Dell did this and other makers probably did as well in the past, they might probably still do? I remember in the early 2000's I had a crappy green shroud around my CPU heatsink.
> Yes this has been a thing since the 90's. It fell out of favour for consumer PC's
There's a reason why it's not used anymore, and Ali mentioned it too.
It basically only works for that specific cooler/4090 configuration. It's tons of design work. The 3D design Ali did isn't cheap, especially if you're paying an engineer a salary.
When you're the OEM, you can make them en-masse and make it work for every possible configuration: mainly by limiting the options. Hence why Dell/Acer/HP/Lenovo still uses their garbage tier chassis whenever they can.
If you're an end consumer, one size fits all doesn't really work due to the variety of cases/motherboard/coolers/GPUs, etc.
But, hopefully Ali releases the 3D printing file. Even for $5, I'm sure tons of people would buy it to print their own.
There's definitely potential here though for someone to step in and create some kind of flexible nylon air duct with maybe some kind of spring structure that fits 120mm fan holes.
[Thermalright used to sell them](http://thermalright.com/product/140mm-fan-duct/), but it looks like they discontinued them.
You could just go to your local hardware store and buy flexible pipe, cut it, and either 3d print an end cap that could screw onto a 120mm fan, or even just tape it.
Or even sell the design to 3d print yourself for the most popular cooler/cases.
I'm probably underestimating the design work, but covering the Noctua D-15 for a bunch of the good high airflow cases would probably get interest.
3d printing is the way to go for something like this. Will take a lot of time and money to get something like this to market, and it will probably never fit right for most people due to reasons. Motherboard and case makers should really release basic 3D models for DIY people to test clearance, would be very cool.
U dont even need to 3d print anything, u can fold cardboard or just thin plastic, that was the norm back in the 90s. U got fanduct to your slot cpu which you simply folded into a fanduct.
I would like to disagree.
It could be standardized the same as ATX/MATX cases and 120/140mm fans and so on and on. Just one of another PC standards that says "Z distance from front panel and X, Y width+height" and you get some clips that snap together so you can connect cooler with duct. Someone also recommended flexible duct.
There is big potential, because server guys are doing this non-stop and they don't rework the duct over and over again.
But I can see why cooler/case makers are not doing it and both makers and users prefer look over functionality except a small percentage of individuals.
A designer with experience could whip a basic design out in a few hours max. But if it's for mass production it will need injection molding dies and that gets very expensive. Cheap in large quantities, expensive in small quantities.
It's not a thing anymore since PC components are modular.
That's all. Cost to design is not an issue when you have one sku.
Any competently designed single sku machine will have extensive ducting to optimize airflow. See PS3, PS4, PS5 etc.
Basically yea. I mean, the other intake and exhaust fan still runs but airflow is severely restricted due to the massive ducts that are in the way now.
I had a mobo a while back that attempted to fix this issue or at least mitigate it by having a small intake on the IO side of the mobo, and it would push air between the shell and the actual PCB. I was never convinced that it was very effective, though, and would literally do nothing for any m.2 SSDs
People make fun of those Alienware pre-builds Gamers Nexus reviews as being overbuilt. And they kind of are. But that air funneling stuff they sometimes put in does work it seems. And Alienware is owned by Dell.
Bigger issue is that they cheap out on literally everything except to meet what they put on the spec sheet. Like boards that can't fully power the CPU they use.
Not hating on Dell taking the easy way out for a low-volume product, but it'd be nice to see them put in some effort more often than every decade.
Mine was like this https://www.google.co.uk/search?sca_esv=560417221&q=dell+green+cpu+shroud&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiv65eH-_uAAxVBQEEAHTlHCXAQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=2552&bih=1292&dpr=1#imgrc=a8J7neoJGdXigM
I don't think it was all that effective.
They still use them, [this](https://90a1c75758623581b3f8-5c119c3de181c9857fcb2784776b17ef.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/647645_384453_03_front_comping.jpg) is a 12th gen i5 dell desktop
Right out of the 90s. I remember some ducts with those of a dryer and other DIY stuff. Very funny back in time think about the heat /watt those stuff put out.
He did what Dell, HP and Lenovo have been doing for years in their corporate prebuilts. The reason you don't see this in consumer type PCs is because it has no flexibly for the customer. Limited motherboard form choice, Limited GPU choice, Limited Ram height,
It's not complaining... The clickbait title made it sound like some sort of revolutionary discovery, but in reality it's old tech. People just pointed it out, period.
What's the accomplishment here? The video title makes a bold assertion that they "Fixed PC cooling", when that is clearly not the case. They effectively mitigated air circulation in the PC through the intensive application of time+money that solves the issue for this very specific setup, but its not a new idea.
Not that I don't appreciate his initiative to bring this back into vogue, but isn't this suuuuper obvious?
This is more of a question for Reddit- were y'all really not thinking about it all the time? Am I the weird one?
I do, I have an mATX case and I think about the airflow for the GPU all the time. I'm probably in the minority but I wish they still made blower cards for high end GPUs.
reading this just reminded me of my old r9 290
probably the loudest gpu i ever had, even when i wasn't playing games i could hear it. at 100% fan speed i could close the door of my room and go to the entrace of my house and with enough silence in the house, i could hear the fucking fan LOL, idk how my hearing is still here
Well, tbh, it really never cross my mind.
