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My PC lives in a 5-sides-enclosed cabinet in my office... and it runs HOT. With the case glass on and while playing games, GPU and CPU were running out of control, despite case fans running full duty. Removing the glass sides allowed the system to run much cooler... but who wants to set up a nice new case and leave the sides off?
I realized that it was due to the mostly-enclosed nature of the space the PC was occupying. Despite a good mix of intake and exhaust fans set up in the case, the exhausted air just wasn't going anywhere, soaking the entire case in excess heat.
So... I added these fans inside the cabinet.
It made an unbelievable difference. I think just exhausting the air out of that pocket was all that was needed. My PC case now has all the glass back, and the case fans are more than capable again of controlling the temps inside the case, just as things should be. GPU and CPU temps are well under control.
A couple things to bear in mind:
- These fans are loud, there's no getting around it. Experimenting a bit tells me it's the grills either side of the fans that cause the noise (removing them helps a ton, but I don't want to run them that way). The actual fans themselves aren't loud but the air passing through the grills is quite noisy / whiny.
- I had to reverse the fans in order to fit the system as shown and have it pull air OUT of the enclosure. Not a big deal, just some screws to remove, flip things around, and replace. Very simple.
In order to avoid the noise of the fans, I've turned this unit down to the lowest setting... and they STILL make all the difference in the world, so that's a good thing.
I may replace the fans with some the 'brown' ones on the market to get the unit to run as silently as possible, but that's a bit involved, and if I recall, those don't move as much air as traditional fans, so I might end up having to go higher speeds with those anyways.
Definitely a good move, if you're looking to reduce the temps in some sort of cabinet, these make a remarkable difference. It fits well with our furniture setup.
10mo in and no issues. It fits well with our furniture setup. Looks even better in person.