Do you want to have fans blowing in or out of your computer case?

I have an HP pavilion computer. I bought a sapphire radeon hd 4850 for it and i want to put an extra fan in my computer because I want to keep the card running cool. Do I put the fan in so it will suck hot air out or make it blow cool air inDo you want to have fans blowing in or out of your computer case?
Out.





That way it pulls cooler room air (through the vents...keep them clean!) across the components that get hot...Do you want to have fans blowing in or out of your computer case?
Let it suck the hot air out :-)
You want a combination of both, to create a current. For example, my case has one on the top blowing down, one in the back and one on the side blowing out to move the heat out. If you have two fans blowing out, your not getting fresh air into the case to transfer heat out , if you have two blowing in, the heat won't move at all.
you want positive air flow in your case....in order to achieve that you need fans pulling air in and fans exhausting air out.....





you say you want to put a extra fan in but you don't say where....if its in the front you want the fan to be pulling air in.....i assume the case has a rear exhaust fan already and that will be pulling hot air out....if the fan you bought is going on the side panel you want the fan pulling cool air in to give the video card some extra air, that also cools the motherboard better somewhat to,like the north bridge and the ram plus the cpu fan will draw some of that air in also........if you are gonna put the fan at the top of the case you want that to exhaust air out also.....





so the typical fan arrangement for keeping a case cool with positive air flow would be like this.....this is my set up.......





2--120mm fans in the front bezel pulling air in, 1--120mm fan for the rear exhaust pulling air out,1--120mm side panel fan pulling cool air in and 1 140mm top fan exhausting air out the top of the case....i also has a xigmatek s1283 cpu cooler with a scythe 120mm fan blowing air through the heatsink and out the top exhaust fan....you can run it out the back but i found sending it out the top of the case works a lot better.....keeps my overclocked phenom II x4 955@3.82ghz nice and cool at 32c idle and 46c underload gaming......and my 4870 runs a 48c idle and 64c underload gaming.....





I realize you cant put that many fans in a prebuilt but that's the type of air flow you want....all fans are 120mm antec tri cool fans that push a lot of air.........








Scott
You wan the fan to blow out