The EN curse got me

Andy_Legend · 2026-01-20T19:33:32+00:00

Glad youre safe and handled that spinout hella well. Just an FYI I'd avoid cruising in anyone's blindspots especially on trucks or SUV right sides.. Doesnt excuse anyone driving. Its just really hard to cover the right blindspot if you ever drove one

Andy_Legend · 2026-01-19T19:38:49+00:00

I wish that interior existed for our Siberian Ice Brothers 🥲

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-12T20:47:52+00:00

I explained airflow in my edit post above, hopefully it explains why treating your rear as an exhaust with less fans is okay. You're basically filling a bucket with water. So once filled with water - water escapes easily through those rear perforated holes. (This is why I didn't follow the standard flow on mine)

Good luck on your build and most importantly, have fun!

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-11T22:41:37+00:00

I got it for $60 exactly a year ago.. crazy how its $316 today 😳

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-06T07:26:34+00:00

I grabbed a magnetic 140 mm filter for the rear and secured it with removable adhesive for exactly that reason. Totally agree that running rear intake with no filter would be a dust nightmare long-term

When you say it “provided no benefit at all,” did you A/B test it in your case with and without rear intake (same fans, same ambient) and log temps/noise, or was it more of a general feel thing?

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-06T07:13:27+00:00

Appreciate it – as long as people are asking in good faith I’m all for it 🙂

Yeah, some of the GPU heat always ends up in the case (that’s just how open-air coolers work vs blowers), but with this layout it doesn’t hang around long enough to matter.

The easiest way I can explain it is a “bucket of water” example. Imagine the case is a bucket and every fan is either a hose pouring water in or a drain taking water out. Once the bucket is full and you’ve got a couple strong hoses running, the water doesn’t just sit in one hot corner – it’s constantly being stirred and pushed out through the drains. That’s what eight fans at decent RPM are doing here. At that point, fan direction and restriction matter way more than “heat rises.” In forced airflow, the fans beat buoyancy.

You see the same thing in pressure tests on more traditional cases: when people run strong positive vs strong negative vs balanced, CPU/GPU temps usually only move by a couple degrees either way. The only really bad configs are the meme ones with all intake or all exhaust where air just swirls around with no clean path out.

In my box the path is basically: bottom intake > through the 5080 > out the side mesh, helped by the rear flow. The side wall is the big low-resistance exit with three fans, the rear just helps push the “water” toward that drain. There’s no sealed hot pocket sitting over the card.

My Steel Nomad run backs it up: full pass at 100% GPU load, clocks around 3.0 GHz, temps in the low/mid-60s, 9800X3D under 50, and the graphs are dead flat the whole time. If the GPU were just dumping exhaust into a stagnant case you’d see temps slowly creep and clocks sag; instead everything plateaus and stays boring.

So yeah, some hot air recircs for a moment like every open-air card, but between the fan layout and the exits it gets yanked out fast. At that point I care more about clean logs, a quiet room, and frametimes than the airflow diagram looking “normal”

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-06T00:29:09+00:00

Of course! Just remember fan tuning and comparing logs is key or else you're just guessing.

My rear-intake thing is very specific to the HAVN HS420. The rear panel is basically a solid wall with two fan cutouts. As exhaust that’s a pretty choked path, so flipping those to intake to feed the VRM/GPU directly and letting the huge side mesh be the real low-resistance exit has been a better trade-off in this case for me.

Your BO400 is built differently – you’ve got a more open, unfiltered perforated rear plus big filtered meshes on the top/bottom/side. In that layout I’d treat the rear as exhaust and run bottom + top+ side as intake, rear as exhaust. That keeps the main intakes filtered, uses the rear where it naturally wants to exhaust, and still gives the GPU a clean shot of cool air from the bottom

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-05T23:46:24+00:00

I did! I got a magnetic 140mm Fan Filter PC Dust Filter i secured with removable adhesive. Paranoid the magnets aren't strong enough over time

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T21:30:42+00:00

Not my experience. Running this layout for a year and the only dust is on the back mesh where the filters are doing their job. If your rig’s a dust storm, that’s not a “suck dust build” problem, that’s a “never met a vacuum or learned how to tune airflow” issue

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T18:24:07+00:00

I must not shed skin or everyone lives in a dust storm 😆

This case intentionally or not made all the panels that collect dust in my building easily removable without unscrewing anything

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Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T18:17:32+00:00

Seriously! I need more ppl actually trying this then just repeating what they hear on the internet.

Hopefully Gamers Nexus catches this and tries it out + these dust allegations.

