this video was supposed to be so simple how much better is it to go from a solid
front panel to a mesh front panel when you've got high-end power-hungry hot
components but then we got some really anomalous data
how could adding knock to a fans all
over our mesh case possibly put it in a position where our GPU is running at the
same temperatures as this here hotbox
the only way to find out is to use our new smoke machine hit me
with the smoke poof
smoke me that is weak
that's all it's got i told you guys to get the good smoke machine we did the other one
well anyway there's a dead spot
you can see it we'll get you more details in a minute
and this video is brought to you by microcenter who sells of course both
solid front panel cases and mesh ones so ultimately i guess they don't care which
one wins which is good no conflict of interest
to kick off our intended video mash versus solid front panels we turned to
the nzxt h510 a case that was notorious
for looking great but having very poor ventilation
now to their credit nzxt did listen and gave us the h510 flow which is the exact
same case just with a mesh front panel which means
should be fine right just drill some sweet speed holes and bang
boom you're off to the races
well yes but actually no as you can see despite the flow's
improved flow of air our core i9 12900k
hits a hundred degrees on the package with the stock fans and even the mighty
nhd15 cooler couldn't tame this 250 watt
beast without us resorting to drastic measures
we then swapped out the stock fans thinking maybe they were the problem for
some knock to us which brought us down to 97 degrees which
well it isn't exactly amazing but it did at least stop the thermal throttling
that we experienced before unlocking the maximum performance potential of our CPU
and demonstrating once and for all that mesh front panels are indisputably
better than solid ones which don't allow any air through them no matter how many
Noctua fans you install so why is this video only one third over
let's talk about our GPU yeah we've got one it's an rtx 3090 and it did run a
little cooler when we switched over to the flow but only by a few degrees
then our 20 minute furmark soak saw temps rise steadily to roughly 79
degrees on the stock fans with the solid panel and then 84 degrees with the
Noctua fans and the wait
i know what you're thinking that can't be right
but we triple checked in both cases while the Noctua fans
markedly improved our CPU thermals they
actively hindered our GPU thermals and
there's nothing wrong with our nfa-12s they're great fans and available at your
local microcenter by the way don't forget they sponsored this video
so what the devil is going on here to start our investigation we're gonna
dial things back a little and use a gaming rather than a synthetic load for
our test we looped our f1 2021 benchmark
for 30 minutes and we got better results seeing a drop of 6 degrees on the flow
on our CPU and 7 degrees on the GPU
so that's a solid improvement going from solid to mesh
but then again we swap to our noc to a
fans and the CPU improves while the GPU
heats up though at least our mesh case still did
manage to see better numbers than our solid front panel
guys we are running exactly the same
components in all of our tests yes we built and rebuilt these pcs
enough times to need some refreshing ice cold water ltteststore.com and we double
checked our compatibility with microcenter's custom pc builder tool
we're gonna have everything in an affiliate link down below
so what is going on here let's take a look at our smoke test
with our stock fan setup it's not so bad
air gets pulled in wafts all around our components with a
good chunk getting pulled into our CPU cooler and some circulating around our
GPU then it gets exhausted out the back
it's clear now though that part of our problem is this huge graphics card in
such a small case it's almost right up against our fans and you can see that
the air gets pulled in and hits a wall causing turbulence when we swapped to
our noctuas we thought wow these things are so quiet we could spin them faster
while maintaining the same noise level but get this at such a high RPM the
turbulence becomes even worse and we got small pockets of air in front of and
underneath the GPU that were just recirculating being heated up multiple
times before going anywhere you can see our CPU cooler is still
getting plenty of fresh air so it's fine better than before even but it's pushed
right up against our 30-90 not quite touching but not much of a gap for air
to pass through either so almost nothing is able to circulate around the GPU's
back plate more fans more better though right
we certainly thought so but since now we have all this air intake but no extra
exhaust there's only one spot for a fan on the top of the h510 and good luck
getting a regular thickness one up there with our motherboard all this extra front fan ends up doing
is putting even more pressure on the top stream
and since it's blowing too fast for our CPU cooler to keep up with we also get
some turbulence at the top front of the case where air cycles around for a bit
before it can be vented out anything trying to come up from the
bottom is instead constantly pushed toward the back
so in a nutshell you can pull in all the
air you want but if it can't leave or if it passes over a hot tower cooler before
getting pushed down into your GPU you're gonna have a pretty bad time as the air
heats up inside your case obviously there are a ton of other fan
configurations cases and hardware to examine so make sure to get subscribed
so you don't miss our upcoming LTT Labs content where we'll be exploring this in
much more depth all of the side questing out of the way though it's time to
revisit our original question mesh or non-mesh
we chose a bit of an extreme example as the h510 only has this tiny strip on the
side for airflow but it really was a huge difference
look how little air we suck in through these side vents even with our intake
heavy configuration even when we blasted our fogger more
directly at the side vent it hardly helped so a mesh front panel at this
point seems pretty obvious but pc building is often about balance
and your own personal preference the more power you're after for work or
gaming the stronger the components need to be and the hotter they might get so
the better cooling solution is obviously going to be the best on the other hand
if you've got a pc with integrated graphics that's meant for light office
work or light gaming you probably don't even need to think about what kind of
case and cooler you buy whatever you need though you can find it
at today's sponsor micro center if their online builder tool isn't enough just
head inside and ask for help from any of their knowledgeable staff members their
stores often have plenty of stock even with the current chip shortages and they
recently renovated their flagship location in tustin california to make it
easier to find what you're looking for if you live nearby and you haven't gone
in yet check them out new customers can get a free 240 gig SSD just by following
the links below offer valid in store only no purchase necessary if you
enjoyed this video maybe go check out our one year airflow experiment in the
stunning conclusion we see which fan configurations result in the most dust
buildup in your pc