Push vs Pull vs Push Pull for Radiators and Heatsinks Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,240 words · ~6 min read
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so i'm in the middle of setting up my my heatsink test bench this is going to be
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an x79 platform with the gtx 580 as well
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as a vengeance c70 case because it'll allow me to easily mount tall air
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cooling heat sinks dual radiator sort of all-in-one units like the h-100 as well
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as single radiator all in one unit such as the h80 so the reason i'm setting
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this up is so that i can do some testing but while i was working on getting it
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going i pulled my h100 off of my test bench and i noticed something that i
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wanted to sort of talk about so i get a lot of questions about should i
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use my fans in push you can see this is configured and pushed the blades are
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going to be rotating this way pushing air through
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the fins of the rail through the fins of the radiator out the
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other side or do i want my fans in pull which is where you'd flip them around
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and have them pulling air through the radiator so i don't know if i have an
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example of that yeah see these ones are configured in push as well right here so
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they're pushing air that way or do i want to have my fans configured
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in push pull so that's where you actually have fans pushing on one side
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and pulling through the other side of the rad in order to
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get well greater static pressure so the answer to that is actually not that
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simple so there's a few different things to consider so number one
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is performance for performance push or
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pull sort of if you have two fans on a dual 120mm grad either on this side or
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on the other side actually it doesn't matter this has been proven time and
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time and time and time again it's been debated until
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you know you can debate it till the cows come home it's not going to change the
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fact that within margin of error it performs
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pretty much the same now when it comes to push pull a lot of people are taking
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sort of i mean especially it was fashionable back in the day and i bought some myself to grab something cheap like
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yate loon fans and then you know you do a layer of fans a layer of radiator a
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layer of fans and you can turn the voltages of those fans down
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in order to make them quieter even though you have more of them and you
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still get decent performance because
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the push-pull configuration allows more pressure to be built up by the fans now
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think about it this way guys if i take two fans that okay here these two fans
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are a great example because of the way they're positioned if i take these two fans they're spinning at the same RPM
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they're capable of moving the same amount of air i take this heatsink out of the middle and i put them next to
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each other they're not going to make the air go any faster like the actual
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cfm is not going to change what's going to happen though is if there's
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resistance in the middle then they're going to get the benefit of helping each
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other to move air through the resistance they're going to gain more pressure so
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people often ask me should i run in push pull i say no the reason i say that is
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because there are so many fans on the market that are optimized for pressure
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such as the sp series from Corsair although those aren't necessarily my
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favorite Noctua's f series are excellent scythe gentle typhoons are excellent
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silverstone air penetrators are excellent lots of good pressure optimized fans
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so you actually have all this pressure available to you by putting another
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layer of fans on the other side all you're doing is increasing the noise because remember you can't make the air
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go any faster in an open environment and if you already have a pressure optimized
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fan then you're good i mean if you had a
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non-pressure optimized fan so this older Noctua s series is a great example see
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that you could spin that at 10 000 RPM it would never generate any pressure
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because there's so much room for air to leak around the outside this is not a
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good radiator fan whereas you see these nice broad blades on the sp-120 that is
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an optimized radiator fan so anyway
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long story short is push-pull necessary i would make the argument no get a
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proper fan run in pull and there's a
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reason for that now when i was taking this radiator off of my test bench i was
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reminded why i normally configure radiators in pole
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see you can see the dead spot in the middle where the fan hub is and then you
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can also see where all that dust is built up this system was actually
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running for about a year on the floor so that's why there is so much disgusting
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dust buildup on it so why do i always run radiators in pole configuration
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because once you've got a fan girl on there and a fan on here without actually
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taking the fan off it is impossible to clean
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on the other hand whoops
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if you run a configuration like what i did with here let me just go over here
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i'm just gonna have to adjust my exposure a little bit there we go if you
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run a configuration like what i did with my thermo-chill here you can see this
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radiator was also run for a couple years and hasn't been extensively cleaned
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because the fans on the other side there those are my silverstone air
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penetrators are pulling air through it so it's very very simple to just go
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through once in a while and you know blow a can of dust at it or use a vacuum
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to clean it off whereas if the fan's in the way it is pretty much
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impossible to do it and you end up with something that looks like this and
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without taking the whole thing apart is very difficult to clean now this is easy
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when it's on a test bench like this but what if it was in a case what if i had
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it configured in push with the fans on the bottom here blowing out how am i
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going to clean that it's like in the middle of a case whereas if the fans are
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right up against the edge of the case and all i have to do is get in there and
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kind of go take the dust out of it and you are good
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to go so thank you for checking out my little sort of spiel about push-pull pressure
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fans non-pressure fans don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more
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unboxings reviews and other disgusting videos i mean look at that
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it's disgusting it's like cat hair i think it's mostly
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cat hair stupid cats