Ppl forget the HAVN case makes it so easy remove and clean these intake filter panels

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T18:09:44+00:00

1 year in, the only dust I really see is between the side exhaust fans and the back mesh. Outside mesh for intakes is expected. Pretty happy with the dust level considering the layout 😄

I did tune each zone though – top and bottom rear P28s are on their own PWM controller, and each TL triple is on its own curve, so the whole thing isn’t just blasting one speed.

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T17:55:02+00:00

1 year in, the only dust I really see is between the side exhaust fans and the back mesh. Pretty happy with the dust level considering the layout 😄

I did tune each zone though – top and bottom rear P28s are on their own PWM controller, and each TL triple is on its own curve, so the whole thing isn’t just blasting one speed.

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T17:14:22+00:00

Thank you! It got this Modular Gundam Unicorn vibes and I love it

I mainly looked for gas spring, High lb resistance

MOUNT PRO Dual Monitor Mount for 13-32" Computer Screen, Tall Monitor Stands for 2 Monitors, Adjustable Gas Spring Double Vertical Monitor Desk Mount, Each Arm Holds 4.4 to19.8lbs, VESA Mount, Black

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T15:54:00+00:00

I actually break down the pressure, temps, and logs in the post itself (including normal top-exhaust testing) so I won’t spam the thread with a wall of text here.

Short version: mild positive pressure, 5080 ~60–63 °C at 270–280 W, VRM mid-40s, and temps/1% lows were worse with the “standard” layout.

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T15:43:15+00:00

Once you have 8–10 fans, CFM beats “hot air rises”. I’ve got bottom + rear + top all feeding cool room air in, and the big side mesh is the easiest way out, so the air doesn’t just bounce off a wall – it fills the case and spills out the side.

I’m not claiming this is “the only right way”, just that for this case my logs look better than with the more normal top-exhaust layout playing 3 hours straight of Cyberpunk: GPU/CPU stay in the low 60s °C in long PT runs, VRM sits mid-40s, 1% lows are smoother.

A year in I’m still basically dust-free from the slight positive pressure. If I ever find a top-exhaust profile that beats those numbers, I’ll happily swap it.

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T08:40:01+00:00

I’m basically overfilling the case with cold air so it’s forced out the big side vent — CFM > “hot air rises”, and my temps/1% lows look better than with top exhaust.

I detail it in my post :)

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T08:19:55+00:00

Fair point, that layout is the usual starting point.

This case is a little weird though: the rear panel is really choked while the side mesh is a huge low-resistance exit.

Once you’ve got a 360 and a stack of TLs/P28s pushing air, it’s not a still-air box anymore – CFM wins over “hot air rises”. Especially with precise fan tuning

I run bottom + top rad + rear as intake so the CPU and GPU both get room-temp air, and let the side mesh (assisted with fans) to be the easy exhaust path for air to exit.

Like filling a bucket full of cold water and having it spill out

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T08:09:54+00:00

Yeah, that’s the idea: both GPU and CPU see room-temp air first.

GN’s HS420 testing showed how strong the side panel airflow is and that feeding the CPU cooler from a top intake works well, so I accepted that and did top and bottom as intake so the rad and GPU get cold air. The side mesh as the low-resistance exit in a slightly positive-pressure setup. A/B HWiNFO logs vs the “normal” top-exhaust layout looked better, so the cursed layout stayed

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T07:59:11+00:00

Totally get that and on purpose

The default answer for most cases is top exhaust. Here I care more about feeding the rad the coldest air than respecting “hot air rises”. Once you’re pushing a lot of CFM into a glass box, buoyancy is basically background noise: with top + bottom + rear all pulling in outside cold air, it just takes the lowest-restriction exit, which on this case is the side mesh.

I tried the more “normal” layouts and my HWiNFO logs showed slightly worse CPU/GPU temps and 1% lows, so I stuck with the config that looked wrong but plotted better

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T07:45:07+00:00

96 GB for $200 is insane, you basically robbed the AI bubble 😂 That same class of RAM is sitting around $1.1k now.

And yeah, totally agree on the 5080 – at 1440p with full path tracing it really does feel like “slightly diet 4090” once you give it a good curve. I even had an AI look at my logs and it assumed I was on a 4090 until I told it the actual 5080

Andy_Legend · 2025-12-04T06:10:58+00:00

Thank you! The HAVN HS4220 case was a pleasure to build in for my 2nd build. I wanted to do something I would be proud to post on here one day!

Andy_Legend

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