Visited a buddy's basement lab last week and noticed he had his fans mounted backward for intake instead of exhaust

He said it dropped his temps by 6 degrees ever since he flipped them around, has anyone else tried reversing their fan direction on a budget rack?

2 comments

2 Comments

felix82419d ago

My buddy Mike did the exact same thing in his garage setup last year with some old Noctua fans he had lying around. He was running a 4U chassis that sounded like a jet engine and his CPU was hitting 82 degrees under load. After flipping the two front fans to intake he dropped to 76 degrees and the noise went down quite a bit too. I was skeptical at first but I tried it on my own homelab with a cheap Rosewill rack case and saw a 4 degree improvement myself. The key seems to be making sure you still have some exhaust path or you'll just bake the components in recirculated hot air. Your mileage may vary depending on your case layout but it's worth a shot if you're on a tight budget.

kimreed19d ago

Those Noctua fans are overrated for the price, I'd take Arctic any day.