Ok, so this is going to be extremely hard to descirbe my fan positions, but I will give it a shot. I am having a problem with temperatures, I know that air cooling isnt a 100% fix for temperatures, but on idle, my AMD Phenom (Triple Core) runs at about 35C with its stock cooler at about 75%. And, I think that it is an airflow problem. I have 8 fans in my case (not including the cpu/video card), which seems like overkill, but when I bought my case, it came with a crapload of extra fans (long story).

[IMG]http://i40.tinypic.com/6f17gy.jpg[/IMG]

Ok, so linked is the picture with my case. The fans are numbered 1-8.2 & 3 along with 4 & 5 are ziptied on the inside of the case. All four of those fans are blowing towards the back of the case. 1 and 8, the very front and back fans are blowing in the same direction as 2, 3, 4, and 5. Fans 6 and 7 are the two fans on the side of the case, and they are both blowing inwards. I don't think anything should be wrong, but can someone please help me understand as to why, even when the fans are at 100% that I still get high(ish) idle temperatures.

As far as Ive been told AIrflow wise the front vans should be blowing in with the back blowing out to create a nice flow of air, I have heard people say don't go with fans that don't blow in that direction I.E. the fans you have at the side, I have a big 12" Fan a the the side of mine and see no problems.

I remeber a few years back I had a problem with overheating and it turned out to be my room was just to hot, the fans were blowing but the air coming in was already hot, I stayed on Floor 12 on a set of flats. that may not be the answer but its something to think about, other than that splash out and get a Nice Heatsink and Fan cooler.

Don't forget the PSU fan. It too can help remove air from within the case.

Basically it might be partly an total air mass in v. total air mass out thing. You've got more fans trying to push more air mass into the case than out, so it's kind of like trying to push the water from a fire hydrant out of a garden hose nozzle. There's an upper limit even if the garden hose develops some leaks (like pushing air out through the CD drive slots and case panel edge fittings). If you double the input by adding another fire hydrant to the input, you're not going to see a corresponding rise in output from the garden hose nozzle.

You might try upping the rpms of the rear fan, changing the rear fan to a much higher CFM (cubic feet per minute) fan, or adding fans that output through the rear pci slots (although I've never liked those types of fans due to quality issues).

Some people also mod their case to provide additional fan or vent output from the top of the case. (It's actually not that hard to do with hand tools such as "nibbler")


edit to add: Just saw MoE's post and the 35C item. My poor vision originally interpreted your original post as 85C. I think that 35C is about half the maximum temp that processor can withstand, so you should be in very good shape. No need to make your system noisier. But, you should double-check on the AMD website just to be sure about the max temp using your processor's specific OPN ID. Use a program like CBID to obtain the detailed AMD CPU OPN info.

Adam, 35c idle for a cpu seems perfectly normal. In fact, it's a very good temp. Now for the airflow I think the best results are all front fans as intake, side fans intake, back fan exhaust and top fans exhaust.

First, thank you all who replied. I think that john may have nailed it, that seems completely logical, and I will try to keeps that one slightly higher than the others. Or, I could turn the farther back side fan the other direction...maybe both.

But, concerning the actual temperature itself, I know it is not incredibly high. But I noticed that my processor should be idling at around 31-32C. If I have 8 fans at 100%, plus the CPU fan at 75%, then I should be getting much lower temperatures. So yeah, I will turn some fans and see what happens.

Thanks again.