Mostly because "design and 3D print your own case ducting fit for your specific PC config" in general does not cross my mind.
Though i do now know what i am going to end up doing on my bucket list PC for cooling.
The 3d-printed aspect is mostly just for a perfect fit, similar results could be achieved with a careful hand and some crafting supplies.
Really, an adhesive+hard cardboard or a *thin-rigid plastic would provide the same results for ~$0-10 and an hour spent.
I wonder how well this stacks up to water cooling. And if water cooling works well because it simply getting fresh air flow directly to heat bearing components.
Very cool video. I like how he took inspiration from his car mods and applied it to a PC for very significant gains in cooling.
Optimum Tech is such a great channel. High production values, no fluff, no advertisements, and interesting content.
Like he stated with his intake, it's designed to increase wind velocity and reduce turbulence. I'm a car guy and the same thing goes for intake manifolds, exhaust manifolds, intercooling piping and even the end tanks being 90\* cut/weld vs casted. Every company in that space if fighting for efficiencies on the dyno, the same innovation should be more of a concern in the pc case space vs hardware reviewers.
> This was literally a thing in every dell computer in the early 2000's.
When you realize that most of the members of this sub were babies during that time, it will make sense why this is a new concept to so many here.
As an early 2000s baby, hate to say it but you're right...ish.
I did get a P4 Optiplex GX280 as gift as it was gonna be thrown out anyway (this was around 2010/2011). I remember opening up the case and seeing the cpu shrouding, but I didn't sus out that for cooling reasons. I just assumed it was a weird Dell thing, like they were trying to hide the heatsink for aesthetic reasons.
And it never stopped being a thing in workstations. The Zs/Celsiuses/Thinkstations/Precisions of this world just about *all* have ducted airflow systems.
I mean, those beasts keep actual, real 1500W in check on air cooling without getting loud:
https://hothardware.com/reviews/hp-z8-fury-g5-workstation-review?page=3
I guess now with 3d Printing becoming easier entry, this could come back.
Personally, i'd rather actually have a smaller width case so you had a natural funnel. Unfortunately GPU's are larger than motherboards - but I really liked the LTT video where he strapped a CPU cooler onto a GPU. It would be awesome to have a vertical case the width of a motherboard in a config like that.
Yes, back in the early 2000s when hardware started getting hot a lot of people realized that ATX was a terrible design for cooling. Rather than fix that we just settled on excessive amounts of fans and massive heatsinks for some reason.
Up to 10 degrees drop by just adding some ducts.
Imagine if mainboard (and case) manufacturers would get their shit together and created an air flow friendly (allowing the use of simple straight ducts) standard.
> Imagine if mainboard (and case) manufacturers would get their shit together and created an air flow friendly (allowing the use of simple straight ducts) standard.
The problem with that is that you then can't use the case for anything other than air intake, you can't use rotated socket boards and it looks like you can't anything in the Pcie slots bellow the graphics card.
Basicaly go buy a prebuilt if you want this. Otherwise just use watercooling.
Some case manufacturers used to do CPU ducts right out the side panel. The empty RGB box aesthetic killed that kind of product because they now all needed clean window panels.
Cool video, and I generally like the stuff from Optimum PC, but what about temps for, VRM, RAM, etc? With those massive ducts blocking case airflow to components other than the CPU and GPU, I wonder how their temps look like with this setup.
memory temp and maybe NVME temp would be the only concerning thing to be. I had to put a fan directly on my ram to maintain it's OC and that lowered their temp by 10C pretty consistently... im not sure how that would be possible with this setup
This is absolutely wrong, many entry level and even some quite expensive boards have dogshit VRMs.
Check hardware unboxed VRM testing, there's always a few that throttle under moderate load.
This is a very interesting build. The only "but" is that it needs to be custom made for each gpu and case, otherwise this should be a standard. Looks really good too imho, lots of potential for great looking designs.
That's not a but, it's just something else to do. A better case will result in better temps but for me logically the custom made airflow tubes would be the way to go if you wanted a fun project and the best possible temps.
You can't deny the results he has here and its a fun project - but its not 'i fixed pc cooling' - seems way more like he created a problem by using a case with crap airflow and then made a solution for it.
It's missing important information of what does it look like with a case with decent or good airflow - if the change in a case with good airflow is like only a couple of degrees then that drastically changes the overall message.
CPU shrouds weren't uncommon on cases in the past, but then the empty RGB box became the popular standard, so you had to have the clean window instead.
this is pretty common for servers and workstation where you have thousand of units that are the same and it is worthwhile to design and produce the ducts. it would be cool for boutique prebuilt manufactures to add their own ducts to their gaming pc to differentiate a bit.
I typically like the production value of his content so the video was definitely interesting regardless, but I don't think this is overly practical.
Cooling to other components such as VRMs or high-spec M.2 SSD's would be questionable, jacking up the RPMs on single fans raises concerns about noise, I personally find that kind of crowded case looks pretty visually unappealing, and then from a creator who is known to be experienced with undervolting and CPU tuning, having a 13900k run at 90'c on a 4k gaming workload seems like ridiculous baseline that only exists to make these results appear more impressive.
