The volume of air a fan sucks in is exactly the same as the volume of air a fan pushes out. There can be differences in the particular path the air takes, but this is a function of distance from the fan and you're not going to see much of a difference with the heatsink attached directly to the fan. In short, the airflow across the fins of the heatsink is going to be pretty much identical regardless of whether the fan is sucking or blowing that air.

My god! She's gone from suck to blow!


Sorry, couldn't help it. Carry on. :)

Wow, THANK YOU. I hope giving a plus 1 to every post in a thread is not breaking some sort of rule of ettiquette, cause that's what I've done here cause I'm sooooooo, soooo very thankful. And we all know, that isn't much. Wish I could thank you all properly, but I don't think I can affort to gift everyone that's posted here a game.

Mmmmm, perhaps I could if I do it over time??? Maybe that's a better way of saying thank you.

Anyway, I just want to ask one more question regarding the cooler, and then I'll make my decision and move one.

I thought about turning the fan around and having it blow toward the rear as an alternative, but felt like, even though I have no idea, that this wouldn't be near as effective as having a fan blow it toward it. However, it is true that the volume of air passing through the fan has to come from somewhere, so maybe there's not much loss there??

Here's the question. I think we probably all agree that doing it that way loses something. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, we may not agree on that, but I think we do agree it loses something. So, the question is, would I be better of accepting that loss with this cooler or changing it out and either putting the Start Tech cooler in or the stock cooler that came with the CPU???

If there is disagreement on that, that's ok with me, I will take all answers, evaluate it as best I can, and make my decision. Again, THANK YOU ALL very, very much for this help. I know this has probably been the worst thread in the history of GOG.COM in terms of someone begging for step by step help. Sorry about that, it's just I don't want to make an errors if I can help it cause some of these parts are very expensive. And while my family seems willing to always come through for me, I don't want to have to ask for parts to be replaced because I screwed up if I don't have to. So, thank you for the patience in this ridiculously long beg for help thread.
lol

There's already been tears, trust me. No sirens yet, but there's still plenty of time for those too. lol When I finally turn this puppy on for the first time, if there is ANYTHING wrong, I'm gonna feel like I've made a mistake again. I sure hope all these parts are good.

In my opinion you'll be losing almost nothing in terms of cooling ability by mounting the fan as I suggested. The larger heatsink with more surface area to pass air over (compared to the stock cooler or the other one you're considering) will also far outweigh any minor loss of cooling potential you may see. Additionally, for overall cooling having your fans coordinated for efficient airflow tends to be more important than what any one particular fan is doing. For instance, standard airflow design on most cases is to pull in air from the front and bottom of the case, then blow out the hot air from the back and top of the case. It's keeping a constant supply of cool air passing over all the components that's the most important thing in all of this. Mounting a CPU fan so that it blows air from the back of the case towards the front of the case makes a bit of a mess of the overall air flow (making it less efficient), not to mention that the air you're blowing over the fins of the heatsink is warmer air from the back of the case (that's already been heated by other components), which is going to provide much less efficient cooling. In past builds I've seen CPU and GPU temperatures drop by 5-10 C just because I cleaned up wiring to allow for better airflow, so take this as evidence that overall airflow is a very important thing to consider.

A final thing to keep in mind is that once you go with whatever setup you decide on you can check component temperatures (both idle and underload) with a utility like Speedfan, then if you're unsatisfied with the temperatures you're seeing make a few tweaks to the setup until you see temperatures you're more happy with.

Here's a little something I stumbled on. Basically, they're testing a CPU cooler (picture on page 2) with different fans either sucking air away (pointing up) or blowing on the heatsink (pointing down). I know it's not the most recent of tests, but the technology hasn't advanced too much since then so that's alright. Apart from a few one-degree exceptions, the temperature is lower when the fan blows air through the heatsink. The difference is noticable if not particularly dramatic. I haven't got much first-hand experience in the field, but I'm going to say you'll be fine mounting the fan "the wrong way around". If in doubt, check your CPU temperatures with something like Core Temp when the build is finished.

Ok, thank you. This makes good sense to me, so I'm gonna go ahead and make that my decision and give it a go. LIke you said, if I have heat problems later, I can always find another option.

I tried moving it again, and it doesn't move very easily, but it will move. It won't, however, move up, so I'm gonna go with this, turn the fan around, and that should do me okay.

The air flow on this one is close to what you describe. There are two intake fans: One in the front (and it's very low, underneath all the bays) and one on the side (left side if you're facing the front of the computer) and it's very low as well. Then there are two outtake fans, one on the top, and one on the back, and it is positioned at the top of the back. So I think having that fan draw instead of blow will work out okay, and the air flow should be good enough because this is a VERY VERY open case. I hope I can come accross a camer and show you how much room there is for airflow. And I've got everything in. (Well, I haven't inserted the two graphics cards yet, was gonna wait till dead last for that). And this case even has a graphics card "dock" but I'm not sure I'm gonna utilize it and it looks to me like it will hinder airflow some.

Again THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU one and all.

