Intro to Air Cooling

Today, the crew would like to take a moment to contemplate the art of cooling – your computer that is. This raises a few questions: water or air cooling? Which case provides great airflow? Which water-block(s) should I get? 1 fan or 2 fan reservoir? Well, let’s back it up a little bit – I’ll take a look at air cooling for now and will tackle water cooling soon. Air cooling is satisfactory for most PC users out there, non-overclockers or extremists (in other words not us), and a great way to start optimizing your cooling system is with a decent case.  If you’re looking for an excellent chassis with superb air flow, my personal favorite (just look at it and you’ll know why) has to be the ABS Canyon 695. With three ‘temperature control zones’ the ABS Canyon 695 provides superior airflow, resulting in optimum cooling. As a ‘full tower’ case, the Canyon has plenty of room for anything and everything that you want to put in it (3X EVGA 295’s anyone?). One of these can be found on the fuel for my obsession: Newegg.com, setting you back 580 smackeroonies (totally worth it in my opinion).

-General Airflow Technique-

OK, I have seen a lot of crazy designs when it comes to airflow management (when I first started experimenting in computers, I used 12 different fans. I was young…), but my general rule of thumb is to keep it simple. Not too many fans, but enough to get some good flow (about 4 I would say), and try to get more air into your case than you push out [logic behind this: if you remove more air than you are bringing into the case, there will be less air to remove the heat produced by your precious cpu, gpu, etc. Therefore your computer will run hotter than it would (or should) otherwise]. I recommend cases with fans in the front of the case (as well as the standard back and side of the case) to cool the hard drives. Plus, it keeps things simple: air comes in one end, and out the other – a straight shot in and out, no crazy redirecting of flow needed).

ABS Canyon 695 full tower

As you can see, the ABS Canyon 695 has a simple airflow design as I described above. With 4X 14cm fans (3 intake, 1 exhaust) and  2X 8cm fans (exhaust) [notice that there is more air being pushed into the case than is flowing out? See? I’m not making stuff up.], I hope you can see why I drooled the first time I gazed upon this case.

Antec came out with a few good cases awhile ago: the Antec 300, 900, and 1200 (mini, medium, and full towers, respectively). Check out Newegg.com for great deals on Antec cases, as well as the featured ABS Canyon 695!