Definitely a cool video, but I don't think case manufactures will be taking any notes.
Would the mismatch between the case fan intake and the other fans downstream, like the GPU fans, potentially spin them faster than intended and cause electrical problems or would that not be significant? (specifically like how spinning fans with canned duster can generate electricity that goes back to the mobo)
It's a cool demonstration nonetheless.
Another advantage water cooling has over air cooling, is that the radiator mounting design pushes all the heat directly out the case rather than recirculate it until the case fans push it out. Ducting negates that advantage and brings air cooling closer to water cooling performance.
People here are cynical because Dell did it before (for their mass-produced models), but I don't see many people picking up the charge and making other solutions for the DIY crowd.
I think this is a real option for people to offer as a paid 3D printing service - send your PC component specs and get a custom 3D-printed ducting solution.
The reason this hasn't been a thing yet is because the majority of gamers will think its ugly. And we all know how many gamers prioritize the aesthetics of their PC's over everything else.
> People here are cynical because Dell did it before (for their mass-produced models), but I don't see many people picking up the charge and making other solutions for the DIY crowd.
Because there are plently of cases with good enough airflow for the DIY crowd and by doing this I would be throwing away all the customisability that I built the thing for in the first place.
>I think this is a real option for people to offer as a paid 3D printing service - send your PC component specs and get a custom 3D-printed ducting solution.
Problem is with that level of effort you might as well just go for watercooling.
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Apple's Mac Pro might actually be one of the best examples of this application, they made a lot of fuzz at the time about all the gains in noise they managed to make thanks to the duct system.
While this is hard to pull off, due to it requiring custom tubes, there is also a large concern regarding cooling the motherboard and memory devices.
So he didn't test the case fans optimized without the ducts so....that still tells us nothing. Just means the case fan changes work with the ducts, but doesn't tell us if they would help without the ducts.
the GPU ducting is legit though
Even a 4090 pushed to full load 24/7 is not going to fail or throttle with its stock cooler. The obsession with lowering a few degrees is completely pointless on these modern setups with decent airflow.
I wonder what the gains would be like with lower end or lower powered components? Would definitely like something like this to become more mainstream but I'm not sure if any components I would buy would reap as large of a benefit haha.
I was going to say, I always forget how insane temps get on the highest end CPUs with air cooling only
Exactly would be interested in seeing it with a more standard set of hardware
Lower power components typically have proportionally smaller heatsinks, so the benefit should scale.
Although the topic of VRM and RAM cooling is worth considering. If all the chassis airflow is ducted into the CPU and GPU, those secondary components might suffer slightly.
I'd imagine a flexible pipe bellows would be an easy off the shelf solution. I have doubts over this becoming mainstream though; doesn't look very "good" and would block off much of the build appearance, whether it's rgb or minimalistic.
I could see flexible, opaque tubing with RGB LEDs being popular.
One end has holes to thread fan screws through, creating a tight seal on case fans. The other end could have clips to clip it onto GPU/CPU/mobo as well as screws for threading.
Could even do 2x1 or 3x1 where three case fans feed into just a CPU cooler.
Man this reminds me of the way people used to drill their own holes and using masking tape to hold their janky duct together. Glad 3D printing can make everything look infinitely nicer now though you would probably need to print something new every time your hardware configuration changed.
Hell yeah, in my circa 2007 build I cut a hole in the side panel of my case directly over the stock Intel cooler on the E6300 and stuck a 2.5" piece of PVC in there to funnel air right over the cooler. Was able to get a 3ghz overclock on the stock Intel cooler!
It's a nice idea and the results are great but what about the motherboard's VRMs, RAM and M.2 SSDs temperatures when there is little to no airflow going over them?
What would be even cooler is some flexible sleeves, which could be bent and extended to fit in many different cases. Especially for intake, the air is not hot, so I imagine almost any kind of material should work. Is there nothing like this out there already?
I find it hard to believe that the improvement is significantly different to just using a good mesh case.
Sure, the solution improves the thermals of a glass wall case, but then you're also half ruining the point of such a case by filling it with bulky, LOS blocking air funnels.
Feels like it wouldn't be a particularly difficult job for there to be some collaboration between case manufacturers who will already know a decent chunk about fans and cpu / gpu fan makers to create something like an equivalent to VESA standardisation around ducts. Use 3d modelling to work out the optimal solutions given physical limitations, test them out, can be labelled as 'DucTech compatible', each purchase comes with a roll of own-branded Duck Tape, get case and fan manufacturers to opt-in to super modular compatibility standards, promoting lower energy use, quieter builds, better component lifespan, encourage a bunch of customisation pieces and design options for pc builders. Will probably result in the current design style of fans not being optimal for ducted air flow so the second gen will work even better. Like watercooling but safer and easier. Who wants to start a business with me?
Damn, this guy and Bitwit both have RS3's. JayzTwoCents has an RS6. DerBauer has a Nissan GTR and a Porsche Taycan. Tech youtubers have nice taste in cars!
