PSA about Torrent PSU position
I was a happy Torrent user up until recently. All my monitored temps were great, I even experimented a bit with switching front fans for AP181 but found Fractals better all around. Acoustics were also great, everything seemed fine.
Come August of this year and a tremendous heatwave hits my location. Under AC my room temps werent dropping much under 30C. The system took this in stride, CPU and GPU temps remained well under the limits, 75C Tdie on CPU and 84C hotspot on GPU. The system was not tuned for airflow, all the fans had custom fan curves but they really werent pulled back too much, bottom fans were ~800RPM and fronts at about 650RPM. CPU is 9600X cooled by NH-D15 G2 (~800RPM) and GPU is Sapphire Radeon 9070XT Pure (~1500RPM).
It was all well and good on the things we all monitor, RAM and GPU RAM temps were also fine, VRM's, all you can read, but I didnt think about PSU temp nor could I read it. After a couple of days of hard gaming at elevated ambient temp my PSU, Corsair RM850x v2018 blew up violently and I was wondering what the hell went wrong. PSU's are rated at 50C ambient, at least this was, at full load, mine was doing 60% at best, at 30C ambient that really shouldnt be the cause. As I looked at the Torrent design I realized that PSU isnt fed true ambient (room) but case ambient. Once I changed the PSU I did some testing on the air that is circulating at the PSU vent opening with a temperature probe and its catastrophic to say the least.
With all case fans and all component fans running adequately fast to cool down all the components at 30C room temp well within their spec your PSU wont be cooled properly, it wont be cooled at all, it will be heated, substantially. Once I probed the air right under the PSU fan, dead center, while the system was running a decently demanding game, total system power 470W, the air temp was measured at 47C basically 5 minutes into the game, I stopped the test at 50C but thats about where it would find equilibrium. This is the "ambient" feeding your PSU in a default setup Torrent. I tried upping the front fans by a lot and even with completely destroyed acoustic profile (jet engine sounds) that "ambient" didnt drop under 44C.
If you have a more powerful system, that outputs even more heat, you are definitely shorting PSU lifespan by making it run at +15-20 over room ambient. If you live in a hot climate this is detrimental to your PSU. Furthermore, most cases consider PSU a closed system, this one doesnt, but it doesnt warn you of implications either.
There should at least be something about setting custom curves in the manual but even on default the problem isnt solved, its just becomes barely in spec, provided your ambient doesnt go over 30C. I checked, there isnt anything even hinting this. No warnings about PSU temps with any fan orientation or anything regarding minimum fan speeds. There really ought to be.
TL;DR Fractal owes me a PSU. Torrent case is feeding "case ambient" to your PSU which might be well over the safe limit if your true ambient (room) get a bit hotter (30C or over). It aint peachy on 25C either, barely in spec, at the edge of it.