H100i water cooler and 4790k

[Lyell Wolf]

Corsair H100i Water Cooler
Intel Core i7 4790k

With this cooling setup I have idle temperatures of about 33 Celsius and 55-60 Celsius while gaming. Now, while these temps are decent, I had hoped for a little better. None the less my concern comes from when I performed a Prime 95 Torture test. About two minutes into the test, my temperatures hit 100 Celsius. I find that odd for a water cooler to be hitting that point.

I've already remounted the water block three times. I have ensured that the parts are on correctly (To the best of my knowledge) and that the back plate is correctly secured. Now, that is not to say I couldn't have installed it incorrectly, only that I've double checked and am at a loss.

-Reapplied thermal paste and remounted water block three times (Each and every time using articlean to properly remove the previous thermal paste).
-It's an exhaust fan setup
-Both fans are running and, using Corsair link (Corsairs fan monitoring software), it doesn't show any anomalies
-Common way to find if the water block is installed incorrectly is to press down on the block itself with your hand while the system is running to see if there is a temperature difference. In my case, the temperatures stay exactly the same leading me to believe that the block is a snug as possible.
-Rubber tubes are warm to the touch indicating that the liquid is indeed flowing and likely doing it's job.

I just feel that for the price and the fact that it's water cooling, I should expect better temperatures. But if there is a better product out there, I'm all ears.

 

[Rvenger]

TIM between the IHS and die is the issue.

 

[t1337Dude]

Are you overclocking? This could be irrelevant to your case, but maybe it's not. What fan speeds are you using? I made a thread about being disappointed with my H80i cooling performance on my i7 930, and the culprit was my unwillingness to turn the fans up all the way. Basically I realized that I wasn't going to get the temperatures I wanted (the temperatures shown in most benchmarks) without ramping up the fans beyond what I'd find reasonable.

Of course, I'm pushing a major overclock on my i7 930, so if you're hitting 100C on stock, then I'd say there's definitely something off.

 

[Lyell Wolf]

Are you overclocking? This could be irrelevant to your case, but maybe it's not.

I do not overclock and my system is set to default bios settings. I checked with CPUZ to see if my clock speed was going over the default numbers and everything seemed normal.

What fan speeds are you using? I made a thread about being disappointed with my H80i cooling performance on my i7 930, and the culprit was my unwillingness to turn the fans up all the way. Basically I realized that I wasn't going to get the temperatures I wanted (the temperatures shown in most benchmarks) without ramping up the fans beyond what I'd find reasonable.

Of course, I'm pushing a major overclock on my i7 930, so if you're hitting 100C on stock, then I'd say there's definitely something off.

My fans are already loud enough as it is. I do not think that would be the main issue as I haven't put a cap on their RPM, but I could be wrong. I'll be placing two Noctua fans later this week to help with airflow, which actually brings up a great question...

When I install my Noctua fans, they will plug into the motherboard CPU fan connectors rather than the one built into the side of the cooling block. Will this cause issues with the fans not keeping up with the temperature reader?

 

[Zepher]

I think there may be an issue with the pump or the cpu.
do you have the stock cooler to slap on and see if the temps soar to 100 with prime95?
I think stock cooler should be in the 80's.

I just did a 10 minute prime95 run this morning with my H80i just to see how warm it would get as I only ran it for a minute or so in the past.

this is 10 minutes, and the radiator fans were only slightly louder than at idle ( I can't hear them at idle) , my 2 case fans were still louder, but you could tell the rad fans sped up.

 

[melk]

I have a H105 on my 4790k and hit pretty much exactly the same temps as you, ~33c Idle and 55-60c while gaming. Fans are set to push/exhaust out the top of my Prodigy case.

I'm fine with the these temps and basically just let it be. Make sure that whatever fan header you have the Pump on is set to 100%. My temps will go lower if I crank the fans up (this is roughly 40-50% fan speed) so find whatever noise level you are comfortable with.

Do you regularly run a P95 tortue test? Yeah me either. So I wouldn't really care about what insane temps you get under a scenario you'll never see in normal usage.

 

[Zepher]

if you do any rendering/encoding it will peg the CPU at 100% for however long it takes to render.

 

[Lyell Wolf]

I think there may be an issue with the pump or the cpu.
do you have the stock cooler to slap on and see if the temps soar to 100 with prime95?
I think stock cooler should be in the 80's.

