Does Power Supply Orientation Matter? - The Workshop
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
2,126 words · ~10 min read
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welcome back to the workshop today we're going to be checking out power supply positioning we've heard a bunch of stuff
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over the years uh with case feet do this without case feet do that with a
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basement do this turn the fan so it's facing up into the case cuz it can help
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cool your graphics card and all this other mumbo jumbo so let's try it out
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we're going to do a bunch of different scenarios we have a case that has a basement in it and we're going to have
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the fan going up and down clear winner here is probably obvious but anyways uh
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without a basement we will do the power supply fan up and down and with a
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reference uh rear exhaust cool graphics card and
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with an internal exhaust graphics card we're also going to take system
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temperatures and GPU temperatures and power spy temperatures and ambient
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temperatures and thermometers everywhere let's get
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offer code at the link below so our first test has the power supply in the
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bottom facing down so the fan is pulling up from under the case and exhausting
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out the back this should not contribute to the system's temperature at all but I
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want it for uh like initial test anyways
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for the rest of the system I have a 390x not overclocked but running The Crisis 3
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Skybox test which will be putting stress on it and the CPU which is running on
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top of a hyper 212 Evo the CPU here is a 4790 K which is overclocked at 1.35 Vols
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so it should be generating some heat as well and with an air cooler instead of a
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water cooler it should actually be dumping heat into the rest of the system
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too so this is a pretty hot air environment so now that we're good to go
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we're going to wait 10 minutes so everything can heat up okay so the first
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test is done our ambient outside the case right now looks like it's about
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25.4 I'm going to take this off of the front which is our thermal probe and
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then hopefully I can read an ambient temperature inside of the case looks
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like it's about 412 so that's actually quite hot inside
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of the case so just checking the numbers now it looks like the power supply is
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running at 32.5 de C at an RPM of about
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530 give or take a little bit the
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graphics card was running at about 87° C
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and the CPU was running at about 74° 72°
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C now we're we're going to try it with the power supply fan pointing up into
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the case but remember there is that basement panel there so I don't really
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expect this is going to go too well but we'll check out the numbers in 10
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minutes okay so the second test is done the outside temperature is at 25.5 de
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okay and then the temperature inside the case is looking like again it's right at
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about 41.5 we're getting the same temperature
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which is pretty much what I expected because the Thermal Zone in the bottom
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where the power supply is is isolated so turning it around shouldn't actually
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change anything we're just making sure that it doesn't Okay so checking out the
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power supply first it looks like it's about 40° C and we're running in fan RPM
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of 640 which is considerably higher than
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the 530 from before our GPU temperature
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during the test was sitting at right about 89° consistently throughout the
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entire thing and then the CPU was running at about
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67° so really the GPU and CPU had no
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change overall so we have now moved the system to the Define R5 I took the modu
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vents off the top so that it can breathe up there a little bit the fans are all
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plugged in and we are now taking the ambient temperature of the room from the
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side of the case because we like taking that right where the case is intaking
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air so we're taking it from the side because the front is a solid block the
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first test that we're going to be doing in here is the power supply pulling air
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in from the bottom and exhausting it out of the back with an internal exhaust GPU
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so a pretty standard setup the temperature going into the case in terms
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of of room Ambience is at about 25.7 de
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and then the temperature inside the system in terms of Ambience is about
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42° which is actually pretty damn hot now we move on to the software stuff we
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get to see that our power supply is running at about 584 RPM at a
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temperature of 35° C our CPU is running at about what looks
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like 67° which is on par with what it was
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doing before and our GPU temperature is
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actually pretty hot at 94° throughout the main testing
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area so now things get interesting we're in the same case same graphics card set
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up internal exhaust same tests all that kind of stuff but now the power supply
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has its fan pointed upwards some people say that this can help your GPU thermals
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or your system thermals as it pulls air out and then out the back of the power
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supply and the power Supply's temperatures will be fine anyway so
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we'll see if it actually does That Dun
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Dun Dun okay so for that test the room
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temperature was at about 25.8 de the
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system temperature we will grab right now yep that's 42° so basically no
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difference at all so the CPU is more or less at about 67° there is quite a bit
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of spikiness here also the GPU is still
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at 94° C now scrolling down to look at
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the core CLA to see any differences there it is also about the same it's at
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about 1040 in terms of core clock so it's not running at 94° but a little bit
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faster a little bit slower it's just it's doing the same thing but the power
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supply was a bit hotter so time to investigate more all right we have now
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removed our internal exhaust stricks 390x so I put in a 290 which should kind
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of you know take a little bit more power and probably cause a little bit more
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thermal destruction to the inside of the case so now 10 more minutes and we'll
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see how a rear exhaust card and a fan pointing upwards from the power supply
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manages to cool the whole system the temperature in the room right now is
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about 26° looks like our overall system
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temperature is way lower sitting at about
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29° the power supply is running at 36.5
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de with a fan RPM of 536 so the power
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supply is not even pushing that hard the GPU before I opened snag it was running
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at about 94° C with a clock speed of
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around mid 600s to Mid 700s and then our
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CPU is sitting at about 62°
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C okay so the last test is running right now the Skybox test is on the screen the
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rear exhaust card is installed and the fan on the graphics card is oriented
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pointing downwards so we'll see you in 10 minutes okay so the temperature in
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the room is a solid 25.8 de okay and
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then the temperature in the system is at about 29 28.9 29.1 de which is more or
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less what it was before so the internal
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temperature is the same power supply
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numbers here's a second okay so it's running at 41° cus but the fan isn't
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even spinning so it's not really trying that hard the graphics card is running a
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core clock of so it's 700 and something
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to 600 and something and the temperature
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is about 94° so there's no real difference there and the
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CPU is running at about yeah
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62 just before people ask for additional information the fan speed on both the
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graphis cards were both pinned at 45% so
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those should not have been changing and the fans throughout the syst system on
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both cases were pinned but I did use different fans again the system
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temperature and whatnot between the two shouldn't even really be compared their
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different cases using different fans whatever just isolate those tests so the
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information here is interesting and there's actually a few different results
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that you can come to depending on what scenario and what case type that you
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have so I'm hoping that these results are interesting to you some of them are
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fairly obvious like if you have a basement in your case don't point the
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fan towards the like roof of the basement where it can't breathe at
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all yeah the ones where it's like an internal exhaust graphics card it didn't
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really seem to help the graphics card which is what I was kind of help hoping
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for and it did increase the heat of the power supply one interesting thing that
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we did notice was with rear exhaust graphics cards if the power supply had
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its fan turned up into the case it actually did perform better in terms of
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the power supplies temperature nothing else not the system not the graphics
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card not the CPU nothing but the power supplies I'm assuming that's because
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there's air coming in through the front of the case that's fresh and nice and
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cold and is being pushed over top of the power supply and then out the back so
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it's able to breathe fresh nice cold air but what we did learn today is that it's
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not that big of a deal which is a very unfortunate and consistent conclusion of
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the workshop but there is different results per test and it's mainly based
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around the temperature of the power supply so while we're still definitely
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within uh what's safe for a power to run at you might be able to change your
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orientation or do something slightly different in order to fine-tune things
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because a zero overall impact in terms of your graphics cards performance and
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temperatures and whatever and saving a fairly noticeable amount of degrees on
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your power supply might not be a bad idea in terms of overall Longevity if
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you guys want to test it out and try it with your own graphics cards and your
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own systems with different setups and all that kind of stuff do it check it
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out on the Forum post that in the Forum thread for this video that will will be
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