"Wind-Tunnel" CPU cooling concept, opinions?

hey, just wondering if I can get some opinions on an air cooling concept I'm gonna try sometime later this year. I call it the "Wind Tunnel" because, well, that's the best way I can describe it.

I'm using a Raven 1 case, which, like any Raven series case, bases its cooling partially on vertical air ascension caused by the natural phenomenon of rising heat. Later on, Silverstone realized that it even so, it still really wasn't putting out any sort of force through the air coming out, it just went around things and stopped with very little resistance. So they came out with a line of fans called "Air Penetrators", which uses a fan blade sort of grill that goes in a direction opposite of the direction the fan rotates. This creates a peculiar effect where the exiting air, confronted with the barrier at its higher exit speed from the fan, starts to spin in the direction of the grill, producing a cyclone of air that's much more forceful than standard fans. I think it might hold some potential in that there's much more concentrated flow of air, so that there's more possible resistance in confined spaces like stack heatsinks, and that the fact that the air is moving in such a uniform cyclone might mean that the air is a lot more forceful and more resistant to obstructions (by that, I mean that if it hits an obstruction, it's more likely to flow around it and not just stop)

Demo:


So pretty much what I'm planning on doing is to take a couple of these fans and lining them up in series, so that each of them is blasting air and feeding it to each other. Specifically, I'm going to apply it to my Venomous X CPU cooler. There's already a high suction CM fan running at 7v mounted on the side panel adjacent to my cooler, and I'll be installing AP121 120mm Air Penetrator fans under the cooler, one on top of it, one at the top 120mm case exhaust. Therefore, airflow should technically work like this :

1. Cool outside air is sucked in by a standard case fan mounted on the side window.

2. Air Penetrator fan underneath the Venomous X (adjacent to the side panel standard fan) takes in the cool air and forces it through the Venomous X. (Possible hinderance here because a vertical stack might interfere with the cyclone effect of the Air Penetrator, but I think the sheer amount of high resistance airflow its outputting will keep the air blasting through it)

3. Airflow feeds Air Penetrator at the top of the cooler, which feeds it to the top mounted Air Penetrator.

4. Top mounted Air Penetrator ejects air forcefully to the top of the chassis. (Another possible hinderance is that the top of the chassis blocks airflow slightly, but I think the higher resistance and air concentration would keep it going to just make it completely through)

you think I might be able to hit any temperature improvements with this? just looking for opinions. I'll be sure to make a test first with a complete standard fan configuration before I do an AP121 run-through.

EDIT : last thing, I know in the demo that you can see that once the airflow hits a critical range, it starts to dissipate and seem to lose pressure. But in my case, I think the proximity of the fans to each other and the proximity of the top exhaust fan to the top of the case is within the effective higher pressure range of the fans.

EDIT 2 : Also, in the video, they demo the effectiveness of what I think is the CM fan I'm using too. it's the glossy framed one right before they show the Air Penetrator. Mine's running undervolted at 7v though, and it's a 2000rpm model, so that's...just shy of 1200rpm.


Edited by ablahblah - 04 Aug 2010 at 3:38pm

fans are pulling in cool air directly from outside actually, I mentioned there's a side panel intake fan (standard fan, the one I have is actually demo'd in the video right before they demo the Air Penetrator) directly adjacent to the Venomous X cooler. so it's the only fan who's airflow is not in series, but the entire purpose is to just loosely disperse cool air for the first tunnel fan to suck in and start off with.

for hooking them up to a CPU heatsink, I think it'll still be able to show promise by the fact that it's able to direct a much larger volume of air in one current. If I can adjust the holster for the fan so it hangs just maybe a millimeter off the cooler, I'm hoping it should be enough room to allow the air to spin up just enough to reach an optimal focus.


Edited by ablahblah - 04 Aug 2010 at 4:09pm

still, you did see how crappy that CM fan's air dispersion was, right? that's the fan I'm using as side intake, not the high volume fan. it's undervolted as well, maybe around 1200rpm, and even going through a dust filter (which also straightens the airflow to some extent). so any air that comes out of it is coming at probably a  low velocity, and is pretty much just floating out of it, not really at any noticeable pressure. entire point of that fan again is to just present the fan with a bubble of cooler air, nothing at high pressure, heh.

but anyways, can you recommend any sleeves? I've been looking everywhere for a way to put some clear distance between some fans, preferably if it can be found on amazon.com (I try to keep my vendors to a minimum) I agree that it'd be better to hang the fan off the heatsink just a bit. in the demo, it looks as if there's  about a 20mm zone right above the fan exit where the airflow really revs up and hits its maximum density and spin, so that's a sweet spot for me.

for the ambient case temps, I'm actually installing another air penetrator on the left side of the case...well, there's a 120mm version of the Air Penetrator, and a 180mm version of it. Raven's are the only cases which use 180mms as a standard, and they're mounted at the bottom of the cases blowing straight up into 3 zones, the HDD, CPU, and expansion area. In the Raven 1, being Gen 1 of the Raven series, there's only two: one that blows up at the expansion card slot area, but just misses the CPU area, and another for the hdds. but at least any air going to the left  that might mess with the GPUs has a clear exit path already. as for the right, well, it's just a CD drives, not much to worry about. there's probably a reason why there's never any exhaust at the CD drive section, right?


