Tower vs downdraft cpu cooler

[Bill_Bright]

You were oddly specific there "any non-living object" ?

I have learned that on this site in particular, if I am not specific, someone will surely jump in to criticize me, often even, taking what I said totally out of context.

I said non-living because if I just said "human skin", for example, I have no doubts someone would jump in to correct me to say "dead" or "non living".

Side story: When I was in the USAF, we actually had a vehicle control officer (a captain, to be "oddly specific"! ) who told us to turn all our vehicles so they faced out of the wind to keep them from being affected by wind chill so they would start easier the next morning.

I prefer tower coolers - I believe they exhaust the hot air more efficiently.

Exhaust? As you noted, that is a function of case cooling. I really don't think that maters unless, MAYBE, the CPU side firing fan is in a direct, straight line between the case's front and rear fans. And that does not seem likely in most cases. IMO, either type cooler will create some turbulence in the flow through the case. That is not necessarily a bad thing since some turbulence is actually a good thing for effective cooling.

 

[A Computer Guy]

I have learned that on this site in particular, if I am not specific, someone will surely jump in to criticize me, often even, taking what I said totally out of context.

I said non-living because if I just said "human skin", for example, I have no doubts someone would jump in to correct me to say "dead" or "non living".

Well I can certainly understand that. I got excited for a moment because I thought you might have had a living example in mind - some kind of interesting science anomaly like earth cooling bacteria or something.

 

[Shrek]

Just to be silly... swamp coolers know all about the chill effect.

 

[nomdeplume]

I also expect my computers to tolerate a non air-conditioned room, but I'm normally below 90°F

The contrasting element here was processors that idle twice as hot with the A/C on. Which is something I suspect you will have to pay attention to with newer hardware.

 

[Bill_Bright]

swamp coolers know all about the chill effect.

Umm, not really. Having spent much of my younger years growing up in Tucson, Phoenix and Albuquerque, I know swamp coolers very well. Swamp coolers work through "evaporation" and actually lower the temperature of the air below ambient temps. Swamp coolers depend on dry air to be most effective. This is why swamp coolers tend to be ineffective during Tucson's "monsoon" season (June through September).

The wind chill effect works by air extracting heat from the skin faster than it would if no air. But ultimately, the skin temperature will never drop below ambient. Evaporation helps (a little) to speed up the cooling process, but again, the temp will not go lower than ambient.

 

[Shrek]

But ultimately, the skin temperature will never drop below ambient.

As do humans (sweating) and it can easily go below ambient; how do you suppose people survive at 120°F?

Really confused

• You say evaporation can take one below ambient for swamp coolers
• You seem to say that evaporation can't take one below ambient for humans

help me out here.

 

[freeagent]

how do you suppose people survive at 120°F?

In misery

 

[Shrek]

I didn't mean to get off topic.

 

[tabascosauz]

Have the Snowman CPU coolers been reviewed on here

tabascosauz ?​

The super cheap one? I don't think so. It also just kinda faded from collective memory once the $30 PA120SE became a thing. Why settle for less?

Even Thermalright quality control is pretty hit or miss, so the Snowman wouldn't exactly fill anyone with confidence either, and performs considerably worse.

 

[Bill_Bright]

As do humans (sweating) and it can easily go below ambient; how do you suppose people survive at 120°F?

Sweating, yes - that's evaporation. But not due to wind chill or from a swamp cooler - not when the body's core temperature is the point. The swamp cooler surely blows cooler air (if not thwarted by rain). And that "feels" good. So the swamp cooler makes us feel better because it is blowing cooler (than the outside ambient) air.

But swamp coolers also work by adding considerable amounts of moisture (humidity) to the air. The more humidity in the air, the less evaporation effectiveness becomes.

I do agree, this is totally OT. So I'm step out of this OT tangent.

 

[maxfly]

LOL - You are so eager to criticize another, you don't even understand what you think you are defending! We were discussing potential problems the "weight" being enhanced by the "leverage" created by tall tower coolers hanging off motherboards. That has absolutely nothing to do with how good (or bad) the C14 and TF2, or any other cooler is.

LMAO. Really? Trying to moderate a mod. Hilarious.

You do realize the c14 and tf2 are among the very best downflows money can buy right? Perfect examples for making comparisons and coming to intelligent conclusions in our, um "general, generic" topic.
Someone speaking from/with hands on experience is exactly the type of information this topic needs. "Isolated or anecdotal" it is not. You may not realize this but you come off as if you have an ulterior motive or worse yet...as if your trolling.

Which part of the above gives you the impression I somehow lost the gist of the conversation bill? The C14 and tf2 are nice big, quality, downflow coolers. Why would I mention that?Because they are exactly that, big and heavy examples, perfect for making comparisons to towers.

Connect the dots is fun.

