I have a Corsair H110i GTX. Any Questions?

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hey,

I may have received one of the first H110i GTX units.

As I go about my build today, does anyone have any questions?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Let me know how good it's working in three years from now.

I've been digging a lot in all of the AIO LC and while I like the Enermax Liqtech 220, this is the one that I want, the 110i GTX, because it's a 280mm rad and from what I've been reading, this set up has been improved overall. For $139.99, it's good but then again, I keep hearing from tech reviewers that at most the pumps only last 3 years and this has a 5 year warranty, just don't like to hear about pumps not lasting longer.

I got my Corsair 450D so that I could put that AIO LC but I'm having my doubts now. It would go nicely with my RM1000i. I may bite the bullet, not 100% sure yet.

Well, I unfortunately lack a time machine, so I can't tell you what will happen in the future.

I'm not 100% certain who manufactures the H110i GTX. My last AIO was a Corsair CoolIT manufactured model. I bought it just over 4 years ago. It still works. The pump is a little louder than it used to be, but otherwise it seems like it still works.

Honestly though, if a cooler dies after 4 years, I feel like I got my use out of it, as long as it doesn't explode and leak water all over my hardware.

 

[Warrior]

You cant possibly know how long a pump is going to last...

the one in my rig is coming on 6 years old.

 

[OGMCVilleTC]

I have a Kraken X61 in my main. Was thinking about grabbing the 110I GTX for my benching rig. What are your temps like?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I have a Kraken X61 in my main. Was thinking about grabbing the 110I GTX for my benching rig. What are your temps like?

Temps are notoriously squirrely as we all run different cases, in different room test, with different CPU's overclocked to different levels at different voltages.

That being said, here's what mine looks like:

Room Temp:

Un-airconditioned room (it was cool today) ~78-80°F

Setup:

Corsair 750D with two included 140mm intake fans in the front, one included 140mm exhaust fan in the rear, and three 140mm Corsair SP140 exhaust fans on the top.

H110i GTX is mounted below two of the top 140mm exhaust fans, forming a push-pull setup.

Like this (forgive terrible low light cell phone picture)

CPU:

Sandy-E hexacore i7-3930k at 4.8Ghz (temporarily clocked down from sig, while I test out the new cooler) Voltage runs from ~1.480V to 1.496V under load according to HWMonitor.

Ran roughly three tests per core in prime95 blend mode, (15- 20 min?) and then took HWmonitor screenshot below:

Temps aren't terrible, but not amazing either, but that being said, it is a Sandy-E at almost 1.5V for which HWMonitor is estimating almost 220W heat output, so I guess it's actually fairly decent.

I hope this helps a little? Unless you are testing in the same environment on the same hardware it is very difficult to come up with good comparison numbers on coolers.

 

[OGMCVilleTC]

Temps are notoriously squirrely as we all run different cases, in different room test, with different CPU's overclocked to different levels at different voltages.

That being said, here's what mine looks like:

Room Temp:

Un-airconditioned room (it was cool today) ~78-80°F

Setup:

Corsair 750D with two included 140mm intake fans in the front, one included 140mm exhaust fan in the rear, and three 140mm Corsair SP140 exhaust fans on the top.

H110i GTX is mounted below two of the top 140mm exhaust fans, forming a push-pull setup.

Like this (forgive terrible low light cell phone picture)

CPU:

Sandy-E hexacore i7-3930k at 4.8Ghz (temporarily clocked down from sig, while I test out the new cooler) Voltage runs from ~1.480V to 1.496V under load according to HWMonitor.

Ran roughly three tests per core in prime95 blend mode, (15- 20 min?) and then took HWmonitor screenshot below:

Temps aren't terrible, but not amazing either, but that being said, it is a Sandy-E at almost 1.5V for which HWMonitor is estimating almost 220W heat output, so I guess it's actually fairly decent.

I hope this helps a little? Unless you are testing in the same environment on the same hardware it is very difficult to come up with good comparison numbers on coolers.