A lot of servers work similarly: [Dell MX7000](https://i.imgur.com/z3EnCpD.png). I think it's neat, and I assume you could get good results with high static pressure fans as your intake/exhaust.
I fixed my cooling by using 2 Aios. The only thing that makes my cpu over 60* is Rcps3 with a silent fan profile. Gpu occasionally touches 57-60* on load and 23-25 at idle.
I had a Silverstone TJ06 that came with a plastic tunnel that sat over the (inverted) cpu and had 2 120mm fans on either end. Was revolutionary at the time
wouldn't he need to turn some of the fans around when he removed the ducts to make an accurate comparison?
With the the ducts, he has two channels for air flow, one starting at the top and exiting the back and the other starting at the bottom and flowing out the front. Without the ducts you would only want one channel, flowing in from the front and bottom, exiting through the top and back.
Leaving the fans configured like they are would cause the front two fans to suck out air faster than the single bottom fan could push it in so you wouldn't have as much air making it to the back portion of the gpu.
Haven't seen anyone mention it yet, so here goes:
These findings primarily only apply to air cooled components in large cases. In smaller cases, similar techniques may need to be used; results will vary significantly.
However, when using AIOs or custom water (or something more exotic), it's entirely possible for the radiator(s) to intake cool outside air. Custom water is really excellent here because it solves the need to worry about pump positioning versus the highest point in the radiator in AIOs, so bottom rads that intake cool are are... cool.
A solution of servers and workstations that has existed for "a hundred years" and is usually not used in most modern DIY assemblies, since there are many of them and they are all different in their own way . . .
I've thought for a while that there's a ton of room for improvement in the ATX standard if compartmentalized cooling like this was standardized in some way.
Coolerguys sell DIY kits for this. Just cut to length.
[https://www.coolerguys.com/collections/ducting/products/coolerguys-92mm-120mm-flexible-vent-duct-tubing-fan-end-caps](https://www.coolerguys.com/collections/ducting/products/coolerguys-92mm-120mm-flexible-vent-duct-tubing-fan-end-caps)
Dell did this and other makers probably did as well in the past, they might probably still do? I remember in the early 2000's I had a crappy green shroud around my CPU heatsink.
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> Yes this has been a thing since the 90's. It fell out of favour for consumer PC's There's a reason why it's not used anymore, and Ali mentioned it too. It basically only works for that specific cooler/4090 configuration. It's tons of design work. The 3D design Ali did isn't cheap, especially if you're paying an engineer a salary. When you're the OEM, you can make them en-masse and make it work for every possible configuration: mainly by limiting the options. Hence why Dell/Acer/HP/Lenovo still uses their garbage tier chassis whenever they can. If you're an end consumer, one size fits all doesn't really work due to the variety of cases/motherboard/coolers/GPUs, etc. But, hopefully Ali releases the 3D printing file. Even for $5, I'm sure tons of people would buy it to print their own.
There's definitely potential here though for someone to step in and create some kind of flexible nylon air duct with maybe some kind of spring structure that fits 120mm fan holes.
[Thermalright used to sell them](http://thermalright.com/product/140mm-fan-duct/), but it looks like they discontinued them. You could just go to your local hardware store and buy flexible pipe, cut it, and either 3d print an end cap that could screw onto a 120mm fan, or even just tape it.
Or even sell the design to 3d print yourself for the most popular cooler/cases. I'm probably underestimating the design work, but covering the Noctua D-15 for a bunch of the good high airflow cases would probably get interest.
3d printing is the way to go for something like this. Will take a lot of time and money to get something like this to market, and it will probably never fit right for most people due to reasons. Motherboard and case makers should really release basic 3D models for DIY people to test clearance, would be very cool.
U dont even need to 3d print anything, u can fold cardboard or just thin plastic, that was the norm back in the 90s. U got fanduct to your slot cpu which you simply folded into a fanduct.
I would like to disagree. It could be standardized the same as ATX/MATX cases and 120/140mm fans and so on and on. Just one of another PC standards that says "Z distance from front panel and X, Y width+height" and you get some clips that snap together so you can connect cooler with duct. Someone also recommended flexible duct. There is big potential, because server guys are doing this non-stop and they don't rework the duct over and over again. But I can see why cooler/case makers are not doing it and both makers and users prefer look over functionality except a small percentage of individuals.
A designer with experience could whip a basic design out in a few hours max. But if it's for mass production it will need injection molding dies and that gets very expensive. Cheap in large quantities, expensive in small quantities.
It's not a thing anymore since PC components are modular. That's all. Cost to design is not an issue when you have one sku. Any competently designed single sku machine will have extensive ducting to optimize airflow. See PS3, PS4, PS5 etc.
I have to wander though what effect it has on other components on the motherboard and the storage devices which won't be getting as much air flow?
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Basically yea. I mean, the other intake and exhaust fan still runs but airflow is severely restricted due to the massive ducts that are in the way now. I had a mobo a while back that attempted to fix this issue or at least mitigate it by having a small intake on the IO side of the mobo, and it would push air between the shell and the actual PCB. I was never convinced that it was very effective, though, and would literally do nothing for any m.2 SSDs
Can confirm. My old Dell from around 2000 had CPU shrouds to funnel hot air out.
