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REVERSE 80MM FAN GRILL TRICK
You may have heard of the reverse 80mm fan grill trick, where you bolt on a 80mm fan grill upside down onto a heatsink and then bolt on the 80mm fan. Peter at Nucleus wanted me to try it out and see just how well this little trick works. I used my Global Win Fop32 sink as a test bed and the stock Fop32 as the standard to go by. None of the 80mm fans came close to the stock Fop32 and its YS-tech 26cfm fan.
The NMB fan was the most quiet, and had the lowest air flow of the fans, the Sunon coming second noise wise and blowing somewhat more air and the T&T was the loudest, as well as the slowest RPM wise , but blowing a equal amount of air to the Sunon. All the 80mm fans kept the temp around 29-30deg Celsius, at 1.75volts and 896mhz.
The problem , to me is that most fans seem to blow most air from the far edge of the fan , so with the overhang on the Fop sink , this means very poor airflow over the sink. Using my WBK sink ( using the Fop32 at the moment ) Im going to mount the reverse grill and the T&T fan , and Im going to use electrical tape to seal of the edges forcing the air to go through the sink. ( Pictures soon )
Well here you can see the results, with the 80mm fan and tape wrapped around it to force air through the sink it topped out at 34deg Celsius, with the 60mm Ys-tech 26cfm fan , it topped out at 31deg Celsius. Well , certainly getting close, unfortunately not close enough, the problem may be that none of these 3 80mm fans are high performance, they are all far more quiet than the Ys-tech fan, and here most likely lays the problem. 3 deg Celsius is close but no cigar esp as the Ys-tech fan is more than tolerable, so with a high performance 80mm fan the reverse fan grill trick just might be worth the effort, or if you just have to have a whisper quiet puter , then OK . Dont forget to wrap tape around the sink fan so as to force all the air through the sink. hmmmm , those 80mm fan adapters just might be the go, but until I test one ?????.
Conclusion
We are talking up to 6deg Celsius more in temp with the 80mm fans VS the 60mm Ys-tech fan here, with tape wrapped around the cooler the temp difference drops to 3 deg Celsius , still in favor of the Ys-tech 26cfm fan. I hate to say it but I would only consider the reverse fan grill trick under two circumstances , one , if I was after a whisper quiet system or if a more powerful 80mm fan were to be utilized. There you go folks, live and learn , personally I think that the fan adapters may be better as they direct the air to the middle of the heatsink , as the reverse fan grill does the opposite, and directs air outward , and away from the heatsink.