Suck or Blow

[Ollie30001]

Hey, is it normal for my CPU fan to suck air onto the heat sink instead of blow away from it? i thiught it would blow away from the heat sink to get rid of the heat...but it sucks air onto it..............?



Specs:

AMD Athlon 3000+ ~2.16
512 DDR RAM
128Mb ATI Radeon 9200 (Need a new card!)
120GIG HDD

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Turn it around, it should suck the hot air from the CPU and blow it away

 

[Didou]

Thread moved to proper forum.

 

[Raiders]

Do you mean the fan should draw air from MOBO to case or case to MOBO?? I maen down through or up through the Heat sink?

 

[Didou]

You should set the fan to suck air from the heatsink or blow air on the heatsink, according to the specifications of the manufacturor. If you're using the fan that came with your CPU, leave it as is. If you try to change it, you're responsible for whatever happens to your CPU.

Manufacturors design the heatsinks with an airflow in mind & nothing will garanty that will work well if you decide to change that.

Alpha heatsinks for example are designed so that the fan sucks air away from the heatsink but they have a cap on the top of heatsink so the fan can suck the air away in a more effective manner.

question
Hi i have a ALPHA PAL6035-A with a Delta 38 cfm fan. Should the fan blow air at the heatsink or suck the air away from the heatsink for best cooling .

answer
We did not test our heat sinks with the particular fan. But, in general, according to our tests, the induction type(air pulling) showed better results the the expulsion type(air pushing/blowing). This is because we used an intake cover to draw air through the lower part of the heat sink for more heat dissipation from the lower part of the fins. However, if some other heat source is located near the heat sink, heated air would come into the heat sink and affect the thermal performance, so the choice must be made depending on the environment. (2003.02.13)

Taken from the Alpha Website

 

[Supra]

Every CPU cooler ive ever used has pulled air from the top of the fan and pushed it down through the fins of the heatsink.

 

[Raiders]

Thats what i was thinking too

 

[Rick]

Most heatsinks (standard ones) are designed to have air blown onto them.

Some heatsinks are designed to have air pulled from them.

It just really depends on the heatsink. Something I might try is to try each one and use a program to monitor your temperatures.. Compare the temperatures and see which one work the best.