PC Case...Positive or Negative Pressure?

This is regarding cooling for your PC.
In the UK we are in the middle of a heatwave.
Cleaning the PC of dust and clearing blocked cooling vanes is essential.
Then I thought, why is there so much crap in the PC case?
I reviewed my cooling method and modified it from a negative case pressure to a positive case pressure.
Why?
Negative case pressure sucks crap in through any available orifice in the case,
Positive case pressure blows hot air out through any available orifice, (you could name it the politician method couldn't you)
I've added an extra fan on top of the case so I now have 2 fans blowing air in instead of one fan blowing air out.

What do you think and what method do you use?
or
Maybe you never gave it a thought like me until today!

Also, what method of monitoring the temps could I use, I just ditched GeForce Experience because it's a resource hog.

I use HWMonitor by CPUID for monitoring temperatures. Free and easy to understand.

I continuously monitor CPU temps and utilisation/ core frequency and memory use using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility - and GPU temps, VRAM use, fan speeds, power consumption, etc. for my Strix-series card using the Asus GPU Tweak II software. These are both displayed on a second monitor.
Occasionally, I'll use CPUID CPU-Z and TechPowerUp's GPU-Z as 3rd party tools for good measure...

I should have mentioned, this is for my second rig with an i3 with a GTX 750ti in a basic unfiltered case.
My main ROG Strix 1070 PC has dust filters and is monitored by the ASUS software. With 16gig of ram, so not concerned about resourses on there.

So which software is resource friendly?

Thanks for the replies so far.

My laptop has several grill screens on the bottom which allow air intake for the motherboard ... the one grill in the back is blowing air out, sucking air out over the CPU heat sink, and and in turn clogging all the dust and debris on the exhaust radiator fins, restricting all air flow, with a clogging mat of dogz and katz hair, dust, and dander ... not so smart of a design

And in order to clean out the dust and debris you have to take out 48 screws, disconnect 12 ribbon cables, (breaking one miniature connector to the sound card), remove the monitor screen, and keyboard, remove the hard drive, flip over the motherboard ... all to get at the 5 screws holding the CPU air cooler radiator unit out, in order to vaaccuumm the dust and debris out, and apply heat sink thermal paste ... where there should have been a 2 screw hatch plate on the bottom of the laptop ... there was none ... my son says: "They din't want you in there anyway ... so the can sell you a brand new laptop when the old one clogs with dust and overheats".

There should have been one easy to remove big plate hatch on the bottom of the laptop, so by removing 2 screws, allowing the heat sink removal/cleaning process, the entire cleaning process could have been accomplished in 15 min ... Now I have a dead PC, with a broken wiring connector

============================================

The tech who serviced my desktop PC said there is no room for airflow as the entire unit is clogged with a mass of jumbled twisted wires ... so I removed the one side panel completely to allow total airflow into the case, and I have a pedestal fan blowing dust and debris into the open side of the PC case

When I feel the need for it, HW Monitor and CPU-Z and GPU-Z as occasional double checks.

Main rig runs pretty cool I only monitor if I hear the fans kicking in more than usual, as with the rather hot weather over the last couple of weeks.
Case is filtered with three large fans, front blowing in back and top blowing out.

Heatwave appears to be over here, windy and rain now, back to normal!

Taskmanager shows HWMonitor uses 2.5MB of memory and 1.5% of CPU on a i5-3570K, so hardly anything to write home about.

Sounds so familiar,

A few thoughts here, many folks will put their Computers on the Floor, well more accurately the Carpet or Shag Rug, this is the worst place to put a PC, remember how old TV's Screens would collect dust do to the static charge on the Screen/ Window of the Large Tube Screen, and you'd have to wipe or vacuum all the dust of your TV Monthly. Same applies to your PC it will suck in all the Carpet Fibers, Cat and Dog, anything else flying around in the area, so you want your PC on something besides the Carpet.

In addition, the Wires in your PC need to be Tied off with Zip Strips or similar, to get the wires compacted inside the best you can do, it's referred to as wire management, some computers come neatly tied and organized, others, well the components are just thrown in and they lay where they do, totally inefficient when it comes to air movement. Below is a link with Videos and directions of what you can use to help your air flow with Wire Mgt changes.........

https://www.google.com/search?q=Wire+management+for+Computers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

As far as heat, remember Heat convex rises, cold air Sinks to the bottom, so you want to get the heat out of the top where it might be trapped, and the cooler air coming in thru lower parts of P.C.

