Maximum PC

Hi, so my current build is just a 3570k/7970/Z77 Ex4/Evo 212/500r. I've had it for a month only running on the Evo 212, as well as the fans that came with the case. I have a stable overclock at 4.5 Ghz. I saw that there were 2 fan spots at the top, any recommendations or would I just be better off getting a high end air cooler?

In terms of cooling power, the Evo 212 is like the Core i5. You could spend more for a little more cooling performance, but it's not usually enough to justify the cost.

Since you have two top fans, my suggestion is to turn them into intakes with filters.

Before someone comes in and cries foul on me for suggesting this, if those two top fans were exhaust to "aid convection", you're pulling air away meant for the CPU. Besides that, instead of trying to get rid of hot air, why not introduce cold air directly onto the CPU?

Well, hear me out: you can't steal air; so foul. It's not like having top fans are stealing a darn thing from the fan on the 212 cooler. However, I do still tend to go with smaller fans or really slow and quiet 120mm fans up top. Just to get rid of heat that accumulates up top and not make a new path. You can bypass cool air with over-the-top top fans, but the CPU's still being cooled by having a fan moving air that's cooler than the cpu over fins and moving it somewhere else. The next step is to get that air out of the case and not linger (this is why I like negative vs. possitive)

So absolutely correct, just a technical foul?

You know, I feel like in the end we're just bickering over who gets the crumbs when everyone's had a slice of cake.

I also am opposed to negative pressure now. When I purchased my build with the FT02 a year and a half ago, I bought it because it was minimalistic in appearance and the novelty of a 90 degree rotated motherboard. However, it's a positive pressure case which... I didn't really care about at the time. But now I see the benefits of it over my previous case (an Antec 900). I tend to neglect cleaning my filters as I do it once every two months maybe, but let's put it this way. The case is pretty much spot free. No dust bunnies anywhere and the graphics cards look almost brand new. There's still dust on the edges, the PCB isn't caked in that impossible to remove layer.

Now you might be thinking "of course, the PCB isn't flat so there's less area for dust to settle". There are plenty of flat spaces in the case for dust to accumulate, and there's very little if any dust to be had and I don't clean the case itself.

Besides that, doesn't positive pressure have the opposite effect as negative pressure? You're pushing in air, if we were to say that hot air and cold air don't mix (they do), wouldn't the cold air coming in be pushing the hot air out in every crack?