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EricHiggin on 25 October 2021
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JEMC said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

In the past, before window kits were so prevalent, the ability to install some side panel fans were pretty common, and often even came pre-installed as they were bigger than what you could find on the market on the time (generally 220mm-320mm). They disappeared as they didn't do much for the cooling, and worse threw off the cooling pathways for the front-, back- and top panel fans. In some extreme cases (ha!), removing or disabling the side panel fan actually resulted in such a better airflow that the temperatures dropped.

They usually helped with GPU temps, tho. But yeah, they did little for CPU or overall case temps.

That makes sense back then. Most cases were much more enclosed, so no where for the side panel air to go but make a mess of the flow internally. Add a bunch of front and rear fans to try and correct the flow. Dumb design.

I've got a couple similar Alienware knockoff cases. Quite enclosed. Both had side fans, one case feeds the CPU and the other the GPU. They both help, but the CPU side fan (which also has a cooling cone) only works well if you're not using a tower cooler. Both are 80mm so they unfortunately add more noise than a larger slower fan would.

That's why if they made a fairly open case, with lot's of mesh, they could likely get away with one large side fan in many, cases. You could likely get away without a CPU fan with the right heatsinks. Just let the top, bottom, front, and rear, exhaust. For high end rigs it's hard to say how well that one side fan would work exactly. You'd still want your CPU fan, but a downflow cooler instead of a tower cooler. Vertical GPU positioning would also be better this way. Could open the door to new third party GPU cooler designs for those types of cases.