I omitted your silly weight, leverage "hypothetical" because it's utterly baseless not to mention hypocritical. I guarantee you have never seen a MB pcb, CPU socket, anything, damaged by a tower heatsink, under any circumstances. Why? Because the pcb is reinforced where the backplate and hs make contact with the MB. You know, where the screw holes are located...the lame part is you already knew that but you were still willing to waste allll this time pretending bill juuust knows its gotta be a "potential problem". Cuz towers is big. LOL. Hows about no hypocrisy, as you pretend to be offended by these purported hypotheticals others use. While you, yourself are doing the very same but without the key ingredient, experience. Hilarious!

The rest of that post is simply your back tracking and your patented selective reading/quoting to cover your backside. Not worth my time.

If you would like to continue this conversation feel free to pm me bill. I'd like to avoid taking the thread off topic.

Exhaust? As you noted, that is a function of case cooling. I really don't think that maters unless, MAYBE, the CPU side firing fan is in a direct, straight line between the case's front and rear fans. And that does not seem likely in most cases. IMO, either type cooler will create some turbulence in the flow through the case. That is not necessarily a bad thing since some turbulence is actually a good thing for effective cooling.

Seriously? Doesn't matter? That's ridiculous. Towers generally exhaust directly through the rear case fan. That's kinda why they work so well...it has been illustrated in this very thread for you, see post #22. LMAO.
"Doesn't seem likely in most cases"? Wtf are you even talking about? 90% of cases are built specifically for that front to back case flow.

 

[tabascosauz]

Alllllllllllllright guys........let's get things back on track here. Don't wanna LQ entire pages, at least not yet.

Big Shuriken/NF-A15 has been a nice pairing for my admittedly low end build. I let the room warm up around 100 F and it still keeps temps low (34 C) with hardly a noise.

Big Shuriken is a little different design-wise than BS3. I think they also have a new version of the BS3 now called Rev.B to incorporate LGA1700 support and some other changes. BS3 caused me a lot of problems in the L5 as it intrudes on the barrel connector for DC-ATX PSUs.

Both demonstrate how big of a problem clearance can be for the smaller top-down coolers especially (bigger ones like C14S or that new Thermalright C-type cooler just bypass most of the problems from being big). The original BS had RAM clearance restrictions (as do coolers like Black Ridge); the BS3 gets rid of that problem but introduces new ones on the VRM heatsink side because it simply shifted the fins over there instead. The L12S and L12 hit both problems at once, both VRM clearance and RAM clearance are problems.

You could just avoid problems altogether by being small like L9x65 (or AXP90 I think), but then you lose the ability to run bigger fans and performance itself is limited. Or move things further away from the board a la the big C-type boys, but then you're increasing your height clearance, and underslung fans make for new problems.........tough times out here in SFF.

These days in ITX everyone is stacking VRM heatsinks and M.2 heatsinks like jenga towers. Causes a LOT of problems for anything bigger than L9x65 footprint.

In a perfect world I'd have another inch of memory clearance that allowed using Ripjaws or Trident Z. Basically any heat shield is a no go which greatly limits your options.

Thankfully, a lot of G.skill's good DDR5 (read: Hynix) lineup is in Flare and Ripjaws, which is quite compact. I hope they keep this trend moving forward. I actively stay away from any of their RGB fare anyways, they have possibly the worst RGB implementation on the RAM market (hardware programmed to default to rainbow puke, must either install their software and run at boot, or openRGB and run at boot and pray every time).

 

[sepheronx]

I go with downdraft because my PC's are itx console size PC's.

I have an arctic cooler 11 LP only because stock cooler is abysmal for my Intel 12400F. And I plan to upgrade so I may need to get something beefier.

 

[nomdeplume]

Big Shuriken is a little different design-wise than BS3. I think they also have a new version of the BS3 now called Rev.B to incorporate LGA1700 support and some other changes.

The original BS had RAM clearance restrictions (as do coolers like Black Ridge); the BS3 gets rid of that problem but introduces new ones on the VRM heatsink side because it simply shifted the fins over there instead.

I have a BS2 Rev.B and there is maybe .75 cm clearance for bare memory. Rotating is a non-starter since there isn't any offset to speak of. If height (pictured) jumped from 58mm to 83mm it would take effort to foul RAM or VRM. Might as well make that 83mm clearance to bottom of the heat pipes and throw a 30mm thick fan in the box to round off the package.

Think anyone but me would buy a 130mm - 160mm tall version of this?

SFF owners will cry but they will be a mere four tapered dremel cuts away from perfection. Me, I've got room to play with.

 

[LabRat 891]

In my experience over the years, a 'Tower' cooler will typically outperform a downdraft cooler, in CPU temps.
However, there are scenarios where the downdraft is necessary for motherboard/VRM cooling.

Example: a non-OC'd but 'mismatched' board and CPU combo. (Like, a 5950X in an A520/A320 board).
Glue some heatsinks onto the MOSFETs, use a down-drafting cooler, and you'll have a long-lasting budget workstation

 

[Greenslade]

The super cheap one? I don't think so. It also just kinda faded from collective memory once the $30 PA120SE became a thing. Why settle for less?

