Techniques for distributing airflow for cooling an electronic device are described. Vanes positioned immediately after a set of cooling fans direct airflow over a plurality of components within the device. For example, the vanes may be designed to segment the net fan blade travel area into equal sections--one section per component--to accomplish balanced airflow distribution. Components requiring cooling include cards, e.g., printed circuit boards and the like. A plurality of cards may form slots between the cards and the vanes may divide the airflow equally among the slots to provide consistent cooling for each of the cards. Embodiments of the invention may be directed to distributing cooling airflows within a computing device, e.g., a network router or a server.