PC Case AIRFLOW; A Visual Guide for Optimal Cooling

Hardware Build a PC
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If you don’t know Mr Matt Lee on YouTube his channel is worth a watch any day. But his latest video on PC cooling with lots of visualisations is worth 12 mins of any PC builders time. A perfect mix of visual and PC build creativity and science. For me it’s the perfect intro to PC cooling.

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Unfortunately, it wasted of 12 minutes of my life. Matt says at the beginning it’s not scientific, which is fine, but there’s little design information, the airflow visuals are brief and uninformative, and the content’s not going to help with optimal fan selection, placement, or curving. Matt closes with “my best advice would be worry less, game more”.

There’s not enough here to motivate me to do detailed fact checking but probably about two thirds of the claims made are supported by measurement and thus helpful to build engineering. The other third either lack support or are contraindicated so, for folks interested in a visual guide to optimal cooling rather than worrying less and gaming more, there’s likely little net value. To summarize,

  • There isn’t coverage of fan affinity, noise-normalized airflow, open area fractions, or other fundamentals.
  • Tradeoffs among case styles and form factors are vaguely described at a high level but are broadly correct.
  • The description of 120 and 140 mm fans being comparable is well supported, comments on 180s and 200s are not.
  • The configurations shown are generally ok but sometimes include fans likely to have little to no (net) effect.
  • It’s claimed convection is significant in forced air cooling. While influential in niche cases, convection’s mostly negligible.
  • Whether or not AIO placement guidance is valid depends on whether or not it’s a pump in rad design.

It is a nicely shot and produced video, though.

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