What is Airflow and how to manage it

If there is an issue that concerns all technology users in general, it is the heating of our devices. If we are talking about a PC, the options we have to minimize the impact of heat on its components are endless, such as the use of cooling or fans, to extend the life of our hardware. Despite the wide variety of such items, we sometimes forget to optimize their arrangement in our cases, leaving aside a basic form of heat reduction: airflow.

what is airflow?

We can define the airflow as the air flow between the different components of our PC, caused by pressure variations and can be caused naturally or induced by mechanisms such as fans or cooling

Here are the factors that influence airflow:

• Ambient temperature: this will depend on the temperature of the place where we have our PC.
• Tower layout: this refers to how we have placed the internal components in our tower.
• Airflow volume over time (CFM): the approximate amount of air that circulates through an element over a period of time. Basically the amount of air.
• Air pressure in the equipment (mm H2O): the force with which the air moves. Depending on the type of pressure we are interested in for our PC, we will arrange the components in one way or another

Here is a guide on how to measure the temperatures of your PC

Types of pressure

We imagine that you already knew the previous points, but did you know that air pressure can be positive or negative?

Positive pressure is achieved when there are more cubic centimeters per minute of air, coming from the intake fans. In principle, this method works very well, but if the PC is to be used for long periods of time, pockets of hot air trapped in small gaps can have a negative impact on cooling.

Negative pressure would be the other way around, less cubic centimeters of air from the intake fans but, with this method we manage to reduce hot air pockets. It also allows to better manage the airflow inside the tower, but we must be attentive to the accumulation of dust.

If you have already decided what type of pressure you are most interested in, you can move on to selecting a good set of components, and we recommend that you start with the case. We have new models that will make it easier for you to manage your airflow with their air inlets and dust filters. Have you taken a look at the performance of our new Synistra? And what about Caelum?

In case changing tower is not yet in your plans, remember that we have several models of cooling and fans for your current towers, and here you can read our post on how to control the speed of them.