MSI GTX 10xx Sea Hawk X pump (Corsair H55) replacement

[pclausen]

I have a MSI GTX 1070 Sea Hawk X GPU. After working well for a long time, all of a sudden it started overheating under any kind of load, with temps climbing into the 90's within seconds.

Unit was still under warranty, so I get an RMA from MSI and shipped them my card. After about 35 days, they finally shipped me a replacement. It was missing the Corsair fan, and looked pretty beat up. Anyway, I added the fan from the failed unit to the rad and powered it up. Worked great for about 1 hour, then the overheating started again. Sure enough, the pump on this unit had apparently failed again.

Called MSI back and the guy I spoke to understood my frustration and told me he would get a 2nd replacement sent out to me as soon as one became available. He got back to me the next day and said that unfortunately there did not have another used 1070 Sea Hawk X they could send me. I told them that was unacceptable and that their competitors (EVGA) will ship you a model with equal or better performance under those circumstances.)

He checked with his manager and the following day got back to stating that he was able to locate a 1080Ti Sea Hawk X and asked if I would be ok with that as a replacement for the failed 1070. I was like, uh sure. He shipped it out 2nd day from CA to VA.

So got it yesterday and it turned out to be a 1080 Sea Hawk X and not a 1080Ti Sea Hawk X. But hey, I figured that was still a decent upgrade. Plugged it in, and what do you know, same freaking problem. Pump was not working and temps shot up into the 90's within seconds.

Here's a shot of it a few seconds into a benchmark:

I know the Sea Hawk X's use the Corsair H55 cooler, which by default are made for CPU cooling. Newegg had them on sale for $59, so I figured I'd pick one up to see if I could make one of these Sea Hawks run again.

So I took the 1070 apart and removed the failed H55, which is super easy to do. I then compared the MSI H55 to the new H55 and there are 2 major differences.

1. The coolant lines exit the pump via 90 degree fittings where the MSI one comes straight out. See red ovals in the pic.
2. The new H55 has a 3 wire fan connector, where the MSI one only has GND and 12V that goes to a special connector that also powers the squirrel fan.

I figured I had little to loose, so I went ahead and when ahead and transferred the MSI mounting plate from the failed unit to the new replacement. Here it is after transfer. All those 12 screws in a circle had to come out. Once I was down to the last 2 screws on the new unit, a few drops of coolant started to come out. So for the last but, I had to hold the pump up high and apply pressure to both the upper and lower parts with my fingers to prevent to coolant from leaking out.

Here's a pic of the old unit. Even with all 12 screws removed, the upper and lower portions ever separated, I'm guessing because it was over a year old and stuck together pretty welll.

Here's the (CPU) H55 cooler attached to the GPU:

Given how the coolant lines exists, I was not able to put the shroud/cover back on. I proceed to install the GPU in an ancient Asus Z97 chipset based machine I had layout around. I left the old pump connected to the GPU and just plugged the new pump into a fan header on the mobo.

Since the squirrel cage fan was't very effective at cooling the GPU RAM without the shroud in place, I added a 120mm fan (red arrow) to blow air across the GPU and heat sink for the voltage regulators.

So it worked. Here's a shot showing GPU temp while under load:

Much better!

I did reach out to MSI again and told them that the 2nd replacement card they sent me failed in the same manner as the first one. This time they wanted a screenshot showing the temp issue. I sent them the 1st pic above showing the issue.

I asked him if he could just send me a replacement pump and I would take of the issue myself. He said that is not how it works, but I explained that after 2 replacements that both had bad pumps, I'd rather just get a new pump and replace it myself. I have not heard back from him yet.

So I am now in position of a 1070 and 1080 Sea Hawk X, both with failed pumps. I was able to hack the 1070 with a CPU pump and it is working, but is not really a permanent solution.

Any idea how to get a hold of the correct MSI modded Corsair pump without the 90 degree fittings and 3 wire plug?

MSI told me they would charge me $350 if I don't return the failed 1070. I'm inclined to pay that and keep since the cheapest I can find it for used online is like $450. And as a bonus, I now also have a 1080!

Perhaps reach out to Corsair to see if they will sell me a pair of those modified H55 pumps?

 

[hititnquitit]

pay the 350 for sure and keep the 1070. even if you have to replace the pump thats a sweet price. i wouldnt waste my time with those asetek/corsair whatever they are. i would pick up a cheap ddc or d5 pump and splice it into the loop. might run ya $70 with fittings.

 

[pclausen]

Thanks for the advice. After messing around with those cheap ass asetek/corsair pumps and getting them working, they failed again in short order (a few hours). I actually took them all the way apart and cleaned out the gunk, carefully capturing all the coolant (glyco whatever), and filled the closed loop back up and actually got the pumps running again. But like I said, they both failed again a few hours later.

So I ordered up some 3/8" to 1/4" reducer barbs from frozencpu ($1.50 each) and plan to just gut the inside of the corsair GPU blocks and splice both the MSI 1070 and 1080 into the loop on an existing rig that already has a couple of water open loop GPUs on it (Zotac 1080Ti Arcticstorm and MSI 1070 Sea Hawk EK). That rig already has a thick 480 rad and EK-XRES 140 Revo D5 pump.

My only concern is that having part of the loop reduced from 3/8" I.D. down to 1/4" I.D. might add quite a bit of restriction, but we'll see. That said, I'm currently running the Zotac 1080Ti @ 220 watts and the MSI 1070 @ 170 watts, and temps are only 33C and 42C respectively, so those can go up quite a bit before it is a concern.

Btw, this is obviously a mining rig as it would not otherwise make sense to run a 1080Ti, 1080 and a pair of 1070's on the same box.

 

[kasakka]

How the hell do you manage to get so many bad pumps or break them? I've had my MSI 980 Ti modded with the Corsair H55 and G10 bracket for the last 3 years and it has been nothing but smooth sailing. Only issue is that the pipes from the H55 are a bit short.

I would probably look at issues somewhere in your machine if the pumps keep breaking. Could voltage spikes or something break them?

 

[pclausen]

So I had 3x MSI 1070 Sea Hawk's working fine for 10 months until one of them failed (whole rig would not boot before it was removed). So some sort of power regular died would be my guess.

It was RMA'ed to MSI. The one I got back (same model), worked for about 1 hour before overheating due to pump failure in a test rig. Called MSI, they sent me another Sea Hawk (1080 this time), and it had a dead pump from the get go (again tested in a test rig).

As it turns out, the issue with the 1080 overheating was not because the pump wasn't running, it was because the base plate on the cooler was concave, causing the cooling plate to not make contact with the GPU. So once I fixed the base plate, it worked fine. I guess the tech at MSI didn't notice that when he repaired the card, and apparently didn't do a stress test afterwards, but just a quick power on test, which it would have passed.

I have about a dozen other hybrids (mostly EVGA 1070's, 1070Ti's and 1080Ti's) and they have been going strong since the day I got them, which in some cases is over a year ago.

 

[{NG}Fidel]

God i wanna do a aio on my Titan X but im not sure what even fits the fucking ncase.