I'm actually using a Storm Trooper case with upgraded fans. My rad has the Noctua industrial 140mm. My cpu is a 5930k @ 4.5. My temps don't get that high, well they did get around there but now I have a 10k btu window unit. It rarely reaches above 50 now. I have a very small room though with a 60 inch plasma, a server, my main rig, and a ts140 as a pfsense machine with a nighthawk x6. So yeah it definitely got toasty in there. Thanks for the reply. I may grab one up and try it myself. Then I could do a better comparison.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I'm actually using a Storm Trooper case with upgraded fans. My rad has the Noctua industrial 140mm. My cpu is a 5930k @ 4.5. My temps don't get that high, well they did get around there but now I have a 10k btu window unit. It rarely reaches above 50 now. I have a very small room though with a 60 inch plasma, a server, my main rig, and a ts140 as a pfsense machine with a nighthawk x6. So yeah it definitely got toasty in there. Thanks for the reply. I may grab one up and try it myself. Then I could do a better comparison.

Yeah, for what it's worth, I usually air condition the room to 68°F. I have a 10k BTU unit in the window, but the noise was bothering me more than usual today, and it was a little cooler out this evening (down to 76°F from mid 80's during the day) so I decided to open the windows instead, and turn on a fan.

I can do a re-run tomorrow with the AC blasting if you are curious. I suspect that my rather high voltage has a lot to do with the temps though.

If curious, I might be able to set it to stock and do another test.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Did you set it up as a push-pull configuration?

Yep, the included high power 4 pin fans are pushing from below.

I have a set of these pulling from above. They don't move much air though (49CFM?), so I am not sure how much they actually help.

What did you do with your other drive cage?

It's sitting on my kitchen counter, next to the fruit bowl

Will you be using it.......?

Probably not. I wasn't even going to use one of them. I haven't had actual hard drives in any of my desktops in a long time. I got my first SSD in early 2010, at which point I moved all my files to a separate drive. Six months later I built my first NAS, and haven't had any spinning drives in any of my desktops since, until this build a couple of days ago.

I was doing a image backup of the NAS server install drive, when the lightbulb struck, that it would be nice to have some storage to back stuff up to if the NAS is ever down (or to back up stuff from the NAS to). I had two 3TB greens just gathering dust from when I replaced all my drives in my NAS with 4TB RED's, so I popped them in, and mirrored them using ZFS on Linux. (I don't trust non-redundant hard drives to begin with, and these have been spinnign 24/7 since 3TB WD greens were first released )


So, chances are slim I'll ever use the second cage. I didn't even plan on using the first one. Why? You want it?

New ones are only $9.99 on Corsairs webpage and it would probably cost almost that much just to ship it, as I am not a volume shipper. You'd probably be better of getting a new one warrantied directly from Corsair.

Unless you are ever in the Boston area and want to stop by

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

For better performance, you should do this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbpb23yTK8

Lol, I doubt that helps much

At some point you have to hit limiting returns

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Like this (forgive terrible low light cell phone picture)

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/513/19728457178_ac57e36e08_b.jpg

I did get around to taking a better pic, if anyone is curious.

click to embiggen:

 

[lee0539]

doesn't that setup get bad cpu cooling performance. the heat two 980 ti is putting out into the case and trying to cool a cpu with that hot air. I have one intake and one exhaust aio and even then I can tell my internal temperatures are getting hot and i have a high airflow case (air 540)

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

doesn't that setup get bad cpu cooling performance. the heat two 980 ti is putting out into the case and trying to cool a cpu with that hot air. I have one intake and one exhaust aio and even then I can tell my internal temperatures are getting hot and i have a high airflow case (air 540)

It might, there are two mitigating factors though.

1.) The CPU and GPU's are rarely going full bore at the same time. I still haven't run across a game that makes my CPU get anywhere close to Prime95 temps, so when the GPU's get hot and bothered, when I am playing a game, the CPU is usually only seeing a medium load, and thus I can afford to have a little hot air flowing over the CPU radiator.

2.) The setup is only temporary like this. I am waiting for the Corsair HG10 N980's to launch, and which point I plan on installing my Corsair airflow kit in the front, and two H90's (one per GPU) so they all exhaust at the front.

The airflow directions will be a little non-traditional (in through back and bottom, out through top and front) but I think it should work well. This way the hottest components (GPU's and CPU) will all be dumping their heat outside the case, and should be getting relatively cool air flowing through them.

For now - however - this works. Maxwell GPU's are VERY cool when idle, Nvidia did a good job with power management, so they don't negatively impact heavy CPU loads, and when I'm gaming, the CPU is seeing lowish loads. end of the story, everything is stable, and I can maintain 4.8Ghz without a problem.

Once I get my GPU coolers, I'm going to crank the CPU back up to 5Ghz.

