Open the Case and Cool the PC with a Table Fan, Does it Work?

The premise is the following: we remove the left side cover of the PC case, so that the motherboard, graphics card and other components are exposed, and using a large table or floor fan, we point it directly inside out of the box so that it pushes a lot of fresh air inside. In theory this should cool all internal hardware pretty well, right? Let’s check it out.

Using a table fan to cool the PC

In our case, and since we have the PC case on the table, what we have used is a standing fan, more specifically this one:

This is a fairly powerful stand fan, and even in the low noise “Silent” position it is capable of moving an enormous amount of air. In addition, with 30 centimeters in diameter, it focuses practically covering the entire interior of the PC case.

To carry out this “experiment”, we have used the usual test bench:

• Intel Core i7-8700K with a Corsair H100i Platinum
• MSI Z370 Gaming M5
• 4 × 8 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 3600 MHz
• EVGA GeForce RTX 2080
• Corsair Crystal 680X
• Corsair H1000i

We have removed the tempered glass side of the box and rotated it on the table so that the fan can point it directly. We have placed the fan at the same height and about 20 centimeters from the interior, in order to allow the hot air to be expelled as well.

We have performed the same test, measuring the temperature of the components using Corsair’s integrated monitoring system with iCUE. In “Idle”, the computer is idle for at least 10 minutes for the temperature of the components to stabilize, while in “Load”, we are running both Prime95 to stress the processor and Furmark to stress the graphics card.

The displayed temperature is the delta, that is, the measured temperature minus the ambient temperature (so that the latter does not influence the measurement), and the result obtained is as follows:

There are many interesting data that we can draw from here, and several conclusions:

• On the one hand, it should be noted that in the temperature of the processor, practically nothing has been noticed using one or the other method. The liquid cooling radiator is located on the roof of the case, and in fact the pressure of the fan pushing air from outside does not give it directly, so it is possible that it is absorbing hot air from the graph and therefore does not improve almost. nothing its temperature.
• As for the graphics, the model used until it reaches 60ºC has the fans turned off to maintain a good level of silence. Therefore, in Idle it goes from not having active cooling to having it, and for that reason its temperature improves considerably (almost 6ºC). Now, under load, the graph moves the fans in an intelligent way, always trying to be below 80ºC, and that is precisely the measurement both with the table fan pointing at the PC, and with the box closed and operating normally.

So is this method worth using or not?

As a general rule, and if you already have a good case and a well-designed indoor airflow, using a huge table fan to cool your PC is not going to provide you any real benefit but rather the opposite, since you will be for one hand consuming a lot of energy (these fans have consumptions between 40 and 80 watts), on the other hand you will be causing dust to enter the interior of your PC, and in fact by having it without the side cover you will be facilitating disasters and accidents.

Of course, our recommendation is that you do not use this “cooling method”.

Now, if you have a PC that gets very hot because you don’t have a well-refrigerated box, you will probably notice a greater improvement than what we have noticed in our test. Be careful that yes, because if this is your case you may have a lot of soot, dust and dirt in general inside the box, and pointing a powerful fan inside could cause all that crap to shoot out in all directions.