How to optimize your case airflow!

Hey Jay fan curve tuning would be a big hit with novice builders.

I'm genuinely learning a lot more about my system dust issue today than ever before. Thank you, Jay

Slightly positive pressure is the best as fans are designed to push against a "load". Load in this case, being the air mass. You can find a fan spec called "back pressure" and that indicates how much pressure the fan can create or push against. When you have a positive pressure inside the computer case, or any other electronic device, it also means that the impedance match between fan wings and the air is better and this reduces noise, sometimes by a considerable margin. I work with this constantly on my field of pro audio devices and optimizing the cooling vs airflow vs noise is a constant battle.

I've been building my own PC for about 30 years, but I haven't updated my rig in about 5 years. I love all the great content around airflow, parts, and this video specifically was very helpful. Keep up the great (educational) work.

I'm an HVAC Tech. and its impressive how much you know about CFM and Positive, negative, neutral pressure. I know it's because your in the industry but it seems as tho you've also done your homework. And this is why I love your channel. Thanks for the video Jay. Very helpful for people who don't know how to do this. I HOPE people know this and it didn't have to be said but DON'T USE YOUR VAPE to test for the pressure in your system. It's vapor, it will stick to the components. Use an incent, it will not harm the system. Just saying this cuz I know how popular vape is right now and people might attempt this and not realize its a vapor...it's sticky...its not good.

Would love to hear some more specifics on this topic. Such as: - Fan curve optimization - How an air cooler fan orientation would affect air flow - How each of the pressures affect the life of a fan - How RPM importance does or does not change with fans built for static pressure - And more I've always preferred air cooled systems over water cooled simply for the ease of maintenance. Water cooled systems can perform better and look amazing, but if something needs to be worked on, it seems that air cooled systems are easier. Thanks for the information, always appreciate it.

And, before using the incense, make sure it is, in fact, incense and not a leftover sparkler from the last 4th of July. :P

7:15 - whether it's set up as intake or exhaust, you will still have a certain amount of flow eddy loss with the grate next to the fan. Thanks for the great content!

I've always used cheap thin tissue paper to test pressure. Let it dangle flat in front of the gaps in your case and it will get pushed away or pulled towards the gap depending on which way the air is flowing. The hard part with case pressure is factoring in fan curves. Pressure may be very different under high load.

little side note about Positive Air pressure. it will turn your computer case into a mini clean room, provided you have proper dust covers on your intake. The advantage there is no particles can enter your system keeping it mostly dust and dirt free. The small particles and smoke (smoke is notoriously small) will still get in from the intake.

I just built my first PC and these videos have been so helpful! This looks like the case I bought as well, Fractal Pop, so the demonstration was extra valuable for me

A lot of people forget about their power supply fan. Depending on the PSU orientation, it may be pulling air from inside the case and pushing it out, so 2 in the front, 1 out the rear, 1 out the PSU, so it becomes close to neutral. Luckily some cases (like the one Jay is showing here) have it turned so the PSU intake pulls from outside and exhausts back out right away with minimal/no air from inside the case.

I always like when we revisits these topics because of all of the different case designs that keep launching. Thanks for this one!

This is why I love having an Aquaero in my build. The level of control and monitoring it gives you really lets you experiment and monitor everything together to see the effect of little changes to RPM. They also have the ability to make synthetic sensors from multiple inputs and use those.

Jay, you do a very good job of simplifying and explaining these type of things. Awesome video!!

Glad you mentioned RPM. In doing research for my PC build I was surprised to see RPM not mentioned much, I always thought that was an obvious solution.

Great content, as usual, Jay & Co! As someone who's tried to do the liquid cooling thing with 12th Gen Intel in a Dan A4 H2O case, I can tell everyone here that you still need good airflow for all the passively cooled components. Liquid cooling is badass for the components on the loop, but you still have to keep air flow over your board. This is especially true if you've got M.2 drives... I'm re-housing my system in an NR200 to have more room for airflow, and because I've managed to straight murder my boot drive. Live and learn, huh? That and stupidly (almost) lose almost 2 TB of stuff (had it all backed up already, but still miffed that I've got to go back to the drawing board). Having a computer building hobby as an OTR trucker isn't easy.

Really good and important basic information. Keep doing these, I bet there are a lot of people who can use this kind of tutorials. Keep 'em coming!

Great video Jay! Something I learned over the years in building maintenance and dealing with HVAC issues now and then plus PC building is about what your air is flowing through. That case and most of the ones I've had over the years have that flat perforated metal partially blocking the air flow to or from the fans. I cut that out and install the chrome metal finger guards so the air can flow freely and turbulence noise is reduced. None of those areas are visible so from the outside the case looks fine but everything inside stays cool and I can sleep with the PC running and barely hear anything. I know, that would offend the flashy RGB crowd nowadays with their clear cases so there would have to be some compromise between looks and function.

The incense is a clever idea to test air flow. Thank you for sharing creative approaches.