Silverstone RL08(Inverted-case) Fan setup

[kurosagi01]

Hello all,i've decided to downscale my main PC to a mATX as i fancy something a little different and i want to gain back my leg room after few years of having the desktop sitting on floor.
Decided to go for the Silverstone RL08 which is an inverted case setup so the GPU will be sucking in air from the top, now this is all new to me with the fan setup, I currently have 2 front intake,1 bottom intake and 1 rear exhaust setup in my Fractal design which is normal, but I can't seem to wrap my head in fan setup in a inverted case.

SilverStone SST-RL08BW-RGB Red Line Mini Tower Computer Case

Buy from Scan - SilverStone RL08 Computer Chassis, with Tempered Glass Window, MicroATX/Mini-DTX/Mini-ITX, 2x120mm RGB Fans, Black/White

www.scan.co.uk

The fans i'll be using with the RL08 are the 2 included 120mm fans, Silverstone 2x AP142 140mm and Silverstone 1xAP124 120mm.
Looking at some photos of other people that have built in this case the setup I can see:
-2x Intake front
-2x Intake top
-1x Exhaust rear

Now I was just wondering if this is the best setup or be better to try experiment?
Cheers

 

[Chrispy_]

Have you aleady bought the case? It's pretty big for mATX and cooling is mediocre because of that inverted design - it works against convection and hinders the GPU which is by far the most important thing to cool in your PC - it uses the most power, spews out the most heat and will likely be very loud if it gets too hot. You want it at the bottom where the coldest air in your case is.

In a conventional design, the intakes of an open GPU cooler suck the coldest air from the floor of the case, directly in the airpath of the intake fan(s) and hot air is exhuasted out sideways towards the case window - where airflow from the front fans and convection get it up and out of the way of the GPU intake fans. With the GPU upside down at the top of the case, it is in the part of the case where heat rises to (through convection). It is also fan-up so heat exhausted by the GPU will immediately hit the case window and most of it will naturaly rise to where the GPU fan intakes are again.

Making the top vents intakes is the only way to really fix this issue, by overpowering convection and forcing a top-to-bottom airflow path. 4 intakes 1 exhaust isn't balanced enough, you will find that the four intakes are operating inefficiently because the single exhaust becomes a bottleneck and creates high static pressure for the intake fans.

Personally, I would make the top vents intakes, the rear vent an intake, rotate the CPU cooler 180 degrees (if it's an air cooler, and if the fan fits that way round) and have the front vents as exhausts. That means that warm air is blasting out of the case towards you, and the dust filter on the front becomes just a pointless restriction - so just throw it away.

In case you can't tell, I don't think much of the inverted design. There's a good reason they're not very popular and that's because they're a bit rubbish.

Edit:
Yeah, Kitguru reviewed a sibling case to this, and explains the difficutlies of cooling with the inverted design. As far as he could tell it was a downgrade over the standard layout but it's workable and worth if it you want to put it on the left side of your desk and still look in through the window:

If you haven't already bought the case, here are some alternatives from SCAN.

This is small:

SilverStone Precision PS15B-G Micro ATX Mini Tower Case

Buy from Scan - SilverStone PS15B-G, Black, MicroATX Chassis with Window, 120mm Fan, Headphone, Mic In, 2xUSB 3.0

www.scan.co.uk

This has optical drive bays:

Fractal Design Black Focus G Mini Micro ATX PC Gaming Case

Buy from Scan - Fractal Design Focus G Mini, MicroATX Computer Chassis, MicroATX/Mini-ITX, with Window, 2x 120mm White LED Fans, USB 3.0

www.scan.co.uk

This makes a lot of sense with a top-mounted AIO:

CoolerMaster MasterBox NR400 Glass Micro Tower PC Gaming Case

Buy from Scan - Cooler Master MasterBox NR400 (w/o ODD), Black, MicroATX PC Case, w/ Tempered Glass Window, mATX/mITX, 2x 120mm Fans

www.scan.co.uk

This is the same thing but with an optical bay and soundproofing instead of tempered glass:

Cooler Master S400 Silencio Steel Quiet Micro ATX PC Gaming Case

Buy from Scan - Cooler Master Silencio S400, Black, MicroATX PC Case, with Sound-Dampened Steel Panels, MicroATX/Mini-ITX, 2x 120mm Fans

www.scan.co.uk

 

[kurosagi01]

Appreciate the feedback and I wasn't keen on any of those cases but appreciate the suggestion and already bought it and yeah sounds logical for the front to be exhaust is not issue for me at all, I can live with that.

