[jongala]

I agree, it feels like a missed opportunity to not explore this. I'd love to see an analysis of the swirl design (or other commonly used manufacturer patterns), with the edges rounded or beveled on the intake face, exhaust face, or both.

Like, even on cut or stamped grills, how much could performance be improved by e.g. sandblasting the finished piece from one or both sides and taking down the edges a bit?

[londons_explore]

The wire is only just laminar flow... I found a random PC fan and assumed a 1mm wire diameter, 2.3m/s airflow, and the reynolds number comes out at 36.

That tells me if you were to get a 1000x really powerful fan, then the grille would start giving turbulent flow, and might no longer perform the best.

Page with lots of details: http://labman.phys.utk.edu/phys221core/modules/m8/turbulence....

[simne]

This is 10 years ago article, coolers tech changed a lot since that.

I even remember, when in mac clones used ultra-high-speed coolers, which now used only in rack devices.

And yes, ultra-high-speed coolers, has much higher speed and make turbulence.