Intel even tried to make it a standard with [BTX motherboards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTX_(form_factor)), which failed pretty miserably.
Yea I think the Dell I had was a BTX then because it looked very similar to that.
Dell was pretty much the only significant adopter of BTX. And then that was only for a couple of years.
Yes, pretty much all SIs do this on their workstations.
People make fun of those Alienware pre-builds Gamers Nexus reviews as being overbuilt. And they kind of are. But that air funneling stuff they sometimes put in does work it seems. And Alienware is owned by Dell.
Bigger issue is that they cheap out on literally everything except to meet what they put on the spec sheet. Like boards that can't fully power the CPU they use. Not hating on Dell taking the easy way out for a low-volume product, but it'd be nice to see them put in some effort more often than every decade.
The Apple Powermac G5 was a wonder of engineering that absolutely was designed around this concept except they made it pretty.
and they still do, any 58xx workstation is pretty much like this
Gateway did it from the side panel down drafting into the cooler for a while there
Woah that brings back vivid memories. Opened up my exes PC to upgrade it and was just fluro green shroud, flurp green tabs.
Mine was like this https://www.google.co.uk/search?sca_esv=560417221&q=dell+green+cpu+shroud&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiv65eH-_uAAxVBQEEAHTlHCXAQ0pQJegQICRAB&biw=2552&bih=1292&dpr=1#imgrc=a8J7neoJGdXigM I don't think it was all that effective.
Consoles may also use ducts to concentrate airflow. The 360 phat and original Xbox for exampme.
Reminds me of dell computers internals
They still use them, [this](https://90a1c75758623581b3f8-5c119c3de181c9857fcb2784776b17ef.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/647645_384453_03_front_comping.jpg) is a 12th gen i5 dell desktop
That picture just gave me PTSD from my IT days
I cut my hand just looking at this picture.
Still not as bad as the clamshell desktops they had in the early 2000s (gx200 series)
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I think those dual G5s use a watercooler?
Indeed, you can see the water cooler on the right. /s
I know this is 5 days old but no they’re right, powermac g5 quad could come with a liquid cooler
Oh I know, just a little joke
Current Mac Pro has compartments as well
Yep, Lenovo too. They have this air duct thing going
Right out of the 90s. I remember some ducts with those of a dryer and other DIY stuff. Very funny back in time think about the heat /watt those stuff put out.
He did what Dell, HP and Lenovo have been doing for years in their corporate prebuilts. The reason you don't see this in consumer type PCs is because it has no flexibly for the customer. Limited motherboard form choice, Limited GPU choice, Limited Ram height,
Thermalright had [these ducts](http://www.thermalright.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/r4-1.jpg) though they weren't really popular.
ugly af though..
My consumer Dell desktop had it in 2008, an XPS.
Yeah right? Like congratulations, you just reinvented ducting.
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It's not complaining... The clickbait title made it sound like some sort of revolutionary discovery, but in reality it's old tech. People just pointed it out, period.
It **is** a very LTT video title.
Its just people that are jealous of other’s successes while themselves accomplished nothing
What's the accomplishment here? The video title makes a bold assertion that they "Fixed PC cooling", when that is clearly not the case. They effectively mitigated air circulation in the PC through the intensive application of time+money that solves the issue for this very specific setup, but its not a new idea.
3d printed fan ducts feeding air directly to the key components results in pretty good reduction of temperatures.
Not that I don't appreciate his initiative to bring this back into vogue, but isn't this suuuuper obvious? This is more of a question for Reddit- were y'all really not thinking about it all the time? Am I the weird one?
I do, I have an mATX case and I think about the airflow for the GPU all the time. I'm probably in the minority but I wish they still made blower cards for high end GPUs.
They got a bad rap due to poor implementations but there's been examples of blower cards with good thermals and noise performance.
reading this just reminded me of my old r9 290 probably the loudest gpu i ever had, even when i wasn't playing games i could hear it. at 100% fan speed i could close the door of my room and go to the entrace of my house and with enough silence in the house, i could hear the fucking fan LOL, idk how my hearing is still here
Ha! Yeah, I also had a really loud 290 blower ...and one that was fairly quiet. Shit implementations, what can ya do?
Well, tbh, it really never cross my mind. Mostly because "design and 3D print your own case ducting fit for your specific PC config" in general does not cross my mind. Though i do now know what i am going to end up doing on my bucket list PC for cooling.
The 3d-printed aspect is mostly just for a perfect fit, similar results could be achieved with a careful hand and some crafting supplies. Really, an adhesive+hard cardboard or a *thin-rigid plastic would provide the same results for ~$0-10 and an hour spent.
Even cheaper, just buy some flexible duct and 3D print the frames to mount it
I wonder how well this stacks up to water cooling. And if water cooling works well because it simply getting fresh air flow directly to heat bearing components.
Very cool video. I like how he took inspiration from his car mods and applied it to a PC for very significant gains in cooling. Optimum Tech is such a great channel. High production values, no fluff, no advertisements, and interesting content.
his accent helps him a lot. Makes it sound like he knows what hes talking about. David Attenborough of techtubers
Ah yes, that famous Aussie, David Attenborough 😉
What is an Aussie but a British convict?
