A Better Computer Fan - Sometimes: Cross-Flow Meshless AIO Case Benchmarks & Review

[Music]

this small form factor case works by

using

zero axial fans and one cross flow fan

which works by creating a lower velocity

air movement at a perpendicular path

tangential to the fan itself the

theoretical end result is a laminer

evenly distributed flow and in this

video we've animated it to make some

educational material but we also did

some practical Imaging of how the air is

moving on this case with photography

using that setup it's pretty crazy we

also did a full Suite of acoustic test

in our Hemi anaco chamber and all this

was worth doing because it actually

works really well we have in-depth

thermals on it today some Acoustics and

more but even the mechanical side of

this case is pretty

interesting oh the misophonia

hurts and now we get to the really

clever part which is the

GPU and the latch mechanism so this

mechanical solution is actually a tab to

pull the pcie slot into place check that

that is actually like the coolest way to

mount a video card that I've ever worked

with with a case and it all works with

this latch in here where you can see

this thing pulls that riser to Brin it

up to meet the GPU and then a 3D printed

plastic flange basically grab ABS it and

hooks and then the

fan so case is pretty interesting the

cooling part is definitely where we're

focusing our testing cuz if this part

fails then none of the rest matters but

even the mechanics of it are pretty well

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store. Gamers nexus.net so this is

