Conclusions
Contents
When we published Part 1 of this comparative, we concluded that the better position for the case fan was at the rear of the top panel. Now, we saw that this can be true for that configuration, but with a hot video card installed, things are a little different.
You can see that the heat generated by the video card affects the CPU temperature, so there were good results with a side fan, but mainly with a two-fan configuration with one fan at the rear panel and the other one at the front panel, which offered the best cooling performance.
The GPU temperature was also improved by a single fan at the side panel. (It was not a surprise, since this fan pushes the air directly on the video card.) The chipset took advantage of the side fan, too.
The hard disk drive, on the other hand, benefits from a fan installed at the front panel (again, not a surprise). The temperature of the memory modules didn’t have a big influence on the case fans.
If we need to make one single conclusion, it should be that using one fan at the rear panel of the case and another one at the front panel can improve your CPU temperature as well as offer good cooling for the other parts of your computer. On the other hand, installing both rear and side fans can improve video card and chipset temperatures at the cost of a little higher CPU temperature.
Please keep in mind that different systems can behave differently because there are a great number of variables involved. That’s why there cannot be only one right answer to the question in the title of this article.