Edited by ablahblah - 04 Aug 2010 at 4:52pm

hm, maybe it'll just be easier for me to find the nearest computer shop and ask them for two identical fans to hollow out.

Alternatively, I can use some short (releaseable) zip ties and just basically suspend the fan from the venomous x a bit. you think that might work? the top fan I'm not so worried about, since any side blowoff from the cooler is taken care of by the dual 180mms in the case anyways.


Edited by ablahblah - 04 Aug 2010 at 8:23pm

for strapping, I'd passthrough zip ties through the fan holes and just tie them on tightly to the wire support on the Venomous X. shouldnt be too much shaking, especially since any shaking should just be distributed evenly and thus counteracted by the other end of the ties. whatever, that'll have to wait and see.

for hollowing out, I never understood it exactly. do you just cut off the supports for the fan itself? or do you also smooth it out, anything fancy?

i like the way you think blah. i'm probably going to be doing something similiar to this when i have DS build my pc. i'm going with the assassin case and i'm going to put the AP's on the middle and back fan positions. that way the middle one is blowing straight up onto the gpu's and the back one will blow straight up on the cpu which will have fans blowing in a northern direction already. i'm thinking this will be a pretty decent way to keep the airflow all moving north and give it some really good positive pressure throughout.

are you responding to me blah??

dude...you know there's not a lot of distance from the top to the bottom of that case. once you put two 480's in there they will be right above the bottom middle fan. and the CPU cooler will be right in line with the push from the bottom back fan so then you have the 2 cpu cooling fans blowing north and carrying the fresh air from the AP fan with them.

for full-length video cards, it'll help feed air, yes. the only thing is, the fan can't aid the cooler itself with cooling, it can only feed air to the fan. the CPU fan it's different because you can mount a AP right on it, AP121's namely. the AP181's aren't close enough to actually start contributing to forcing air through the heatsink. blegh, just look at the demo at 1:48, there's about 1 and a half fan frame's worth of distance where the air really gets turbulent, then it starts to dissipate. it's that area that you can really take advantage of by mounting an air penetrator directly next to the cooler, you can have the heatsink just at the tip of that sweet spot and have all that main force forcing itself through the heatsink. the AP181's can try to do that, but it's just not within the main range of the cyclone effect, so it'll just help a lot with feeding air and lowering ambient temps.

also...ha, I just remembered I still have a couple of older fans. I think I'll just hollow out that old noisy Zalman pair, put it to some good use for once


Edited by ablahblah - 06 Aug 2010 at 1:00pm

not really trying to SELL the air penetrators here, lol.

the only fan I might consider personally is just the 180mm fan under it. doesn't really matter, it's your own choice. the stock fans do fine, it's just the range of them isn't that good. the main purpose of the larger 180mm AP's is to just feed air to components. honestly, the noctua's already do a pretty good job, don't really need to change em. the ven x I have didn't come with fans, so I'm taking the liberty to try and optimize them as much as possible, heh.

change only the bottom one that's aimed at your CPU. the proximity of the GPUs and the HDDs to their own fans makes changing those fans irrelevant.

only other two that you can change that could possibly make a difference is swapping the topmost noctua fan to an AP because it might help the end airflow reach the top exhaust fan, but that's your choice.


Edited by ablahblah - 06 Aug 2010 at 2:54pm

no it wouldn't make anything uneven.

not really. the GPUs and the CPU are really the only one's that produce the heat. RAM does a bit, but the fan under the CPU has that covered already. GPUs are already exhausting a lot of heat through the top anyways, it doesn't hang around much. sure, they radiate heat, but in your case, it doesn't really make sense to swap out the fan because of that.

in MY case, it might make sense since the 180mm fan is way way below the GPUs. it's the first gen Raven, so obviously there are some bugs that got worked out in gen 2 (RV02), gen 3 (FT02), and gen 4 (RV03). \

still, I'd consider leaving that noctua fan be though. it's optimized for one of noctua's really good coolers, dunno if messing with that design is a good thing or bad thing.


Edited by ablahblah - 06 Aug 2010 at 3:30pm

changing the exhaust fan to an AP will make a difference only in the fact that it'll allow the exhaust air to get through the top grill more easily. your choice.

your system is just fine, lol. like i said, my case has a few flaws since it's the first gen Raven. the graphics cards aren't close enough to comfortably take in air from the 180mm fans, and the cpu area has no direct stock fan feed. even now it doesn't have one that conveniently aims up lol. so I'm trying to fine tune it, and optimize it for air cooling in the meantime.