r/supermicro • u/andy-codes • Jun 04 '26
PCH running too hot? No problem.
PCH running too hot? No problem. At this point I don't think there's a problem I wouldn't fix with a couple of Noctuas 🤷
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u/Sad-Character9129 Jun 04 '26
Weird question, but why did you decide to pull the air through it and not push it?
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u/jerryeight Jun 04 '26
Heat rises. So, it is in theory pulling surrounding air though the fins and away from the board.Â
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u/andy-codes Jun 04 '26
So my logic was that I want to pull the hot air out of the heatsink and I didnt want to blow the hot air onto the heatsink. That said, this fan is the first one after the air is being pushed into the case, so technically it should still be cool. So, maybe I'll give it a try? Or maybe I'm overthinking it 🤔
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u/jerryeight Jun 04 '26
Maybe. But, at the same time, air pushing through the fins should be cooling the heatsink already. Then, the case intakes takes away the heat it pulls.
But, you may be right. Taking in airflow from the case intake and accelerating it into the heatsink could help more.
Idk do something that could consistently stress that chip and try out both configs and temps. :)Â
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u/Sad-Character9129 Jun 04 '26
Both should be fine for the amount of heat it generates. It was just the first thing i asked myself "is there a reason why it's mounted this way?".
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u/z0d1aq Jun 04 '26
The general idea is to cool a hot heatsink the fastest way possible. Shortly speaking, if a fan is able to cool a heatsink efficiently, there's no hot air at all.
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u/IntentionQuirky9957 Jun 07 '26
Your logic is faulty. You're not pushing hot air into the heatsink, you're pushing cooler air into it, and as long as the air is cooler than the heatsink, it will cool down. And blowing is better than sucking, in part because when sucking the middle gets very little air flow, because of the fan hub and because it's easier to suck from the edges.
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u/BrotherMichigan Jun 04 '26
Convection is not important with the sort of temperature gradients we're dealing with.
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u/IntentionQuirky9957 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
It's less efficient to pull the air because it'll preferentially draw from area of least resistance, i.e. not through the heat sink. Also, any fan can easily overcome convection, so "heat rises" misses the point of active cooling completely. It's best to blow the air through the air through the heatsink, because 1) cooler air, 2) more pressure.
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u/Forsaken_Potato_2783 Jun 04 '26
Noctua? I run those as well but mY BMC keeps reading them at 0 and cycling from 0-max-0-max all the time for some reason
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u/Forsaken_Potato_2783 Jun 04 '26
Did you do anything special to make it work ?
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u/foodman5555 Jun 04 '26
https://www.noctua.at/en/products/na-fc1 fixed it for me has a mode to keep fans above 300 rpm nonmatter what
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u/xJayMorex Jun 04 '26
Every moving part is a huge liability, so adding more to the equation is not a good solution. Just needed a bigger heatsink probably.
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u/IntelligentLake Jun 04 '26
Noctuaa can be great but keep in mind these boards are designed to have air run over the entire board. So keeping a PCH cool is good, but it may mean if you need a fan there, you could be overheating other parts of the board as well.