 

[tisb0b]

How loud is the pump on the GTX? Because I've read plenty of people whinging about Corsair coolers and pump noise. Who then proceed to recommend the Kraken x61 which is the same oem who makes the GTX.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

How loud is the pump on the GTX? Because I've read plenty of people whinging about Corsair coolers and pump noise. Who then proceed to recommend the Kraken x61 which is the same oem who makes the GTX.

I think the people who complain about pump noise are either wrong, insane or have defective units.

I have had several different Corsair AIO coolers over the years and have never heard one without sticking my head in my case and the I g all my fans off. Simply a non issue.

There were some who were co planning about pump noise years ago, but it actually turned out it was fan bearing noise. Others simply have to tilt their AIO's a bit to get the trapped air bubbles out, and the noise goes away.

If there still is noticeable pump noise I'd suggest an RMA is in order. It must have been damaged in shipping.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

And last but not least, a 2nd bottle of Glenfiddich.......

From personal experience, alcohol (particularly hard alcohol) and our mutual hobby don't mix

This message brought to you by the two AMD Athlon (Palomino core) 1800+ CPU's and the one AMD Athlon (Thunderbird core) 1200Mhz CPU cores I crushed with my Asetek Vapochill back in college in 2001

That was a very expensive semester, and I had to downgrade to my 650Mhz Duron (Oc:ed to 950Mhz, of course) until I could afford a new chip again.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

One thing I like about the H110i, is that it's powered by a SATA power connector, from the reviews I saw on the net (didn't bother to look at the manual or ask you before), it seemed as if it was powered from the CPU's fan connector or a molex, and I didn't want that, also, I don't think I'll be connecting that plug for the PWN. My Asus Z97 Pro controls the fans and they run below 600rpm and the CPU fan at 994rpm, I don't hear the fans at all but in any case if the pump is too loud? Then the connector for the PWN will be.

Yeah, I talked to Corsair support about this.

They goofed. The manual says that it is powered by a single CPU fan connector, but it is wrong.

All power, for both the pump and fans comes from a single SATA connector. There is a 4 pin CPU fan connector, but it only has one wire, and all it does is provide RPM data to the BIOS, for those few motherboards that still throw a fir when they don't get an rpm signal from the CPU fan and panic because the "CPU fan is dead"

 

[2k3eblade]

I did get around to taking a better pic, if anyone is curious.

click to embiggen:

Clean build. I like it!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Clean build. I like it!

Thank you.

It's about to get more clean in one regard (I got an extension, so I can route the 8pin power behind the board, rather than on top) but less clean in another.

As soon as Corsair launches their HG10 N980 brackets, I'm getting a pair for the GPU's, and attaching a pair of H90's to the front of the case.

This unfortunately means I'll be losing the EVGA 980ti LED's on top of the GPU's, which I hated at first, but have come to appreciate...

It will make it a little bit more busy, but I'm thinking I'm going to like those cool GPU's.

My only problem is going to be that I will be exhausting more air than I am sucking in, creating under-pressure and possibly dust. I'm rotating the air flow from front to back to back to front using the rear 140mm as an intake (I installed an aftermarket dust filter), and blowing out over the two H90's in the front. Also exhausting all three 140mm's up top, in order to have the air going the same direction to create flow.

Because of this, I am going to move the hard drives to the 5.25" bay using adapters, and put two 120mm intake fans in the bottom (also with an aftermarket dust filter.)

I'll still have more fans pushing out than in, especially when the H90's and H110 rev up under load, but even at idle. I'm considering covering up all the passive vents and PCI brackets with black tape, and just hoping that all the air gets pulled through the 140mm slot in the back, and 2x 120mm slots in the bottom that are filtered.

Time will tell how it works...

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Pump is definitely quiet and with the Fan Xpert 3 software from ASUS, the fans are spinning between 650 to 710 rpm.

Nice. I haven't switched over to motherboard fan control yet. Still have them hooked up to Link, which is having some problems with Windows 10.

They are working on a fix by end of the month though, and they have also contracted an external vendor with a new larger team to create Link 4, which should finally fix all of its issues.

Not sure if I am going to wait around though. When I have some time on my hands, I'll start using motherboard PWM control again.

Question: How come you have your PSU oriented with the fan up? Wouldn't it be better to have it pull in air from underneath, or does the 450D not allow that?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Besides, I remember back in the day when there were people with 15-20 dust-bunnies when they had their fan blowing air in from the outside from the bottom of the floor.