 

[sneekypeet]

In a chassis like this, I know it is a PITA, but you should test many configurations.

With an AIO on my CPU, I had no thermal issues when I reviewed that case, although, to be fair, my gear wasn't top-tier power drawing material either.

 

[tabascosauz]

I have the TJ08, one of the classic archetypes of Silverstone's inverted layout towers. It's mATX as well, and almost exactoy the same volume as the RL08. Only differences between the two are that the PSU is top mounted on the TJ08 so it should run cooler in the RL08, the lack of fans at the top in the TJ08, and the single 140/180mm in the front of the TJ08 versus dual 140s for the front of the RL08.

Only real issues with inverted layout are that GPU temps generally will be about 5C higher on average, and the close proximity to the bottom of the case or PSU maybe give you less extra space to work around a large air cooler (ie. reaching fan headers after the cooler is installed). However, that's where the RL08's top mounted fans come in, to provide direct airflow for the GPU. I'm not sure whether top intake or exhaust will yield better results, you might have to test that for yourself.

I have one of the warmest running axial coolers on the market, the shorter NVIDIA FE cooler, and my temps peak at 78C, a 3C increase over before (where I also had 2 A12x25s directly feeding it with cold air). The layout also helps CPU and VRM temps on air, while chipset temps may be very slightly warmer.

People who deride inverted layout as "rubbish" should probably spend some hands-on time with the cases themselves before jumping to conclusions.

 

[Chrispy_]

Since you already have the case, the only accurate answer I can give you depends on your CPU cooler and graphics card. The size and type of your graphics card has a large impact - blower coolers are very different for airflow design to open coolers, and some open-cooled cards are so wide and long that they act as a partition wall in the case and require you consider cooling as two seperate air chambers either side of the GPU.

If you're not going for optimum cooling then you can probably just leave it like a standard case - two filtered front intakes, one rear exhaust and let positive pressure assist convection by leaving the top fan mounts empty. Your GPU temps will be higher than necessary but nothing is likely to overheat.

So, are you using a tower cooler or an AIO, and what's your exact graphics card?

People who deride inverted layout as "rubbish" should probably spend some hands-on time with the cases themselves before jumping to conclusions.

My personal machine was in a TJO8-E for several years and I've built plenty of others in the TJ08-E because it was one of the best mATX cases on the market for a long time.

The reason the inverted TJ08-E works so well is because of the 180mm air penetrator - it is doing an incredible job of cooling despite the inverted layout. I ended up 'modding' mine because the long and wide 7970 I had created a deadzone between the GPU and the PSU with no active cooling. I modded the PSU fan so that it ran at a fixed speed all the time and then installed the PSU upside down so that it could exhaust that pocket of hot air from right above the GPU. It probably didn't do my PSU any favours but it did keep the GPU cooler and (most importantly) I couldn't hear its screaming fans any more.

 

[kurosagi01]

Since you already have the case, the only accurate answer I can give you depends on your CPU cooler and graphics card. The size and type of your graphics card has a large impact - blower coolers are very different for airflow design to open coolers, and some open-cooled cards are so wide and long that they act as a partition wall in the case and require you consider cooling as two seperate air chambers either side of the GPU.

If you're not going for optimum cooling then you can probably just leave it like a standard case - two filtered front intakes, one rear exhaust and let positive pressure assist convection by leaving the top fan mounts empty. Your GPU temps will be higher than necessary but nothing is likely to overheat.

So, are you using a tower cooler or an AIO, and what's your exact graphics card?

I have a Be Quiet shadow rock slim installed on the 3600x and GPU is a sapphire nitro+ RX 5700XT, the whole specs is in my bio just the motherboard is getting swapped out aswell for matx.

 

[tabascosauz]

My personal machine was in a TJO8-E for several years and I've built plenty of others in the TJ08-E because it was one of the best mATX cases on the market for a long time.

The reason the inverted TJ08-E works so well is because of the 180mm air penetrator - it is doing an incredible job of cooling despite the inverted layout. I ended up 'modding' mine because the long and wide 7970 I had created a deadzone between the GPU and the PSU with no active cooling. I modded the PSU fan so that it ran at a fixed speed all the time and then installed the PSU upside down so that it could exhaust that pocket of hot air from right above the GPU. It probably didn't do my PSU any favours but it did keep the GPU cooler and (most importantly) I couldn't hear its screaming fans any more.