called the meshless AIO it's a mini ixk

small form factor and it has a solo

designer the designer emailed us months

ago we've had it since that time and

he's already been working on some

improvements such as to the fan these

two look mostly physically the same uh

however there was a chain

to the hub on the fan and now it's

entering its final stages should be

ready for production and going on sale

soon for $360 which is expensive but

then you look at the ITX case market and

everything's expensive maybe with the

exception a few cases like the Dan Case

A4 H2O there's really only one way to

build the computer as opposed to the end

case where there's a million ways to

build it this however it is very

important to build it in that specific

way because of the fan

so this is supposed to launch sometime

in May and it is expensive however it's

produced in an expensive way it is

mostly one giant 4 mm thick aluminum

Extrusion that forms a unibody it goes

as wide as a little over 5 mm as shallow

as about two at the back but ultimately

it's a huge piece of aluminum and since

it's all basically one piece of metal it

doesn't need screws or rivets to hold it

together structurally this thing has

very little Flex even when it's

basically half disassemble like this

because of how it's built the unibody is

also finished with a lot of CNC

Machining to form these tabs and

mounting points that allow it to avoid

using a ton of hardware and screws

something that end case struggled with

there's optional Parts like this Ram fan

this uh has some 3D printed components

as a common theme at least with this

version of the case so we'll test with

that actually works it's pretty

interesting additionally there is this

flow guide in theory to help prevent

recirculation that's where our and

imaging will come in later to help

illustrate that so here's how the flow

path works on this this only supports

280 mm radiators no 240s the axial fans

come off that's by Design the air ends

up getting pulled in as a result again

of this fan which

mounts there we got a piece of foam down

there but it goes in here and when the

fan is spinning it's pulling air in

through the radiator so the air is

coming in it is not being expelled here

where it gets

expelled is out this side so this

narrower slit at the top of this panel

uh shoots the air out at pretty high

velocity actually despite the overall

concept of a cross flow fan that's

because so focused and targeted so it

comes flying out here and then as for

Distributing that air throughout the

case the interesting thing with these

fans is that the air will pass through

blades twice and uh that's by Design as

opposed to an axial fan where if air

goes through these blades two times you

have a recirculation problem and you can

watch our bit Phoenix video if you want

to learn more about recirculation

problems the air also is intended to

come in through the holes down here that

hits the GPU for the motherboard side of

things because it's just a sheet of

glass there's this tiny strip of fine

mesh and air is supposed to find its way

in that as well all of this functions on

basic principles of pressure systems

within physics where you have positive

or negative pressure systems and

depending on the pressure of the system

we get either air flowing in through any

hole in the case or air flowing out

through any hole in the case that's what

our animation will look at as well there

are a few other places with holes on the

case so on the motherboard side there's

holes above the motherboard and the

power supply there also holes cut out in

the bottom of the case on the GPU side

which are meant to be passive exhaust

holes for large gpus and with our

modestly sized 70 Founders Edition they

probably end up more as intake all of

the air converges at the fan and is

exhausted through the upper quarter of

the right side panel but it would help

to visualize this and because we can't

see air the next best thing we can do is

look at the air density gradient so

we'll head over to our and imaging setup

this is it we're right now set up in

front of a parabolic mirror it acts as

uh basically a lens to allow us to see

the air density gradient change so we're

not technically seeing the heat but

we're seeing the change in density of

air in this General region but basically

over on this side of the room we have uh

I don't know just looking at it it it

looks like a uh it looks like a mad

science experiment that shouldn't work

but it does work so there's a camera of

course the camera is receiving light

that's getting split by this razor that

set up in front of the lens we also have

a very tiny but super high-powered Point

light source here that's taped to this

tripod and you can see an alumin umum

can uh cut out with a pin hole in it

that is to help uh basically make the

light as narrow and small as possible

when it hits that mirror and comes back

we want a as long a distance as we can

get so that's why the mirror is the size

it is now for the rest of the setup so

this is wired down to a benchtop power

supply we're running 24 volts into that

light that's what it takes and I have

some props over here as well so this is

a hand warmer uh this is one of the

tools that allows us to generate some

heat not because we're seeing the heat

in in the Imaging but because we're

seeing that density change in the air

around the mirror and where the Fan's

pulling in now one of the problems with

doing it this way is creating a

propulsion this pushes and so what we do

is turn it off after it's heated up that

grill a little bit and just let the uh

fan naturally pull the heat in put it

off to the side up to the middle

whatever couple different locations and

pull the uh that heated air in rather

than pushing it in which would influence

the result now this isn't perfect but

it's a pretty good visual representation

then we can measure the exhaust as well

uh but that one's pretty easy because we

just run a heat load inside the computer

and there's your change to the to the

air density so that is the schen Imaging

setup pretty fun and this is the result

first here's the exhaust side of the

Cross flow fan you can see the air exits

up at a 45° angle which is great because

it helps prevent recirculation of hot

air in through the the holes in the

bottomer sides of the case it's

excellent design to project It Up and

Away rather than just straight out the

flow enhancer is actually fascinating as

well with it on you can see that the

exhaust path doesn't change much but it

does better angle the air away from the

case and the other reason this works is

because it instead is blocking the

cooler air lower in the frame from being

sucked up into the exhaust path and

pushed or pulled away this allows the

air to instead find its way into the

case through the lower 2/3 of the side

panel this orientation shows us air

intake at the top of the case when a hot

object is held above the case without

any air movement the shifting air

density is observable getting pulled

into the top of the case with a bias

towards the right side or towards the

Fan's Mount and exhaust the currents of

the exhaust also pull air in this

direction using an upside down air

duster you can actually see this even

more when we move the output towards the

left there still pulls to the right one