True, but back in the day they didn't have those nifty dust filters, did they?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Question for you; I'm wondering here if my pump works or not, I'm touching the hoses, getting a good grip, and feel nothing.

Touching the back of the cold plate where the pump would be but I feel no vibration.....is this damn thing broken or is that scary quiet? It's not even warm. Couldn't be dead, the Corsair logo comes on.

Temps are lower than ever but this is giving me a little bit of a concern. And in Link, I got the pump at 2900rpm.

Firstly, don't be scared. Modern CPU's throttle, they don't burn up. Let's trouble shoot though.

To find out if it is working, load it up with something (like Prime95) and check in CPUz or HWMonitor or something of the like, if the CPU is throttling.

If not, you are probably good, but to make sure the pump is doing its thing, feel the reservoir on the radiator. If it is warm to the touch, the pump is working. If the pump weren't working, the heat would all stay near the CPU.

Honestly, I have owned a few AIO coolers (H50, H80, CoolIT 180mm, and now H110i GTX) and I've never heard any of them without putting my ear right up against them, and I don't even use particularly noisy fans that would drown the sound out.

Different people have had different experiences, but I suspect in the cases where there has been a lot of pump noise, it's either been one of those where someone misidentified fan bearing noise as pump noise, or the pump was damaged.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

K, I went back to the LINK, change the rpm in the pump from 2900 to 1900 and put my ear close to one of the hoses and I heard the fluid flowing through.

From the reviews I saw, I imagined this was gonna be very warm to the touch (like the Liqtech) or it was going to be vibrating when at high rpms.

The other weird thing was that my CPU is overclocked to 4.5ghz and while I was running Prime (fans on the rad spinning at 1200rpm) for a moment Prime pushed the CPU to 4,680mhz and then all hell broke loose. The fans on the rad jumped to 2,000 rpm (very loud) temps to 80c for about 1min, then it back down to 59-60c once that part of the test had passed.

Which version of the link software did you install?

3.2.5676 is the newest, and the only one with Windows 10 support, but it has some issues. Sometimes fans aren't responsive at all, unless it is running and they are specifically clicked on, other times it works fine, but the fan curves are weird, and can cause stuff like what you were mentioning to happen.

3.1.5667 is the previous version. It lacks Windows 10 support, but if not running Windows 10, this is to be preferred. It is much more stable.

Either way, this shouldn't matter though, right, as you said you were using the motherboard for fan control?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Yes, I have the latest version and yes, the Fan Xpert 3 from Asus is what it's set on right now.

Says here the CPU fan is at 650 rpm and the CPU Opt at 712 rpm but they sound a bit loud in my opinion, maybe it's because they're right up against the rad and it's creating a vortex when the air passes through the fins?

That is odd.

Using the Corsair Link software to control the fans, in "Quiet mode" they never spun down below ~960rpm, (I really need to use the motherboard control instead).

My point being, at 960rpm, while they are audible, it is on a "very slight whooshing" level.
Spinning so much less than mine, I would expect yours to be less audible than mine...

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I'm actually shopping around for alternate fans for my H110i GTX.

The problem with the included fans is that in PWM mode, their min RPM appears to be 900-960RPM. At this RPM they make a slight, by noticeable noise that is driving me unreasonably bananas.

Using Corsairs built in fan controller, they would hover around 900-960rpm at idle. It was impossible to force them any lower.

When I instead plugged them into the motherboard, and used motherboard PWM control, using a splitter, I saw the same thing. I set it to manual control, and to run at 20% below 50C, and to spin up to 100% by 70C. Still, even though the motherboard reports giving it a 20% duty cycle, it the fans never go below 900rpm.

Finally I tried it with my Sunbeam Rheosmart 6 fan controller, which has the ability to convert motherboard PWM signals to voltage control for 3pin fans (I figured if I ran them in voltage mode, I could run them at lower speed, or at the very least they would stop when not needed), but this didn't work at all. Apparently the minimum pwm speed on this controller results in 7.5V fan control, which is too high.

So, replacing the fans seems like the only real choice.

At load I still need similar power to these fans though, as when I do a prime95 load test, I do need 100% cycle to keep the temps in check.

I have been looking around for alternatives, and the 140mm Noctua Industrial 2000 pwm fans appear to provide similar power at the high end (slightly lower rpm, slightly higher CFM & static pressure)

The best part about these is that their minimum pwm speed is 500rpm, which is fantastic.