And when you work in your PC, make sure above all else, unplug the Wire to your P.C, wear a static discharge strap, you'd be most surprised how easy it is to Static Discharge from your fingers to Mother Board or something else, and blow a component,,,,doesn't take much, how do I know this, I did it once, and blew 150$ mother board, lesson hard learned, was green and didn't know about wearing static discharge cable......

One other thing, I usually try too, when possible to by a computer with Fans in the Top or high on the sides of the Case to get that last bit of Hot Air out of the Case.........Also, some cases are built with mesh rather than solid metal, so heat can escape better, all depends on what your likes are for the design of the Computer Case.........I never liked solid cases, because they trap heat more than a Mesh type case........But that's me......Doesn't mean you have too........Choice is always a proper concern when shopping.

positive pressure works better, it will keep things from trying to enter... where as if it was negative, like a sick room, it will keep everything inside.

pdkoester said:

positive pressure works better, it will keep things from trying to enter... where as if it was negative, like a sick room, it will keep everything inside.

Click to expand...

The air has to come in somewhere - you can't stop things from trying to enter.

The reason for preferring positive pressure is that it is usually fairly easy to have a removable filter on the exterior of an inlet fan. The air enters at one location, it can be filtered before it enters, and the filter can be cleaned easily. With negative pressure you would suck in air from all the (unfiltered) holes around the case and the dust would be deposited on the interior before the air gets blown out again.

I respect of dust etc. I read somewhere that positive pressure was the preferred because the cooling fans creating the pressure could each be fitted with filters to reduce the ingress of dust whereas with negative pressure dust is being sucked into the case through every possible opening the majority of which it would be impractical to filter. However in respect of cooling it was more to do with case/component layout and airflow than the air pressure in the case. I likewise use HWMonitor seems to do the job and free. Peter

The dust in your PC is directly proportional to the dust in your house i.e. dirty house = dirty PC!!

Rob.

I used to have 8 fans in my Corsair C70 (5 filtered intake, positive pressure). With so much air moving inside no amount of filters or positive pressure setup will keep dust away for long. A year ago I moved the heat outside altogether by mounting a 560mm radiator on top of the case with hoses running through two holes drilled in the rear.

Now there's just one intake and exhaust fan for the drives and GTX1070, which requires much less to cool anyway compared to the 7970 that used to be there. It's much easier to give the top of the rad a quick vac than cleaning the inside of the case and risk damaging components. They still maintain positive pressure otherwise you'd still see dust sneak in through and build up around all the small gaps.

nicky9499 said:

I used to have 8 fans in my Corsair C70 (5 filtered intake, positive pressure). With so much air moving inside no amount of filters or positive pressure setup will keep dust away for long. A year ago I moved the heat outside altogether by mounting a 560mm radiator on top of the case with hoses running through two holes drilled in the rear.

Now there's just one intake and exhaust fan for the drives and GTX1070, which requires much less to cool anyway compared to the 7970 that used to be there. It's much easier to give the top of the rad a quick vac than cleaning the inside of the case and risk damaging components. They still maintain positive pressure otherwise you'd still see dust sneak in through and build up around all the small gaps.

Click to expand...

That is a great idea Nicky9499. I agree as well, it is much easier to have a radiator block than to have alot of fans in the case. Also, alot less maintenance to deal with. I have a 200m exhaust fan at the front of my case and a 200m fan at the top of my case and a 120m fan at the rear for a good overall airflow,, but to unplug the fans and clean in between the fan can be alot. Also, the good thing about the radiator block is, it would allow for me to remove the front exhaust fan and put back the drive bays so I have the option of installing many drives.

SailorDan said:

The air has to come in somewhere - you can't stop things from trying to enter.

The reason for preferring positive pressure is that it is usually fairly easy to have a removable filter on the exterior of an inlet fan. The air enters at one location, it can be filtered before it enters, and the filter can be cleaned easily. With negative pressure you would suck in air from all the (unfiltered) holes around the case and the dust would be deposited on the interior before the air gets blown out again.

Click to expand...

couple of links, for your viewing pleasure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8EN3K-eaVA

https://youtu.be/jitCQtP4npY

The Origin video is rubbish, as expected from anything EA puts out. The lazy buggers didn't bother moving any of the fans at all, tested positive pressure *once* with an intake and exhaust fan right next to each other and paying no regards to dust management whatsoever. To say nothing of how they didn't install any kind of heatsink at all which is central to any airflow effort.