Does Air duct affect other components’ thermals?
The Air duct’s main task is to cool graphics cards, but it indirectly affects hard disk temperatures. Most of this is reflected on the disks in hot-swap bays, as they aren’t cooled by the front 230 mm fan. In order for the hard disk, or an SSD drive, to be cooled by the Air duct, the latter must be positioned higher so that the air reaches the bays (like on the picture below). Thanks to the Air duct, we recorded 2°C lower temperature on the hard disk in the hot-swap bay (36°C without and 34°C with the Air duct). The Air duct will help with cooling hard disks in 3.5” drive bays, but you’ll have to mount it to be level with the disks. The picture above shows the case where Air duct didn’t improve hard disk thermals; the HD was mounted in a second bay from the top, so the Air duct can’t reach it. We performed an hour of Everest’s “Stress local disks” which pushed the temperature to about 32°C. After we moved the HD one spot up, the temperature dropped to 31°C. Will the side panel fan’s A
