It sweeps a wide, slow sheet along the board, so M.2 slots and VRM fins sit in moving air rather than still air. A round fan sends a narrow column over the top of them instead. The GR20 Edition 20 includes a crossflow fan and sells for R15,999.
Most case fans are built to push air in one direction, through one gap, as fast as possible. A crossflow fan is built to do something different: spread a wide sheet of moving air across an entire flat surface, which is exactly the shape a motherboard happens to be.
A crossflow fan is a long drum with blades running its full length rather than a spinning propeller, and it throws air sideways across whatever surface it faces rather than forward in a cone. That reaches M.2 drives, VRM heatsinks and memory sitting in the still-air pockets a normal round fan rarely points at. The R15,999 GR20 Edition 20 includes one for exactly this reason, aimed to sweep air across the board rather than into open space.
A standard axial fan, the square fan everyone pictures, works like an aircraft propeller: it accelerates air along its own spinning axis, producing a cone-shaped column ideal for pushing through a filter or a radiator directly in front of it.
A crossflow fan looks and works completely differently. It is a cylinder roughly 100mm to 150mm long with many small blades running its full length, closer in design to a paddle wheel, and it pulls air in on one side and pushes it out the other in a flat, even sheet as wide as the drum itself. The same mechanism is what moves air across a car windscreen or through a shop's air curtain at a doorway.
A motherboard is not a single point that needs cooling, it is a wide, mostly flat area, often 305mm across on an EATX board inside a mid-tower case, with several components that each generate a little heat on their own: the chipset, the VRM heatsinks near the CPU socket, the memory slots, and any M.2 drive lying flat against the board.
The main intake-to-exhaust draft that ventilates a typical case moves over that whole area only in passing, without aiming at any one part of it, so a component tucked beneath a large graphics card or off to one side can sit in genuinely still air even inside a well-ventilated build. A crossflow fan closes that specific gap by laying a moving sheet across the whole surface at once, deliberately, rather than hoping the case's general draft happens to wander past every corner on its own.
Fans are controlled either by varying voltage on a 3 pin header or by a 4 pin PWM signal riding on top of a steady 12V supply, and the two behave differently at low speeds. Which method a specific crossflow fan uses, and which header your board offers for it, varies by model, so check the fan's own specification and your board's header type before assuming either behaviour.
Whichever control method applies, the placement and orientation matter more for this style of fan than for a standard case fan. Aim the sheet of air parallel to the board, within a few degrees of flat, rather than down into it, since pointed the wrong way a crossflow fan produces turbulence rather than the even coverage it is designed for.
It is a drum-shaped fan that pushes a flat sheet of air sideways across a surface, rather than a propeller-style fan pushing a cone of air forward.
M.2 drives, VRM heatsinks and memory that sit in still-air pockets a standard front-to-back airflow path does not reach directly.
Speed control depends on the individual fan's design and the header it connects to, so check both before assuming a particular control method.
Across the board's surface, parallel to it, rather than straight down into components, which produces turbulence instead of the even sheet the design relies on.
Ready to get airflow into the parts of your build a normal fan misses? Check your board's header type, then aim any crossflow fan across the surface, not into it.
It is a drum-shaped fan that pushes a flat sheet of air sideways across a surface, rather than a propeller-style fan pushing a cone of air forward.
M.2 drives, VRM heatsinks and memory that sit in still-air pockets a standard front-to-back airflow path does not reach directly.
Speed control depends on the individual fan's design and the header it connects to, so check both before assuming a particular control method.
Across the board's surface, parallel to it, rather than straight down into components, which produces turbulence instead of the even sheet the design relies on.
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