Either top as exhaust or back wall next to mobo as intake.

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

Either top as exhaust or back wall next to mobo as intake.

Thanks!

I'm not sure I would install the radiator fans as intake, but if you do, just make sure to monitor temperatures for a while (especially in summer, as the ambient temperature plays a big part). Using them as intake you are effectively bringing in air, but that air will be heating up passing on the radiator, so depending on your CPU and how much heat it generates, that air can be a bit hot and being thrown into the case. In general, the CPU should be fine since it's being cooled by liquid system but everything else might be getting hot.
One option could be to have the radiator fans up front but blowing out, the back fan as intake, the bottom fans as intake too and the top as exhaust.
But, as always, check temperatures after you make changes. Adjusting might be necessary. There are many ways to do so other people might have different ideas.

top as exhaust is best for an aio
will keep all air bubbles in the rad, last thing you want is the pump to be air locked or bubbles in the heat block

Originally posted by _I_:

top as exhaust is best for an aio
will keep all air bubbles in the rad, last thing you want is the pump to be air locked or bubbles in the heat block

I agree. I looked at the case and for some reason, most examples I see only have 2 fans on top when it looks like the case can handle 3. And radiator up front. Not sure exactly what the issue is, but it does look like the case can easily handle 3 up front and 3 on top.

it shows 2x 140, the aio is 3x 120 so that will fit fine

Originally posted by x:

I'm not sure I would install the radiator fans as intake, but if you do, just make sure to monitor temperatures for a while (especially in summer, as the ambient temperature plays a big part). Using them as intake you are effectively bringing in air, but that air will be heating up passing on the radiator, so depending on your CPU and how much heat it generates, that air can be a bit hot and being thrown into the case. In general, the CPU should be fine since it's being cooled by liquid system but everything else might be getting hot.
One option could be to have the radiator fans up front but blowing out, the back fan as intake, the bottom fans as intake too and the top as exhaust.
But, as always, check temperatures after you make changes. Adjusting might be necessary. There are many ways to do so other people might have different ideas.

NZXT Elite 9 is aquarium case with no front fan mount. That`s why it`s better to put radiator as intake if you mount it on the back panel next to motherboard.
Other fans - bottom intake, back and top exhaust.

Other way around would mean that hot air inside would need to do lot of unnatural acrobatics and corner turning causing turbulence.
Personally I don`t like those aquarium cases because you don`t have straight airflow from front to the back and top through the case like with front fan mount cases and airflow needs to move in unnatural curves causing turbulence and vortexes of hot air inside the case.
It`s especially bad when you use CPU air cooler in aquarium case. Not so much problem with liquid AIO coolers and those aquarium cases are basically meant to be used with liquid AIO.

I would say radiator mounted on top as exhaust is better option for aquarium case.
This allows bottom and backside intake fans to create enough pressure to overcome the turbulence issues with aquarium cases.

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

NZXT Elite 9 is aquarium case with no front fan mount. That`s why it`s better to put radiator as intake if you mount it on the back panel next to motherboard.
Other fans - bottom intake, back and top exhaust.

It has that "front/side" fan line that should work more or less like the front line since the exhaust fans can move the air from front to back. From the photos it looks like 90º. I know some cases are about 45º.
I any case, it's not my favourite design for airflow, but I personally don't care much for aesthetics.
I still don't like that in most cases/motherboards the GPU blows hot air towards the MB and CPU. I would place the GPU on top. Could even be directly and straight to the outside. But who am I to change MB and case design?

If you have fast / high performance ddr5, you really want some airflow over it, so you'll want atleast one fan in the top over the ram as an intake for best / most stable results.

If you don't have fast / hot memory, this isn't really as important (ddr5 doesn't like getting to 50c or more).

Originally posted by Monk:

If you have fast / high performance ddr5, you really want some airflow over it, so you'll want atleast one fan in the top over the ram as an intake for best / most stable results.

If you don't have fast / hot memory, this isn't really as important (ddr5 doesn't like getting to 50c or more).

Those kind of builds are mostly for tower air coolers and front intake cases.
I have seen builds like this, front as intake, closest to front top slot as intake, middle top slot empty and back and closest to back top slot as exhaust.

Even with a top mounted aio, IF you have fast memory (so Intel only really at this point in time) it's worth turning one of the fans on a top mounted aio round, the breeze can make the difference between stable and crashing.

But, I really made the comment purely as an incase sort of thing.

For 99%, aio up top as an exhaust is the way to go or on the back panel alongside the mobo.

Oh and by fast memory, I mean 7200+ but really 7800 to 8000+ or tight timings and tuned is when it will be getting a bit toasty for it's own good, which, is another advantage of ryzen having no need for such speeds.

Originally posted by _I_:

top as exhaust is best for an aio
will keep all air bubbles in the rad, last thing you want is the pump to be air locked or bubbles in the heat block

Front and side radiator are generally fine as long you don`t do something stupid like mounting the radiator with hoses below the pump.
You will always want to keep the part of the radiator where hoses connect up and higher then then the pump at CPU.