad in the front if it can reach and have the fans in pull configuration and intake from the front. Pretty hard to explain in words, so here's ascii art, kind of.
<- fans <- H100Radiator <- front panel <-
the arrows denote the airflow...
Then I'd cover the top alltogether, and a slow spinning 140MM fan for exhaust then of course your video card as exhaust.
I'm not 100% sure the h100 will reach but I'm fairly certain it'll fit because that was one of the big upgrades of the R4, allowing a 240rad in the front. The bottom cage can be offset a little inwards to fit rad+fan and then remove the top cage, obviously.
That may not give you the maximum airflow potential of the case but it's not like you need it for modern systems anyway. Unless you live in a desert or tropical climate, then you may want to have the top as exhaust and rear as intake like ookami's pic
i will be removing the top drive cage and repositioning the bottom. I like ookami's configuration, this way i will only have the h100, video card and psu exhausting, i might move the extra 140mm from the front to the bottom as a filtered intake directed at the gpu.
The recommendation for H100 as intake is mostly for performance, it will be 1-3+ degrees cooler than running as exhaust, and it will also add to positive pressure. Personally, I'd buy either a 240mm magnetic filter, and stick it on the top, outside, or 2x 120mm fan filters and screw them between the h100 rad and the case.
And the "hot air rises" is misquoted time and again. Hot air rises when the environment is calm/stagnant. In a forced air environment, it goes where it's designed/told to go, very little air will naturally exhaust out the top of a PC case with fans pushing and pulling horizontally.
EDIT to add:
With an H100 mounted in exhaust, your CPU will run a few degrees hotter, but your GPU might run a few degrees cooler. And with the H100 mounted as intake, it's reversed, the CPU will run cooler, but the GPU hotter. Given the overall efficiency of the Nvidia Kepler/600 series, I'd not worry about a couple degrees on the GPU, but if you were running an AMD 7000 series card, I might suggest to switch and run the H100 exhaust since they generate so much more heat than kepler.
^ Oh, Um i know this is kind of OT but i was thinking about getting a Kraken X60 but my Mobo's CPU power is only a few inches to the left of where the Asrocks is.
Any chance i might be able to squeez the Kraken in ?
i finally got everything installed and the h100 mounted in the fron with 2x noctua nf-f12 as intakes and a 140 in the back as an exhaust. My temp reading are showing the hottest core at 30 degrees while idling and gets up about 60 on full load. My GPU hovers around 36-37 at idel and gets up about 80 on full load. Is that decent?
