Hey guys, not to be a damp towel on the conversation, but I do this for a living.........
So, getting a normal room fan and pointing it at the exposed machine would be good, right? If I dust clean it from time to time?
Yessir, best bet is also to make sure the in case airflow is not restricted...
Not to be a dick but physics class wasn't THAT hard lol.
no, the positive presure in the case helps get the hot air out.
Also choose wisely which direction you want the fan to blow/exhaust air in/out.
I chose the top fans to exhaust hot air out because the last rig saw all that hot air from the CPU trapped in that area. But since I'm currently air cooling, I might have to change that terminology, as most of the cool air the CPU is grabbing gets taken away, causing it to heat up incredibly. All of this is about balancing the positive and negative air pressures.
OK I guess I'll stand corrected
This is how I have setup 3570ks OCed to 4.5 with Hyper 212s for heatsinks and the normal idle temps are 29-31°C.
Ivy tends to run hot FYI
If you want dust to get all over your componets sure lol
Totally depends on how you have setup your rig. In my situiation, I noticed that keeping the panel off actually heated up the insides.
Ambient temeperature of ~38 C (panel on) versus ~42 C (panel off). Oh, and, I wasn't aiming any table fan at it.
I think there's no arguing that, for high end systems with a lot of fans and a well-thought-about airflow, you get the best results with the side panel on.
But I can imagine that a lower end system with only a few fans cools better without the side panel. That's just because the airflow wasn't optimal to begin with.
And yes, if you don't have a little over-pressure inside the case, get ready to clean a lot of extra dust.
This is what I learned from building an electrical cabinet as an intern last year. It's not a computer, but like mentioned before, it's just simple physics.
P.S. For the people with hot summers, there's also this "solution"
yah but that would probly burn out the fridge kinda quickly fridges arent made to cool things that generate heat constantly, i would sooner install a phase change cooling system into my pc
This can be compared to driving a car without the hood on, it will screw with the airflow, but if you supply it with air(drive, pref fast, the faster the better cooling), thats preferably colder, for example if you took off the side panel and put the open side in the direction of an open window, then yeah that would probably improve the temperature.
@eschippers, I wasn't quite serious with the fridge thing, but glad you pointed out the facts about fridges.
Remember your basic laws. Heat rises. There is no such thing as cold, only absence of heat. Depending on what you have inside and the air flow design of the case will decide if taking the side panel off is a good idea. If your case cannot handle the heat get it out of your kitchen. Get another case.