side of the radiator gets a higher speed

of flow here we were curious whether the

rear was acting as intake or exhaust and

you can see that it's exhaust cost the

air is Flowing out of the case thanks to

the video cards fans there's some very

slight air intake at the bottom left of

the frame at slow speeds it takes us a

day to set up and capture Shan Imaging

and we spent over $5,000 on all the

tools to do the job so to support this

type of unique approach to testing head

over to store. Gamers nexus.net and grab

one of our PC building project mats our

mod mats our coaster packs for your

drinks with PC themes or other items

like shirts even though the cross flow

fan as you'll see in our thermal testing

actually works pretty well in this case

it will not work well in every case

there's a lot of fine detail that has to

go into a case from the ground up to

make it work so all over this case

there's finely tuned shaping of metal 3D

printed inserts things like this for

example uh which is actually goes in

some of the cable routing area but it

can be removed or added based on if you

need the space and adding it helps with

controlling the air path even more so it

won't work just anywhere one of the

downsides of this approach is that the

GPU doesn't have enough space behind the

back of it so for modern flowthrough

designs found in most of the Nvidia

cards they'll run into restrictions and

more on this in the testing we wanted to

take this opportunity to teach more

about how this fan actually works and

also for us to learn about how it works

so this is called either a cross flow or

a transverse fan sometimes they call it

a tangential fan It's relatively new in

the world of fans it's about 131 years

old from the first patent the only case

we could find that used one was The

Cooler Master stacker case and it was an

optional part Silverstone also made one

for General small form factor

applications for the anatomy of a fan

that's crossflow so it's separated into

blocks that's these three large sections

of blades the blocks are separated by

joint discs which is these two on this

one and one on each end the blades are

cross-sectional and they're at a slight

rotation so they're not perfectly

straight all the way across this one

also has a drum motor on the end or an

impeller there are some that are duplex

cross flow fans but this one just has it

sitting on the end now we've wanted to

start introducing educational animations

were possible lately so you get to see

the first one in this review a

traditional and simple axial fan slices

through the air to scoop and move it in

the targeted Direction choices in Blade

shape and design can dictate how wide or

straight the column of air is but the

concept is the same squirrel cage blower

fans or centrifugal fans pull air into

the center and then eject it outward

along the blade path

this is useful in cramped areas to evict

air quickly like in handheld gaming

devices or laptops where we need to

exhaust the hot air out of the chassis

as fast as possible for a cross flow or

transverse fan the fan is a longer and

narrower cylinder that rotates

longitudinally with a entering

perpendicularly to the rotational axis

and being evicted from the cylinder

tangentially to that axis so fitted to

the Ambi facient lunar Wayne shaft that

side fumbling was effectively prevented

the blower fans we normally see in

laptops and some gpus the cross flow fan

doesn't pull air in from the middle of

the impeller instead it has separate

Inlet and Outlet sides across the entire

length the outlet is formed by this

wedge or Vortex wall stabilizing the air

vortices in just the right way to create

directional flow through the impeller

these fans are used in situations where

a constant laminer stream of air is

desirable without the buffeting effect

of large L axial fans the total pressure

of the fan is proportional to the square

of its speed according to research by

yon chanu at all and research in 1973 by

e at all found that a reduction in angle

of attack improves the total pressure

coefficient later research discovered a

combination of tuning to the angle or

curve of the blades across the length of

the fan would further improve pressure

you can see this present in the modern

cross flow fan used for the meshless PC

case its angle gradually swoops from

right to left cross flow fans create

lower velocity air movement from in to

out and produce a laminer flow which

gets evenly distributed across the

length of the blade you might find these

in a common Standing Room tower fan

where the goal is to distribute air

widely across the room but not to direct

it at a particular Point cross flow fans

can also be found in certain HVAC

products Refrigeration products and

outside and digital signage and

billboards they've also been considered

for Aviation use inside The Winds of

planes but the idea hasn't really gotten

off the ground so cross flow fan has

that downside it's not going to force as

much air into a single point as an axial

fan or something like a blower fan some

Jay's two cense style

editing the captain we should leave that

in shout out to Jay Captain Jay's two

cents I like boats all right let's get

into the tasting for theral on this so

for variables there aren't too many on

this one there's three speeds for this

fan we'll test all three of them they're

100% it goes all the way down to 45% or

in the middle 65% we are testing with

the Kraken 280 NZXT cooler we just

bought it on Amazon for this review the

axial fans are mostly removed there's

one test though where we pull this fan

and we instead install the original

axial fans uh but they end up largely

blocked off so it's not a perfect

comparison but it's an interesting one

the last two things we're testing will

be the flow guide on versus off and the

ram fan on versus off let's look at the

data time for testing with a full CPU

and GPU workload at 100% fan speed in

stock the cross flow fan kept the CPU PE

cores at 35° C over ambient with the all

core average 3° lower this had it

running at 37.8 DBA at 1 meter in our

Hemi anoqui chamber conveniently this is

almost the same noise level as when we

taped the two axial fans to it instead

which ran 5° warmer that's great news

for the cross flow fan but a word of

warning because this case wasn't

designed for axial the fans are blocked

around the edges when held in place so

it's not really a fair comparison but

it's the most we can do without cutting

giant holes in the cas we still wanted

to run it out of curiosity in other

words a cross flow fan won't always be

better this entire case was designed

ground up for the solution so axial fans

will remain Superior in most computer

use cases but when carefully designed

for cross flow our data here suggests

that it's possible to produce a better

result the flow enhancer did improve

performance from a stock dropping about

1 degree from the Baseline results it's

not just a gimmick and adding the Ram

fan didn't change the CPU results

outside of variance but we'll look at

the ram temperature in a moment adding

the seat belt boosted the temperature as

it ends up blocking large parts of the

radiator due to its floppy nature

temperature increased over 1 degree from

basine dropping fans speed to 65% with

the button reduced the Noise by almost

