Actually, I think both play a vital role, but I belive the intake is a little more important because (I think…) the tempature can be cooled faster with more cold air in then trying to push it all out. On my case, I got sooo many fans, 120mm in the back for output, 2 80mm fans in front for intake, 1 80mm fan on the door for intake (because i've noticed that I get a draft in sometimes from my roomdoor which hits my pcdoor, which is cooler than the temp in my room, and one 80mm fan on the top of the case for output, and thats not even counting the vidcard fans/hs, the cpufan/hs, or the psu fans. But thats just me. [also note this is on my oc'd system (CeleronD336) w/ 2 nVidia 7600GTs (sli mode...duh...)] Crazy eh? If i didn't have those, the temp inside is 90C+, but w/ them its only 60c+. (I also have them REALLY high)