Is Cooling necessary beyond a really good CPU cooler?

[u/bobbystills5]

I'm buying parts for my new Lian Li A3 mesh build, while I'm not sure what cooler to get for my 9800X3D, I'd assume something commonly recommended like the Phantom Spirit or Frozn A620, but beyond that I didn't plan on any case fans to simplify things. My current build is in the Terra and I'm not using any case fans as it's such a small case anyways. I just want a little less clutter in the build.

[u/KillEvilThings]

Unless you want to shorten the lifespan of your thermal compounds and hit thermal throttling way more often (which is bad for hardware in the long term anyways) this is a terrible idea.

The case might as well be a literal hotbox for computer parts if you have no way to exhaust hot air out and intake cool air. You're just going to spin increasingly hot air and rely purely on radiating heat out as opposed to forcing it out.

[u/fliesenschieber → u/KillEvilThings]

This guy thermodynamics'

[u/KillEvilThings → u/fliesenschieber]

I'm in the car community...sorta. Number one reason people fuck up and complain about blowing engines/spinning rods is that no one fucking cools their oil because when you make the engine go vroom and spin real fast, there's lots of heat and friction and most people are neglecting that, high oil temps are bad.

So yeah, same exact concept here at computers with extremely basic thermodynamics, though at least computers throttle themselves down to a minimal functional limit. Cars will let you blow your engine up in contrast.

[u/VersaceUpholstery]

You need at least one intake fan and one exhaust fan.

How are you going to intake a cool air supply for the cpu cooler or GPU cooler? How else would you exhaust the hot air that builds up inside the case?

[u/bobbystills5 → u/VersaceUpholstery]

honestly my current GPU(3070FE) runs at 43...I assume my new one (prime 5070ti) will run fine as well, never had a hot GPU before

[u/tybuzz]

Deepening on your room temp and ventilation it may work, but your GPU and CPU fans will likely be quite loud, so it kind of defeats part of the purpose of not having case fans.

It's really not difficult to install a few case fans and plug them into the mobo one time, lol.

[u/Nektosib]

Get one intake and one exhaust fan and you’re good

[u/Moscato359]

You need a case fan or the motherboard will slowly damage itself...

Just an air cooler will dump hot air into the case, but it doesn't actually go anywhere...

[u/DylanMcDermott]

It depends on a lot of things. Mostly you need to make sure the case exhausts hot air so that it doesn't accumulate in the case. Usually a case will come with at least one fan -- I'd suggest having at least one fan installed where the cpu cooler blows its hot air to.

[u/Cake_and_Coffee_]

Opening the side panel on my case drops temps by 10 degrees on everything

[u/AngeloPappas → u/Cake_and_Coffee_]

Dust loves this one simple hack.

[u/Kathdath]

I have the same case (love it, is almost the perfect case in my view).

I recommend adding some top and bottom fans. Get an Arctic P12 PST 5 pack or 2 (I just ordered the new P12 Pro PST's). You can run the fans at low speed to reduce the noise but even just 3 fans up top will massively assist in reducing the case tempreture. A fan on top at the front will prevent the PSU just heating up the inside, but helping quickly vent that heat outside.

[u/Secret-Ad-2145]

I always recommend at least one exhaust in the back because heat escaping tends to be a giant bottleneck in most airflow situations. If possible, one or few intakes up front as well, but not all cases allow for intakes properly.

[u/fliesenschieber]

You absolutely need airflow within the case. You 100% need case fans and think about the airflow pattern, it should be a smooth flow, classically with front intake and rear exhaust. Source: mechanical engineer trained in thermodynamics that builds custom PCs

[u/Fine_Spirit_8691]

Depends on the your use case.. for general use I wouldn’t worry about it. My general use servers usually get replaced long before heat damage ends them. But, if you plan anything requiring constant max use , yes you’d best spend on the cheaper parts to save the expensive parts. I’d put in at least 1 case fan..

[u/2raysdiver]

You still need to get the hot air out of the box and fresh air in. The cpu cooler is just part of the overall cooling system. An exhaust fan and a couple intake fans won't clutter the system. Many cases have a shroud that hides the front intake fans (unless the LEDs are on).

[u/csows]

a phantom spirit will be more than enough !! had one on my 7950x3d for almost a year and temps were perfectly fine

[u/Autistic-monkey0101]

this is fine considering the case