Even Thermalright quality control is pretty hit or miss, so the Snowman wouldn't exactly fill anyone with confidence either, and performs considerably worse.

How come the top you tubers say there so good

Brain is my fav Aussie you tuberAnd my fav UK Utuber Mike

I think the price for it has a lot to do with it.

 

[tabascosauz]

How come the top you tubers say there so good

Brain is my fav Aussie you tuberAnd my fav UK Utuber Mike

I think the price for it has a lot to do with it.

Maybe if you can find it for like, $10, sure......?

PA120SE is what, $30, $35? Absolutely destroys the snowman in every possible aspect. Currently the snowman I can find on AliExpress for like, $30. It needs to be 1/3 of that price to even begin making any sense.

I mean, if you have an old PC you picked up for free, need a cooler for it, and are unwilling to spend $30......I guess?

 

[Bomby569]

Maybe if you can find it for like, $10, sure......?

PA120SE is what, $30, $35? Absolutely destroys the snowman in every possible aspect. Currently the snowman I can find on AliExpress for like, $30. It needs to be 1/3 of that price to even begin making any sense.

I mean, if you have an old PC you picked up for free, need a cooler for it, and are unwilling to spend $30......I guess?

if you get a good price on the PA120SE it's an amazing buy, i know i have one.

 

[tabascosauz]

if you get a good price on the PA120SE it's an amazing buy, i know i have one.

TR took a while to bring its coolers up here (I had to go cross border for my FC140 back then), but now on Amazon.ca they've got the entire sub-$60 segment on lockdown. PA120, PA120SE, PS120SE, FC140, FS140......sometimes even cheaper than they are on Amazon.com. Usually eligible for Prime 1 or 2 day as well, bonkers.

The 120 dual towers all sit around the $40 mark ($30usd). FC140 a bit more at around $55 ($41usd).

Even niche coolers like the AXPs and SS135 are down below $50.

 

[Bomby569]

TR took a while to bring its coolers up here (I had to go cross border for my FC140 back then), but now on Amazon.ca they've got the entire sub-$60 segment on lockdown. PA120, PA120SE, PS120SE, FC140, FS140......sometimes even cheaper than they are on Amazon.com. Usually eligible for Prime 1 or 2 day as well, bonkers.

The 120 dual towers all sit around the $40 mark ($30usd). FC140 a bit more at around $55 ($41usd).

Even niche coolers like the AXPs and SS135 are down below $50.

i bought mine for 35 euros, dual tower, dual fan. Awesome value, great temps.

 

[Greenslade]

if you get a good price on the PA120SE it's an amazing buy, i know i have one.

I see that is £40 on Amazon it has two Fans Two fans v single. Fan what which one do you prefer?

 

[Bomby569]

I see that is £40 on Amazon it has two Fans Two fans v single. Fan what which one do you prefer?

mine is 2 fans 2 towers, not a single block. That's the PA120SE i have

for single block tower coolers, and i had a few, one fan or two fans is at best less 2c in temperatures, it basically makes no difference, tested it myself, and you can look reviews, they will all tell the same

 

[Greenslade]

TR took a while to bring its coolers up here (I had to go cross border for my FC140 back then), but now on Amazon.ca they've got the entire sub-$60 segment on lockdown. PA120, PA120SE, PS120SE, FC140, FS140......sometimes even cheaper than they are on Amazon.com. Usually eligible for Prime 1 or 2 day as well, bonkers.

The 120 dual towers all sit around the $40 mark ($30usd). FC140 a bit more at around $55 ($41usd).

Even niche coolers like the AXPs and SS135 are down below $50.

I could only see the Dual ones on Amazon.I see the

Thermalright Silver Soul 135 White Dual Tower​

£43 uk price * No reviews* I would not want a Dual fan anyway.Chance of getting a PC for free is like finding a needle in a haystack .Last year i did find an old pentium it did work but when i showed it on here i was told some of the caps had gone.

 

[Greenslade]

I didn't mean to get off topic.

No problem Shrek You make me laugh calling yourself Shrek.

 

[tabascosauz]

I could only see the Dual ones on Amazon.I see the

Thermalright Silver Soul 135 White Dual Tower​

£43 uk price * No reviews* I would not want a Dual fan anyway.Chance of getting a PC for free is like finding a needle in a haystack .Last year i did find an old pentium it did work but when i showed it on here i was told some of the caps had gone.

Dual tower and dual fan are two different things. SS135 is a dual fan with only a middle fan.

However, it does seem that European availability for Thermalright is very spotty compared to NA and Asia.

The no reviews part is not really relevant as long as it's being sold by Thermalright's distributor. For some reason for every cooler they always have a ton of different listings, from the same but different distributor (often numbered like Thermalright EUR 1 or 2 or 3).

40 quid for a PA120SE doesn't seem that bad, considering things in the UK have always been pretty poor exchange-rate wise. Hard to get it down to $USD equivalent.