- This video was supposed to be so simple.
How much better is it to go from a solid front panel
to a mesh front panel when you've got high end,
power hungry, hot components,
but then we got some really anomalous data.
How could adding Noctua fans all over our mesh case,
possibly put it in a position
where our GPU is running at the same temperatures
as this here hotbox.
The only way to find out,
is to use our new smoke machine.
Hit me with the smoke poof!
- You want a little bit of smoke or a lot of smoke?
- Smoke me!
- [Nick] All right.
- That is weak.
- [Nick] No hold on, it was doing better before.
(smoke machine sounding)
- That's all it's got?
I told you guys to get the good smoke machine.
- We did.
The other one was like 1500 bucks.
- Well anyway, there's a dead spot.
You can see it.
We'll get you more details in a minute.
And this video is brought to you by Micro Center,
who sells of course both solid front panel cases
and mesh ones.
So ultimately I guess they don't care which one wins,
which is good, no conflict of interest.
(upbeat music)
To kick off our intended video,
mesh versus solid front panels,
we turned to the NZXT H510,
in case that was notorious for looking great,
but having very poor ventilation.
Now, to their credit NZXT did listen
and gave us the H510 flow,
which is the exact same case just with a mesh front panel,
which means that should be fine, right?
Just drill some sweet speed holes
and bang boom you're off to the races.
Hmm, well yes, but actually no.
As you can see, despite the flows, improved flow of air,
our core I9, 12900K hits 100 degrees
on the package with the stock fans.
And even the mighty NHT 15 cooler couldn't attain
this 250 Watt beast
without us resorting to drastic measures.
We then swapped out the stock fans thinking
maybe they were the problem for some Noctuas,
which brought us down to 97 degrees,
which well, it isn't exactly amazing,
but it did at least stop the thermal throttling
that we experienced before
unlocking the maximum performance potential of our CPU
and demonstrating once and for all
that mesh front panels are indisputably better
than solid ones, which don't allow any air through them
no matter how many Noctua fans you install.
So why is this video only 1/3 over?
Let's talk about our GPU.
Yeah, we've got one.
It's an RTX 3090 and it did run a little cooler
when we switched over to the flow,
but only by a few degrees.
Then our 20 minute Fur Mark soak,
saw temps rise steadily to roughly 79 degrees
on the stock fans with the solid panel
and then 84 degrees with the Noctua fans and the...
Wait,
I know what you're thinking,
that can't be right.
But we triple checked, in both cases,
while the Noctua fans, markedly improved our CPU thermals,
they actively hindered our GPU thermals,
and there's nothing wrong with our NF-A 12's.
They're great fans and available
at your local Micro Center, by the way.
Don't forget, they sponsored this video.
So what the devil is going on here?
To start our investigation,
we're gonna dial things back a little
and use a gaming rather than a synthetic load for our test.
We looped our F1 2021 benchmark for 30 minutes
and we got better results,
seeing a drop of six degrees on the flow on our CPU
and seven degrees on the GPU.
Though that's a solid improvement going from solid to mesh,
but then again,
we swapped to our Noctua fans and the CPU improves
while the GPU heats up,
though at least our mesh case still did manage
to see better numbers than our solid front panel.
Guys, we are running exactly the same components
in all of our tests.
Yes, we built and rebuilt these PCs enough times
to need some refreshing ice cold water, lttstore.com.
And we double-checked our compatibility
with Micro Center's custom PC builder tool.
We're gonna have everything
in an affiliate link down below.
So what is going on here?
Let's take a look at our smoke test,
with our stock fan set up, it's not so bad.
Air gets pulled in,
wafts all around our components
with a good chunk getting pulled into our CPU cooler
and some circulating around our GPU,
then it gets exhausted out the back.
It's clear now, though,
that part of our problem is this huge graphics card
in such a small case,
it's almost right up against our fans,
and you can see that the air gets pulled in
and hits a wall causing turbulence.
When we swapped to our Noctuas, we thought,
"Wow, these things are so quiet,
we could spin them faster
while maintaining the same noise level."
But get this, at such a high RPM,
the turbulence becomes even worse.
And we got small pockets of air in front of,
and underneath the GPU that were just recirculating,
being heated up multiple times before going anywhere.
You can see our CPU cooler is still getting plenty
of fresh air,
so it's fine better than before even,
but it's pushed right up against our 3090,
not quite touching,
but not much of a gap for air to pass through either.
So almost nothing is able to circulate
around the GPU's back plate.
More fans, more better though, right?
We certainly thought so,
but since now we have all this air intake,
but no extra exhaust,
there's only one spot for a fan on the top of the H510
and good luck getting a regular thickness one
up there with our motherboard.
All this extra front fan ends up doing,
is putting even more pressure on the top stream.
And since it's blowing too fast for our CPU cooler
to keep up with,
we also get some turbulence at the top front of the case
where air cycles around for a bit
before it can be vented out.
Anything trying to come up from the bottom is instead,
constantly pushed toward the back.
So in a nutshell, you can pull in all the air you want,
but if it can't leave or if it passes
over a hot tower cooler before getting pushed down
into your GPU,
you're gonna have a pretty bad time
as the air heats up inside your case.
Obviously there are a ton of other fan configurations, cases
and hardware to examine,
so make sure to get subscribed
so you don't miss our upcoming LTT Labs content
where we'll be exploring this in much more depth.
All of the side crusting out of the way though,
it's time to revisit our original question,
mesh or non mesh?
We chose a bit of an extreme example as the H510
only has this tiny strip on the side for airflow,
but it really was a huge difference.
Look how little air we suck in through these side vents,
even with our intake heavy configuration,
even when we blasted our fogger more directly
at the side vent, it hardly helped.
So a mesh front panel at this point seems pretty obvious,
but PC building is often about balance
and your own personal preference.
The more power you're after for work or gaming,
the stronger the components need to be
and the hotter they might get,
so the better cooling solutions obviously gonna be the best.
On the other hand,
if you've got a PC with integrated graphics,
that's meant for light office work or light gaming,
you probably don't even need to think
about what kind of case and cooler you buy.
Whatever you need though,
you can find it at today's sponsor, Micro Center.
If their online builder tool, isn't enough,
just head inside and ask for help
from any of their knowledgeable staff members.
Their stores often have plenty of stock
even with the current chip shortages.
And they've recently renovated their flagship location
in Tustin, California,
to make it easier to find what you're looking for.
If you live nearby and you haven't gone in yet,
check them out.
New customers can get a free 240 gig SSD
just by following the links below,
offer valid in store only, no purchase necessary.
If you enjoyed this video,
maybe go check out our one-year airflow experiment.
In the stunning conclusion,
we see which fan configurations result
in the most dust buildup in your PC.