Holy crap. What the hell is up with this thread??!.. :s.. Didn't think it'll be 3 pages..... So far...
Anyways, as I've said in my message, I wasn't talking about computers per se only. But, certainly applicable to computers as well.
Nubius says he's only seen air blowing in - and I am sure he's seen many computers. And the other guy says he's seen it blowing out. So what guys. There is more than one way of doing things.. Always..
Gaara stated such a scenario just a couple messages up. That's essentially what I was getting at when I said "if it gets cool air from some other intake" (or some similar wording - 56k connection today, too slow to check
). If fresh air is coming in from some other intake fan blowing from the side for example, it doesn't make sense to push more air from some other direction also. Where's all the air gonna go? The important thing is that there is an air gradient from a cool source to the exhaust. Who cares where the air is really getting pushed to the CPU from as long as there is a gradient?
Depending on the size of ur case and such and if u have a lot of HDDs generating a lot of heat, the air at top might be somewhat warm. Then why not take fresh air from somewhere else?
A good case will probably have an intake fan right above the CPU fan, that can get fresh air to the CPU fan, to blow onto the CPU. But, doesn't need to be the case necessarily. I am sure all of us can think of architectures where blowing "onto" the CPU is not necessarily required:
See this for example. It's not always black and white IMO,
http://www.asus.com/products/pccomponents/cooler/gaming/starice/overview.htm
I realize that "most" stuff in the market right now blow in. But, that doesn't mean, "good" architectures can't exist with blowing out from the top.
.. It only takes one good exception for something to be true
.. I can think of an idea right now..
.. lol
