I would take a lot more empty fan extenders to bring the direct airflow to the front. But still he needs one more to seal the deal, because the top fan may be stealing some of it.
The top fans are pretty weak relative to the other fans, they are the Noctua NFA12x15 thin fan. They mostly remove heat from the VRM. There is such little space at the top due to the size of the NHD15S. I wanted the exhaust for the top because the VRM does get quite hot due to the fact that the processor is a i9 12900KS and it can draw a lot of power at full load.
Yeah, Noctua's not being daisy chainable is actually deal breaker now that comparable fans are now being sold. At least it's fixable using a fan hub or fan splitter.
Also what's up with the backwards airflow?
The backwards airflow seems to result in lower temperatures. I tried it both directions. The CPU gets fresh air straight from the back, the videocard gets fresh air straight from the bottom (I don't run the bottom filter so theres a substantial amount of air brought in). The difference in temperatures from back intake versus front intake is only a few degrees at best though.
Most of the hot exhaust flow goes out the front top Thermalright (orange) fan.
These Noctuas came from heatsinks, I bought a bulk lot of 20 of them for ~$8 per fan, they all had heatsink clips.
Its quite likely the front most horizontal fans are totally worthless but they look good.
Looks like the case design puts the mobo / PSU / CPU cooler in the way of mounting a topside radiator. Heat rises, so I've wondered whether a bottom intake / front-rear exhaust setup might be more effective. Be interesting to see what Valentine says though. I wonder what case that is.
The case is a Lian Li O11 Air Mini. The case is great except you cannot run a 3x120mm radiator, it doesn't have enough length for the end caps, they made the case slightly too short. The O11 Dynamic Mini is the correct length, despite similar name, very different case. Not sure their logic with that.