10 DBA or a perceived effect of doubling

a noise when going from 65% to 100% fan

speeds the temperature increase was only

3 to 4° though finally the 45% result

had it close to silent at 25 .3 DBA and

our heian coic chamber with a noise

floor of 13.6 DBA GPU thermals aren't as

good so this is the weak spot especially

with a flow through cooler the axial

fans were actually the best here despite

being mostly blocked the GPU ended up at

54 de for average load temperature with

both speed variations of the axial fans

although the GPU memory temperature was

slightly better on the 100% test but

within variance this isn't abnormal to

see though the GPU isn't in the direct

flow path of the fans but it is far

enough from the cross flow fan in terms

of its path that the air follows that it

performs better a this mostly has to do

with the pressure system that's forming

within the case the first cross flow

appearance on this chart is the flow

enhancer which has the GPU at 55 deg

load that's improved from 56 without it

the handle hurts performance again with

fan speed reductions obviously impacting

it the most the bottom two results see a

hit to frequency where the 45% result

drops 20 MHz from the clocks not shown

on this chart this is a less favorable

set of results compared to what we saw

in the CPU and we suspect fact that the

design of the case doesn't do the Fe

design for gpus any favors there's

barely any room behind the flow through

portion of the cooler and any air that's

ejected towards the bottom of the case

has a strong likelihood of just being

recirculated this could be improved upon

in a number of ways one would be coming

up with some way to mount the GPU closer

to the outer wall no matter how thick it

is the second would be maybe using a GPU

with a more traditional cooler design

where hot air is blown out the top and

bottom edges of the cooler if you get

one with a vertical fin stack that would

allow maybe the cases fan to pull it out

directly the last chart looks at RAM and

vrm thermals the tiny Ram fan definitely

does something it's actually really cool

to see SPD Hub temperatures on the

memory drop to 14° over ambient when

using the cross flow fan with the memory

fan which is an impressive reduction of

5 to 6° against the most relevant

results the ram fan had a small benefit

for vrm mosfet thermals as well the

axial fans otherwise did the best and

were within error of each other here

using the cross flow fan with the flow

enhancer is 1 de better than without it

but not as good as with the ram fan

let's get back to the case itself now

move away from some of the pure thermal

discussion and talk about the fitment

and how it all comes together features

for example like that clever GPU

installation

lever I hate rhyming since the GPU area

of the case is closed off on all sides

the GPU is inserted from the back of the

case as we showed earlier this bracket

goes onto the GPU then the slots on the

side of the bracket slide into place

using these screws under the motherboard

as guides it works well in order to

attach the pcie riser to the GPU the

meshless AO has that levered operating

mechanism that we showed that lowers the

Riser slot onto the connector on the

card plastic 3D printed guides ensure

that it lines up during the process it

can be a little stiff to move into place

but it's a brilliant solution given the

inherent space restrictions for size the

case measures 379 by 165 x 259 mm which

is 9 mm longer and 10 taller than on the

spec sheet the rear pcie bracket and

case feet make up the differences we

think that should be included in

measurements that makes the outer volume

16.2 L well within small form factor

territory but not incredibly small gpus

up to 362 x 78 x 163 mm are supported

which includes the massive aor Master 40

series cards those are the largest we're

aware of so everything currently on the

market can technically fit obviously do

your own research to confirm and look

for protrusions as usual though fitting

in the case doesn't necessarily mean it

should go in the case and it's going to

have more problems for thermals in the

rest of the case too you end up with

this massive wall that starts to block

some of those really finely detailed but

important flow paths for the air to get

in and out of the two Chambers CPU

cooling is designed entirely around 280

MCS and the bracket doesn't even have

mounting holes for 240 the radiator

itself can only be up to 30 mm thick

which rules out the Arctic liquid

freezers and the block can only be up to

56 mm tall which blocks a few options we

used the NZXT crack in 280 so we know

that fits but getting rid of the fans

means some dead ends on Modern clc's

with rats nests of cables on the Block

for power supplies both sfx and sfx L

are supported with the usual reduced

Cable Management space with sfx L some

positives and negatives we'll start with

the positives we like the execution the

meshless AIO gives you a guided build

experience with one final configuration

in mind and it does it well and it's

Unique like we said earlier the meshless

is more like the Le Dan A4 H2O in terms

of maximizing one build style if you

boil it down to base elements the A4 H2O

is the meshless ao's closest competitor

we think the layout is very similar but

H2O is half the cost and is manufactured

completely differently it also uses

standard fans we also like the use of

integrated rails in this case internal

components like the crossbow fan the

radiator and the optional handle Mount

cleanly install with these the side

panels hinge into place with small tabs

and secure with screws and unlike the

end case it's way way fewer screws all

these things work well the 2 and 1/2 in

Drive Mount can hold two drives at an

angle between the motherboard and the

power supply and a secured by a single

screw above that there's a hook to keep

the clc's tubes in place there's also a

small hole in the rear panel below the

motherboard iio so you can run a

wireless antenna back inside the case we

used it for a thermocouple wire there's

a lot of thoughtful touches on this as a

last positive note we value manuals here

and the manual is well done and helpful

even in its current unfinished State the

cable routing suggestions are

particularly helpful now for some

negatives we've covered plenty of

positives so first of all on the

opposite side of attention of detail the

fan PCB that goes up here broke loose

from its Mount unfortunately the

approach that the meshless uh

construction used was soldering the

standoffs to the PCB they weren't secure

they weren't strong they snapped off so

we res secured it with screws the power

supply Mount was another problem it

seems like the brackets design takes the

exact placement and size of the AC plug

and power switch for granted as neither

of our standard test power supplies fit

perfectly the end result is that we had

to force them to fit and the power

supply doesn't sit correctly in the

machined area this could be fixed if

meshless tweaked the brackets design

we're also concerned about the power

supply being starved for access to we'll

call it fresh air so the power sply ends

up being one of the few components

without a carefully positioned hole to

help it breathe and it's going to end up

relying on Whatever Gets In basically

over here because the rest of it