Would it be ok to gift each of you a game over time?? Perhaps if you guys could PM me a game you would like, I could do that. If it's a $9.99 game, just know that this will likely put you on the end of the priority list as I would wait until the last moment to see if it went on special at any time. I really want to thank you all for all you've done.

The CPU cooler you linked to is a bit of a different case where sucking vs blowing actually will make a bit of a difference. This is because trying to suck air through that heatsink won't move the air at the very surface of the heatsink (by the CPU) nearly as much as blowing it will. This will apply whenever you're trying to cool a surface perpendicular to airstream of the fan; however, when you're trying to cool a surface parallel to the airstream a fan is pulling in or sucking out there's much less of a difference.

That said, even considering that once you look at the data the temperature difference are so close that I doubt you're even reaching statistical significance.

All right, fan turned around on brackets, reinstalled, will be drawing air through the heat sink rather than blowing it through.

Next issue (sorry!). My case has 4 USB 2.0 inputs and 2 USB 3.0 inputs on the front. To that end, it has three wires running, 2 USB 2.0 wires and 1 USB 3.0 wire. So, apparently each wire supports two of the inputs.

However, my motherboard only has 1 USB 2.0 input and 1 USB 3.0 input.

Leave it alone, and have two of the front USB ports not working??

Is there an adapter of some sort that will turn one motherboard input into two???

Or is there an adapter of some sort that will turn one of the wires leading from the front into a regular USB plug and I could simply run it through to the back of the case and plug it into one of the back panel USB ports?

I'm searching now, but if anyone has any good ideas/thoughts, be great.

And it's ok if it's not until Monday. I'm thinking I'm going to just let this go until Monday and maybe do some more reading/researching before I decide which way to go regarding this issue.

As far as I know there isn't any way to simply split a USB connection coming from the motherboard. There are some types of what basically amount to "hubs" that you can get to expand USB capacity, but from what I can tell these are rather hit-or-miss and can cause various problems (especially if you're trying to run devices with any kind of substantial power draw). Also, unless you're running a pretty funky setup the front-panel USB ports shouldn't be seeing a whole lot of activity (at least not activity that requires over 4 USB devices plugged in at once). My recommendation would be to just leave two of the USB 2.0 ports disconnected- figure out which wire connects to which ports, then determine which ports you're least likely to reach for when plugged in USB devices and leave those ports dead.

I haven't heard how you could split a USB connection either. I checked all the USB cable things on my local computer store, and they're out of ideas as well. As DarrkPhoenix stated, there are USB hubs - external devices that you connect many USB devices in, and then plug into a single USB port - which have problems of their own. Some have external power supplies so they can cope with power-hungry devices, but obviously having yet another cable lying around is not ideal. Some draw their power directly from the USB port, in which case you obviously shouldn't try to rechardge four phones through it. Transfer rates through hubs aren't much cop, either.

I've got two USB ports on the front panel and I hardly ever use both of them simultaneously. I think you'd have to be pretty committed to regularly use four or six, so just leave one 2.0 cable disconnected. Put a sticker or something over the dead ports if they bother you.

If you really need that frontal usb, you could use a pci to usb card with internal connection. Something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16815166001

Thanks again guys.

So, my choice is another PCI card or leave them unconnected I guess. Okay, I'll think about that and decide. I'm pretty sure I likely won't need 6 front USB ports, but I'm also pretty sure that I don't much like having "dead" ports on the front. I thought there was an adapter, but I can't find it either, that would change the end of one of them into a regular USB input end, and I could then run that wire straight through to the back of the machine and plug it into a USB port back there. I could've sworn I've seen that before.... but guess not.

Okay LAST ISSUE. (regarding wiring anyway, lol, sorry). Case also has a 1394 port in front, and I'm not finding where that plugs into on the motherboard either. Only thing that looks close wouuld be one labelled 'COMM'. Guessing that isn't it though.

So, irregardless, it looks like I'm going to have dead ports on the front of my case????

Firewire/iLink/IEEE1394 (known variously by all three names) and COM/RS-232/Serial port are... not exactly the same thing, beyond both being serial interfaces for connecting devices to the computer, I don't really see a similarity.

And it's also quite possible that your motherboard doesn't have a FireWire interface, even though the case does have one. Just ignore it.

Yeah, that's what I figured. So it looks like I'm going to have another dead port on the front of the case.

Hmmm, I researched pretty well regarding memory and CPU match for motherboard, I'll have to chalk this up to lesson learned on researching CASE to MB compatibility. I'm anal in that I just don't like dead ports. Even if I were never to use them (which I guess I wouldn't, lol, since I don't even know what 1394 is) it bothers me that a brand new computer has several dead ports. Just bugs me.

Next build, RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH CASE TO MOTHERBOARD compatibility.

So, maybe there is a 1394 to comm adapter???

Gonna search that now. Still can't believe there isn't an adapter to just plug the front USB wire into the back USB hole, cause I know I've seen that before. Guess in that case though the wire initially running inside the case must've already been a standard USB plug so that you had no choice but to run it to the back and plug it into an existing USB port. Only thing I can think of.

Or, that PCI card is an option regarding not having two dead USB ports.