I have my PSU set up the same way in mine, which makes it a little hot when the GPU is fully loaded, so I leave its fan to stay always on. Aside from the PSU, the RL08 is laid out the same way as the TJ08, so I don't see why cooling would be noticeably worse in the RL08, as it now has direct airflow through the top.

If this was the KL07 we were talking about, that would be understandable, because the front fans do not draw air directly through a mesh panel. But they do on the RL08. I also don't doubt that the LD01B you linked sucks at airflow. Just look at it; the entire front of the case is glass! But attributing its poor performance to the general Silverstone mATX layout is a bit misguided.

I ripped my AP181 the day I got my case because the bearing was screeching at an unbearable volume. I replaced it with a single A14 iPPC-2000 and haven't noticed any issues with airflow with either a C14S on a 4790K with a F12 exhaust fan, or even a Dark Rock Pro 4 on a 3700X with no exhaust fan as it is now. The single 140mm pushes plenty of air even at minimum speed on a silent fan curve where it isn't audible at any time.

I can only imagine the RL08 will be even better with 2 x 140mms in the front, and should be respectable even with 2 x 120mms.

 

[kurosagi01]

The rl08 has the psu mounted at bottom which is slightly different to the tj08.
The rear exhaust on the rl08 though will only take a 120mm fan.
So my thoughts are on setup wise:
2x140mm front
2x120mm top
1x120mm rear
Also as mentioned the 3600x has a shadow Rock slim and GPU is a nitro+.

 

[Chrispy_]

I have a Be Quiet shadow rock slim installed on the 3600x and GPU is a sapphire nitro+ RX 5700XT, the whole specs is in my bio just the motherboard is getting swapped out aswell for matx.

Cool. Then you should probably do what @sneekypeet says and test a few different configurations to be sure, but I would focus on positive pressure, max airflow to the 5700XT because the 3600X isn't going to make a lot of noise - it's only going to be pulling ~90W at peak load. It'll be more like 60W when gaming and cooling that quietly is a doddle.

The obvious priority is to have the two most powerful fans as intakes at the top blowing down into the GPU fans.
I'm pretty certain that running the rear as an intake and the front two as exhausts will result in the highest airflow down onto the GPU, but you will want to fiddle with the CPU cooler by either rotating the entire thing 180 degrees, mounting the fan on the other side of it, or simply reversing the fan orientation and having it in a pull configuration.

I would remove the optical cage if you're not using it, and put the 120mm intake fans at the top, 140mm fans as exhausts in the front and take out the removable dust filter in the front, it's not needed on exhausts and it'll just restrict the flow.

You might want to play with 140s in the top and 120s in the front too, but since you have an imbalance of 3 intake and 2 exhaust like that, you probably want to try and balance it as much as possible. The goal is slightly positive pressure to stop dust from collecting in all the gaps and crevices, but as close to zero pressure as possible because the flow rate of the intake fans will drop as the case pressure increases. I also think that the higher pressure of 120mm fans will be better at fighting recirculated exhaust from the GPU, making sure it goes down into the CPU half of the case.

The 'default' configuration of front-to-back might be worth testing - 2x140 filtered front intakes, 2x120 top exhausts, 120 rear exhaust, typical front-to-back CPU cooler orientation. It'll definitely give you higher GPU temps but you might find that the case is being cycled so well that the difference is small - with the benefit of double-filtered intakes to reduce dust-cleaning maintenance. With fan control in motherboard or software, you'll want to ramp up the front fans a bit and run the top and rear fans pretty slowly if you try this config though.

 

[Vario]

I have a inverted case, convection isn't a big deal. The air goes where you push it. I have top intake, front (behind bezel) as intake, and rear lower exhaust. My temperatures in game are usually 50*C for the videocard and 60*C for the CPU. Things run quite cool, considering this room I am in now is 28*C.

Edit: playing Mordhau now, 57*C for the video and 58*C for the CPU.

 

[Ethical01]

Wanted to share this with you all, I took the plunge and bought this case also! I get 41 degrees CPU and 56 degrees GPU when gaming! The concepts works and works very very well! Enjoy the pics!

specs: 2700 Ryzen / 5600xt / 16GB Ram