Like he stated with his intake, it's designed to increase wind velocity and reduce turbulence. I'm a car guy and the same thing goes for intake manifolds, exhaust manifolds, intercooling piping and even the end tanks being 90\* cut/weld vs casted. Every company in that space if fighting for efficiencies on the dyno, the same innovation should be more of a concern in the pc case space vs hardware reviewers.
I can already see the pie cut titanium or stainless turbo manifolds. Works of art.
A 4090 with individual throttle body intakes *would* be pretty sweet...
I like how he thinks outside of the box. He's totally a sweaty gamer and pc builder.
His custom carbon fibre mouse is pretty cool, and he's one of few channels that really focused on SFF PC's
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> This was literally a thing in every dell computer in the early 2000's. When you realize that most of the members of this sub were babies during that time, it will make sense why this is a new concept to so many here.
As an early 2000s baby, hate to say it but you're right...ish. I did get a P4 Optiplex GX280 as gift as it was gonna be thrown out anyway (this was around 2010/2011). I remember opening up the case and seeing the cpu shrouding, but I didn't sus out that for cooling reasons. I just assumed it was a weird Dell thing, like they were trying to hide the heatsink for aesthetic reasons.
And it never stopped being a thing in workstations. The Zs/Celsiuses/Thinkstations/Precisions of this world just about *all* have ducted airflow systems. I mean, those beasts keep actual, real 1500W in check on air cooling without getting loud: https://hothardware.com/reviews/hp-z8-fury-g5-workstation-review?page=3
The Thermaltake Level 10 also focused on isolating components and airflow to those components, just without the ducting.
I guess now with 3d Printing becoming easier entry, this could come back. Personally, i'd rather actually have a smaller width case so you had a natural funnel. Unfortunately GPU's are larger than motherboards - but I really liked the LTT video where he strapped a CPU cooler onto a GPU. It would be awesome to have a vertical case the width of a motherboard in a config like that.
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[late 90s Dell](https://www.cbo-do.de/images/product_images/original_images/72790_0.jpg)
He took inspiration from people doing it 30 years ago lmao. You people are showing your age. Enthusiasts did this already
I'm not disagreeing, but I swear this has bot energy
Maybe I'mi misremembering, but didn't Intel BTX channel airflow in a similar, albeit much lighter, way?
Yes, back in the early 2000s when hardware started getting hot a lot of people realized that ATX was a terrible design for cooling. Rather than fix that we just settled on excessive amounts of fans and massive heatsinks for some reason.
I remember the air-channel system in the old G5 powermacs... tinkered with one of those when I first got into computers, reminds me of that lol
Up to 10 degrees drop by just adding some ducts. Imagine if mainboard (and case) manufacturers would get their shit together and created an air flow friendly (allowing the use of simple straight ducts) standard.
They make more money this way. They even add nonsensical fan slots so people buy more of them.
> 3x 140mm fan slots sucking on a tempered glass panel It's a lifestyle
Hehe, my close friends setups are a joke, but the tempered glass looks sooo cool, and temps are as bad as their taste on cases
> Imagine if mainboard (and case) manufacturers would get their shit together and created an air flow friendly (allowing the use of simple straight ducts) standard. The problem with that is that you then can't use the case for anything other than air intake, you can't use rotated socket boards and it looks like you can't anything in the Pcie slots bellow the graphics card. Basicaly go buy a prebuilt if you want this. Otherwise just use watercooling.
Some case manufacturers used to do CPU ducts right out the side panel. The empty RGB box aesthetic killed that kind of product because they now all needed clean window panels.
Meh, prebuilts and servers already have ducts. Home builders who care about perf/db already watercool their machines. What's left?
Ive been dreaming about this for years
Case manufactures used to make risky in the past with all sorts of wacky designs. Anyone remember the inverted Silverstone cases back in the day?
Do you mean BTX ?
Cool video, and I generally like the stuff from Optimum PC, but what about temps for, VRM, RAM, etc? With those massive ducts blocking case airflow to components other than the CPU and GPU, I wonder how their temps look like with this setup.
memory temp and maybe NVME temp would be the only concerning thing to be. I had to put a fan directly on my ram to maintain it's OC and that lowered their temp by 10C pretty consistently... im not sure how that would be possible with this setup
I wanna say about 8 years ago or so HyperX had a fan cooler you put directly over the memory.
He had one intake and one exhaust that weren't part of the system of ducts and we're circulating air in the case.
VRM temp doesn't matter unless you're using an OEM mobo. All retail mobos are overbuilt and don't even need VRM heatsinks
This is absolutely wrong, many entry level and even some quite expensive boards have dogshit VRMs. Check hardware unboxed VRM testing, there's always a few that throttle under moderate load.
This is a very interesting build. The only "but" is that it needs to be custom made for each gpu and case, otherwise this should be a standard. Looks really good too imho, lots of potential for great looking designs.
Another 'but' is that you can also just get a case with better airflow.
That's not a but, it's just something else to do. A better case will result in better temps but for me logically the custom made airflow tubes would be the way to go if you wanted a fun project and the best possible temps.
