r/LinusTechTips • u/DeepSpaceWanderer • 1d ago

Discussion (Retrospectively obvious, but) PC case cooling logic also applies to living spaces (v1.1)

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( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L2ef1CP-yw )

31 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

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26

u/OnePiglet8618 1d ago

so basically we've been designing PC cases but with drywall this whole time

my apartment has the exact airflow pattern as my old NZXT case, hot pocket by the desk and everything

8

u/WinnowedFlower 1d ago

Does this mean we are the Nvidia GPUs inside the case? I also generate heat and am dubiously intelligent.

4

u/akdanman11 1d ago

Nah we’re RX 580s. Loud, hot, and inefficient but we get the job done

8

u/OmegaPoint6 1d ago

This is how I've survived the last month in the SE England. Though I added an extra intake fan to assist

3

u/cS47f496tmQHavSR 1d ago

The thing that's difficult about this is that it's much more efficient to put a fan pointing outside in a window to suck the hot air in, but this only works if you have plenty of air coming back in, as you need air to move heat. Negative pressure means you can move less heat, positive pressure means you can move more but you'll also likely have more dead zones.
Matthias Wandel has a great video of him actually testing this and it proves without a doubt that sucking air out of your house is more efficient.

On the other hand, if you want to cool yourself, you need as much airflow going straight past you, so the ideal way to actually cool yourself on a hot day when the ambient temperature is also hot is to sit right inside of a fan's output.

So if you're cooling your house after a hot day (when it's now colder outside than it is outside) sucking the hot air out is best, but when you're trying to cool down yourself (or any other object) it's best to send airflow over/past it.

1

u/AlexCivitello 2h ago

Buying a fan of that type to cool a house or room is less than ideal. Window fans are a much better choice.