I just did a 10 minute prime95 run this morning with my H80i just to see how warm it would get as I only ran it for a minute or so in the past.

this is 10 minutes, and the radiator fans were only slightly louder than at idle ( I can't hear them at idle) , my 2 case fans were still louder, but you could tell the rad fans sped up.

This concerns me. This is the level I want to be at and I'm really not sure why It's not reaching it. I'll see about installing the stock cooler sometime later to view the results.
Did you by chance need to change the voltage the motherboard had set for you or alter any other settings? I'm using the Maximus 7 Hero Motherboard.

Update: I ran Prime 95 for a few seconds and used CPUZ to see where my voltage would go. It's bumping around 1.3v and 1.2v. I noticed that your screen shots shows 1.1v even during high usage.

 

[Riccochet]

Odd. I'm pushing my 4670k at 4.6 with an H80i in intake config. With the fans on full blast under load I hit about 83c. While gaming it might hit 50c. Idle temps are around 23-27 across the cores. You'd think temps would be a lot better on your rigs at stock clocks with a H100i.

 

[t1337Dude]

Well - maybe you should try RMA'ing it at this point. It doesn't sound like your product is working on par with other people's products. You really shouldn't be going even over 65 on Prime95 on stock settings.

Only other thing I can imagine is your thermal paste is crap or entirely went bad, but I doubt it because it'd have been noticeable upon application.

 

[Lyell Wolf]

Well - maybe you should try RMA'ing it at this point. It doesn't sound like your product is working on par with other people's products. You really shouldn't be going even over 65 on Prime95 on stock settings.

Only other thing I can imagine is your thermal paste is crap or entirely went bad, but I doubt it because it'd have been noticeable upon application.

Before I decide to RMA a Processor I'm going to try and see if it's the cooler or the motherboard. Like I stated in a previous reply, my CPU's volts seem to be higher than normal. It could be that I have a bad CPU, but I'd rather not jump to that and have to deal with RMA until I really know.

I'm also interested in dropping my H100i for a Noctua Fan Cooler.

 

[trick0502]

I don't think you cpu should be running at 1.3v stock. I'd reset the bios defaults and load the system again to see what voltage the cpu goes to.

 

[Zepher]

This concerns me. This is the level I want to be at and I'm really not sure why It's not reaching it. I'll see about installing the stock cooler sometime later to view the results.
Did you by chance need to change the voltage the motherboard had set for you or alter any other settings? I'm using the Maximus 7 Hero Motherboard.

Update: I ran Prime 95 for a few seconds and used CPUZ to see where my voltage would go. It's bumping around 1.3v and 1.2v. I noticed that your screen shots shows 1.1v even during high usage.

I haven't changed anything in the BIOS of my Sabertooth Z97. Oh, and that shot of Premiere Pro rendering above was with the Artic Freezer 7 Pro rev2 installed. The H80i replaced the Arctic due to my ram being blocked.
in CoreTemp, the voltage and multiplier change at idle, 1.14, 1.183, 1.23 and goes between 42-44x.

 

[SpasTas0917]

double post- delete
smartphone greatness...

 

[SpasTas0917]

In many forums or threads.
prime95 is not recommended on haswell CPU's since it spikes and cranks the volts higher, with the AVX instructions balls walls testing.

I would recommend you to set volt to 1.2v-1.25v-ish with adaptive volt regulation thing*. Or get it lower if it can handle it without losing performance or crashing.
So it doesn't go above 1.3v. Especially since you're on stock clocks, you wouldn't need that much volt.
Except if you've lost on the "silicon lottery" and it's a "bad" chip, hence needing a lot of volts to power it.

And some "default" bios settings might have a higher, volt default settings, for compatability with the CPU's.
Try and search for your MB's bios release notes, or search for a thread. If there are new notable updates.
Since asus is all about that "safe bios flash" might be worth a try.

So either test a new bios and see if it fixes it.
Or try and lowering the volts to your cpu, via the bios. Since your on stock clocks, 1.3v is high.

Some fabulous quick "stability tests" you can do is to simply start BF4 and see if it holds.
Although battlefield 4 doesn't run the cpu at max, it can break "24 hour+ aida64/prime95" battle tested overclocks for some reason
Handbrake a high quality video file. It uses AVX instructions

And it's the AVX that causes higher than normal volts. with adaptive volt settings.
*And about that adaptive thing. I meant
The thing That sets the volt, but still can lower the volt when idling or light loads... Can't remember the name for that.
And remember on some motherboards the H100i sits loose. Hence needing washers, For better fit.

