F50S fan question

This may also just be general computer knowledge, maybe not.

Why is the fan on my Asus F50S covered up by a panel while the vent lies over computer components? Thanks!

 

General notebook design knowledge .

Notebook chassis have designed and engineered internal airflow patterns, routed by internal components, vent and fan placement.

A fan draws the outside air through the chassis and then expels the heated air out. Exterior vents are the origin point for the cool airflow. The fan is pretty much always next to the air expel vent with the cpu/gpu radiator, for maximum efficiency of airspeed across the fins, while still drawing the cool air across the other internal components.

That should explain it.

 

Thanks! Would the airflow be improved if I cut bigger holes into the tiny airvents that are on the panel right now? This is hypothetical, I probably won't end up doing it because I don't want to totally mess it up.

 

Other holes will disrupt the draw and path of the air inside the chassis - making the vents larger will increase the potential for dust and other airborne gunk to get into the chassis.

Asus' engineers dictate the size of the intake vents, heatpipes, fanspeed and radiator specs all based on the heat potential of the chassis and internal components. And they're generally fairly conservative about it, in terms of it will work quite well for 95+% of users. If you hyper-stress your system, then you're not one of those - but most people will do just fine without messing around with the chassis.

 

My sister had an Acer and for some reason they had blocked an air vent from the heatsink with some sort of plastic ( it had 2 air vents ). This was the reason it was getting so hot, so i just took off the plastic-like thing and temps improved a lot. But maybe you might want to look into which way your fan is turning? (cw or ccw) maybe you'll then know if the air is going in that direction

 

I personally would not recommend any modification to the chassis.

Those holes - vents are not opened randomly. The engineers try to optimize the airflow to cool down the internal components (this does not only include CPU and GPU -- there are several other stuff on the motherboard).

Opening up a new vent may increase the airflow slightly and may reduce the tempearture of the CPU a bit but may cause some other components on the board to overheat (since you are kind of short-circuiting the airflow).


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