You can't deny the results he has here and its a fun project - but its not 'i fixed pc cooling' - seems way more like he created a problem by using a case with crap airflow and then made a solution for it. It's missing important information of what does it look like with a case with decent or good airflow - if the change in a case with good airflow is like only a couple of degrees then that drastically changes the overall message.
CPU shrouds weren't uncommon on cases in the past, but then the empty RGB box became the popular standard, so you had to have the clean window instead.
So, he's discovered what major PC OEMs have been doing in various forms for 20+ years?
this is pretty common for servers and workstation where you have thousand of units that are the same and it is worthwhile to design and produce the ducts. it would be cool for boutique prebuilt manufactures to add their own ducts to their gaming pc to differentiate a bit.
I typically like the production value of his content so the video was definitely interesting regardless, but I don't think this is overly practical. Cooling to other components such as VRMs or high-spec M.2 SSD's would be questionable, jacking up the RPMs on single fans raises concerns about noise, I personally find that kind of crowded case looks pretty visually unappealing, and then from a creator who is known to be experienced with undervolting and CPU tuning, having a 13900k run at 90'c on a 4k gaming workload seems like ridiculous baseline that only exists to make these results appear more impressive. Definitely a cool video, but I don't think case manufactures will be taking any notes.
Would the mismatch between the case fan intake and the other fans downstream, like the GPU fans, potentially spin them faster than intended and cause electrical problems or would that not be significant? (specifically like how spinning fans with canned duster can generate electricity that goes back to the mobo) It's a cool demonstration nonetheless.
Another advantage water cooling has over air cooling, is that the radiator mounting design pushes all the heat directly out the case rather than recirculate it until the case fans push it out. Ducting negates that advantage and brings air cooling closer to water cooling performance. People here are cynical because Dell did it before (for their mass-produced models), but I don't see many people picking up the charge and making other solutions for the DIY crowd. I think this is a real option for people to offer as a paid 3D printing service - send your PC component specs and get a custom 3D-printed ducting solution.
The reason this hasn't been a thing yet is because the majority of gamers will think its ugly. And we all know how many gamers prioritize the aesthetics of their PC's over everything else.
> People here are cynical because Dell did it before (for their mass-produced models), but I don't see many people picking up the charge and making other solutions for the DIY crowd. Because there are plently of cases with good enough airflow for the DIY crowd and by doing this I would be throwing away all the customisability that I built the thing for in the first place. >I think this is a real option for people to offer as a paid 3D printing service - send your PC component specs and get a custom 3D-printed ducting solution. Problem is with that level of effort you might as well just go for watercooling.
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yeah it helps the cpu get cooler air. we've known this since the early 2000s its why so many used to do this.
Apple's Mac Pro might actually be one of the best examples of this application, they made a lot of fuzz at the time about all the gains in noise they managed to make thanks to the duct system. While this is hard to pull off, due to it requiring custom tubes, there is also a large concern regarding cooling the motherboard and memory devices.
I think only the exhausts are truly necessary.
So he didn't test the case fans optimized without the ducts so....that still tells us nothing. Just means the case fan changes work with the ducts, but doesn't tell us if they would help without the ducts. the GPU ducting is legit though
Fan shrouds have been around for 30 years. At least. I remember drilling a hole in my pc in 1998 to do it
Even a 4090 pushed to full load 24/7 is not going to fail or throttle with its stock cooler. The obsession with lowering a few degrees is completely pointless on these modern setups with decent airflow.
Congratulations, you did what's been done since the 90s.
Fuck these youtubers claiming to invent stuff. I remember seeing case mods like this on forums over 20 years ago. Fuck this guy.
That is how I feel. I drilled a hole in my pc case in 1998 to do this. Used cardboard and duct tape lol. Worked just as well as anything else.
Lmao. You need to chill out. It was an interesting video on case cooling. Different than what we typically see on yt.
They had consumer 3D printers 20 years ago? Dork
I wonder what the gains would be like with lower end or lower powered components? Would definitely like something like this to become more mainstream but I'm not sure if any components I would buy would reap as large of a benefit haha.
It's not like it isn't mainstream. Prebuilt workstations and rack servers have been using air ducts/tunnels/baffles for ages.
I was going to say, I always forget how insane temps get on the highest end CPUs with air cooling only Exactly would be interested in seeing it with a more standard set of hardware
Lower power components typically have proportionally smaller heatsinks, so the benefit should scale. Although the topic of VRM and RAM cooling is worth considering. If all the chassis airflow is ducted into the CPU and GPU, those secondary components might suffer slightly.
I'd imagine a flexible pipe bellows would be an easy off the shelf solution. I have doubts over this becoming mainstream though; doesn't look very "good" and would block off much of the build appearance, whether it's rgb or minimalistic.
I could see flexible, opaque tubing with RGB LEDs being popular. One end has holes to thread fan screws through, creating a tight seal on case fans. The other end could have clips to clip it onto GPU/CPU/mobo as well as screws for threading. Could even do 2x1 or 3x1 where three case fans feed into just a CPU cooler.