See how Handbrake encoding compares to a Prime95 test. Temp wise.

Well.. If some of the stuff I've said are shooting for the stars. so be it and enlighten me further I've read a bunch of threads and forums before building my first rig. And d*cking around with overclocking.
And if you're in pull mode, it helps to tape the fans to the rad so it doesn't suck air from around and not through the rad. Granted it isn't much but helps. Or get something more square than the sp120's and a rubber gasket thing.

Edit: went on pc and fixed iOS autocorrect shenanigans.
- Spas

 

[Lyell Wolf]

In many forums or threads.
prime95 is not recommended on haswell CPU's since it spikes and cranks the volts higher, with the AVX instructions balls walls testing.

I would recommend you to set volt to 1.2v-1.25v-ish with adaptive volt regulation thing*. Or get it lower if it can handle it without losing performance or crashing.
So it doesn't go above 1.3v. Especially since you're on stock clocks, you wouldn't need that much volt.
Except if you've lost on the "silicon lottery" and it's a "bad" chip, hence needing a lot of volts to power it.

And some "default" bios settings might have a higher, volt default settings, for compatability with the CPU's.
Try and search for your MB's bios release notes, or search for a thread. If there are new notable updates.
Since asus is all about that "safe bios flash" might be worth a try.

So either test a new bios and see if it fixes it.
Or try and lowering the volts to your cpu, via the bios. Since your on stock clocks, 1.3v is high.

Some fabulous quick "stability tests" you can do is to simply start BF4 and see if it holds.
Although battlefield 4 doesn't run the cpu at max, it can break "24 hour+ aida64/prime95" battle tested overclocks for some reason
Handbrake a high quality video file. It uses AVX instructions

And it's the AVX that causes higher than normal volts. with adaptive volt settings.
*And about that adaptive thing. I meant
The thing That sets the volt, but still can lower the volt when idling or light loads... Can't remember the name for that.
And remember on some motherboards the H100i sits loose. Hence needing washers, For better fit.

See how Handbrake encoding compares to a Prime95 test. Temp wise.

Well.. If some of the stuff I've said are shooting for the stars. so be it and enlighten me further I've read a bunch of threads and forums before building my first rig. And d*cking around with overclocking.
And if you're in pull mode, it helps to tape the fans to the rad so it doesn't suck air from around and not through the rad. Granted it isn't much but helps. Or get something more square than the sp120's and a rubber gasket thing.

Edit: went on pc and fixed iOS autocorrect shenanigans.
- Spas

You make some good pointers in your post and I have read about the prime95 issue as well.

At this point, what I'm going to do is ask Asus about my current motherboard (Maximus 7 Hero) and if it auto overclocks even on default settings. If they say no or yes, I'm going to change my CPU cooler to one of the Noctua Fan coolers. If I need to change the motherboard, so be it. I do not overclock in anyway and only got the board to ensure I got the best performance at stock settings. If that doesn't work, I might consider a RMA.

Regarding the over voltage I read somewhere that the i7 4790k can sometimes default to asking for too much power. More research would have to be placed on that as it may have been speculation.

 

[SoulCreatr]

I have heard/read/experienced Haswell chips running hot in Prime95. These chips, Haswell-e included, turn into little heaters when you nudge that voltage up which Prime95 causes to happen regardless of what you set the limit at in the software. If it is doing it at stock clocks, then I would try to set it in the bios at 1.1v and see how it behaves. Also I do not use Prime-95 as it will thrash my poor 5820K up to 85C+, but when I encode videos in Handbrake I sit around 60C and 50-52C during a CPU intensive game. My system is rock solid stable even after encoding videos for hours on end.

The big complaint I see about the Corsair CLC is that their fans are loud....and that is true, especially if it is installed in a horizontal position. Change out the fans to a high static pressure fan from Noctua or other quality fan. I use Noiseblocker PK-3's on my H110 but it uses 140mm fans so you may be able to find better ones as the pickings at 140mm are a little slim.

 

[Nnimrod]

Don't use prime...

And delid.

 

[melk]

I moved my H105 into a new case. Same 4790k. Artic Silver 5 paste. Temps after a few hours gaming: