Whichever method will most efficiently put moving air over the cooling fins of your heat sink. Mark Wagnon wrote:

I put together a new system last weekend and I've never had any concerns with keeping my system cool. When I put it together I used a heatsink and cpu fan (without thermal compound, I'm going to radio shack this weekend), but I picked up a case cooling fan. It's one of those that is mounted in the front of the case. My question is...WHICH way should the airflow be? Should it take air in through the front of the case and pass it back through the system, or should it pull air in through the back and out the front?

Yeah I know this is off topic, but I'm sure someone here can help me out.

TIA,

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On Thu, 10 Sep 1998, Mark Wagnon wrote:

. . . weekend), but I picked up a case cooling fan. It's one of those that is mounted in the front of the case. My question is...WHICH way should the airflow be? Should it take air in through the front of the case and pass it back through the system, or should it pull air in through the back and out the front?

The new fan should almost always blow into the case. The power supply fan is already exhausting air, so sucking more air out could even make matters worse depending on how many and where the "leaks" are in your box. It is not uncommon in sealed, industrial electronic/control boxes (and other equipment too) to have a fan inside the box for the sole purpose of circulating internal air to reduce "hot spot" temperatures and distribute the heat more evenly. In fact, blowing internal air directly at the hot spots could be better than blowing fresh air into the cooler end of the box depending on ambient air temperature, amount of air flow, hot spot temperature, etc. I've never used any more than a CPU fan/sink, but I have thought about adding one if I decide to overclock my CPU. In any case, what you want is air circulation at the hot spots, and if you have to suck instead of blow to accomplish that, then do it! Mike McFarlane - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e