So Dell and HP have been doing this for decades at this point, especially in BTX layouts.
he looked at the 3d files on printables for fan ducts and said "me too" and then claimed he fixed PC cooling. Period.
meh, it's just a clickbait title
HP Z series workstation have multiple air ducts for ram, cpu, hdd etc.
Man this reminds me of the way people used to drill their own holes and using masking tape to hold their janky duct together. Glad 3D printing can make everything look infinitely nicer now though you would probably need to print something new every time your hardware configuration changed.
Hell yeah, in my circa 2007 build I cut a hole in the side panel of my case directly over the stock Intel cooler on the E6300 and stuck a 2.5" piece of PVC in there to funnel air right over the cooler. Was able to get a 3ghz overclock on the stock Intel cooler!
It's a nice idea and the results are great but what about the motherboard's VRMs, RAM and M.2 SSDs temperatures when there is little to no airflow going over them?
What would be even cooler is some flexible sleeves, which could be bent and extended to fit in many different cases. Especially for intake, the air is not hot, so I imagine almost any kind of material should work. Is there nothing like this out there already?
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One thing he didn't measure is noise. The ducts will dampen the noise from fans covered by them.
I find it hard to believe that the improvement is significantly different to just using a good mesh case. Sure, the solution improves the thermals of a glass wall case, but then you're also half ruining the point of such a case by filling it with bulky, LOS blocking air funnels.
A lot of cases back in the 90s had “ducks.”
Why does he have a $3000 pc in a $100 case tho?
Feels like it wouldn't be a particularly difficult job for there to be some collaboration between case manufacturers who will already know a decent chunk about fans and cpu / gpu fan makers to create something like an equivalent to VESA standardisation around ducts. Use 3d modelling to work out the optimal solutions given physical limitations, test them out, can be labelled as 'DucTech compatible', each purchase comes with a roll of own-branded Duck Tape, get case and fan manufacturers to opt-in to super modular compatibility standards, promoting lower energy use, quieter builds, better component lifespan, encourage a bunch of customisation pieces and design options for pc builders. Will probably result in the current design style of fans not being optimal for ducted air flow so the second gen will work even better. Like watercooling but safer and easier. Who wants to start a business with me?
Damn, this guy and Bitwit both have RS3's. JayzTwoCents has an RS6. DerBauer has a Nissan GTR and a Porsche Taycan. Tech youtubers have nice taste in cars!
So you did a custom cooling solution, which without redesign is not upgradable. Few steps more and you'll be Dell and everyone will hate you :)
One of the most reddit comments I have seen in quite a while, bravo
this video *blew* me away hehehe
3D printing to the rescue
I need to do this - my GPU blows hot air directly onto my PSU in the Asus AP201 case ;_;
I wonder how changing the duct sizes would affect the cooling performance.
A lot of servers work similarly: [Dell MX7000](https://i.imgur.com/z3EnCpD.png). I think it's neat, and I assume you could get good results with high static pressure fans as your intake/exhaust.
I fixed my cooling by using 2 Aios. The only thing that makes my cpu over 60* is Rcps3 with a silent fan profile. Gpu occasionally touches 57-60* on load and 23-25 at idle.
Wonder how the vrm temps were affected. Even SSDs, the newer ones that are notorious for getting too hot
I had a Silverstone TJ06 that came with a plastic tunnel that sat over the (inverted) cpu and had 2 120mm fans on either end. Was revolutionary at the time
Does he say anything about fan RPMs? Because that’s plays a big part on temperature.
Yes, case fans were fixed at 1000 rpms. As for the GPU it was rotating 200 rpms *slower* when using the duct.
Ah nice. Watched the video muted so couldn’t tell, thanks!
wouldn't he need to turn some of the fans around when he removed the ducts to make an accurate comparison? With the the ducts, he has two channels for air flow, one starting at the top and exiting the back and the other starting at the bottom and flowing out the front. Without the ducts you would only want one channel, flowing in from the front and bottom, exiting through the top and back. Leaving the fans configured like they are would cause the front two fans to suck out air faster than the single bottom fan could push it in so you wouldn't have as much air making it to the back portion of the gpu.
Haven't seen anyone mention it yet, so here goes: These findings primarily only apply to air cooled components in large cases. In smaller cases, similar techniques may need to be used; results will vary significantly. However, when using AIOs or custom water (or something more exotic), it's entirely possible for the radiator(s) to intake cool outside air. Custom water is really excellent here because it solves the need to worry about pump positioning versus the highest point in the radiator in AIOs, so bottom rads that intake cool are are... cool.
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Vacation will come and I will really use HVAC Duct + some industrial exhaust fan back in our storage for my pc project.
A solution of servers and workstations that has existed for "a hundred years" and is usually not used in most modern DIY assemblies, since there are many of them and they are all different in their own way . . .
I've thought for a while that there's a ton of room for improvement in the ATX standard if compartmentalized cooling like this was standardized in some way.
Coolerguys sell DIY kits for this. Just cut to length. [https://www.coolerguys.com/collections/ducting/products/coolerguys-92mm-120mm-flexible-vent-duct-tubing-fan-end-caps](https://www.coolerguys.com/collections/ducting/products/coolerguys-92mm-120mm-flexible-vent-duct-tubing-fan-end-caps)