Novice needs help

T

taveston

n00b
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May 15, 2011
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I have recently changed to a water cooled setup, but have run into issues regarding high temperatures (particularly with the vcore and the motherboard sensor as reported by Asus AI Suite II) as well as excessive fan noise.

I’d appreciate any tips regarding the optimal fan set up and anything else I might be doing wrong.

Please see below for screenshots of temps (with the side panel off) and a photo of the case

Performance so far (in terms of heat and noise at idle for both CPU and GPU, and at load for the CPU) is worse than when I had air cooled GPUs and an H100 on the CPU, although GPU noise and heat at load is lower

System
  1. Case: Corsair 600T SE
  2. CPU: i7-3960X with EK-Supreme LT – UNI waterblock (overclocked to 4.3 using the OC Tuner)
  3. MB: Asus Sabretooth X79
  4. GPU: 2 x Radeon HD 7970 with Koolance VID-AR797 waterblocks (not overclocked)
  5. Ram: 4 x 4GB GSkill
  6. HD: Intel 5 series SSD and 1 TB HDD

Cooling and fans
  1. Single loop
  2. 2 x Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm on exhaust at the top
  3. 2 x Bitfenix Spectre Pro 120mm on intake at the front
  4. 1 x Coolermaster 120mm as intake at the back
  5. 2 x XSPC EX240 Multiport Series Copper Dual-Fan Radiator
  6. XSPC high flex hose
  7. XSPC Acrylic Dual 5.25" Reservoir and Laing D5 pump

Finally, any thoughts on the (24/7) OC performance for CPU and GPU I should be targeting for this setup?

Thanks for your help,

Tom

Idle temps with the side panel off


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Temps after one game of SC2 - system crashes if MB sensor gets much hotter


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Because you are using water cooling, there is going to be a lot less air moving around to cool the motherboard.

Even 1 120mm side fan blowinf in the direction of the motherboard would probably take care of the "high" motherboard temps.

A good way to find out where you need it, would be to test different locations with the side of the case off while watching the motherboard temps/gaming.

If it was me, I would also make sure that there is some air moving across the RAM so it doesn't overheat as well.
 
In the Thernal Radar main screen, you can click on the thermal sensor to show a map of sensors it is reading from. This way perhaps you can tell which part of the mobo is overheating. Quite likely the MOS are heating up, and the temp is being picked up by one of those sensors...
 
Thanks for the tips. I installed a fan blowing air onto the motherbaord and this brought temps down a lot. However I still can't run a 4.7 GHZ overclock at 1.42v without the system overheating and crashing when playing BF3.

Is 1.42 too much voltage? I get BSOD below this...

Also, any ideas on how to bring the noise levels down - the pump is especially noisy

Cheers
 
The D5 is a very quiet pump. I have the Swiftech version of the same pump. What setting do you have it on? Even on 5, my pump is quieter than my fans at 50% speed.

My guess is that you have air in your system. You should have enough radiator surface area to cool 2 GPUs and your processor. My 680 though is loading 44*c, which is the same as your idle temps, so something is definitely wrong.

You will likely need to do push/pull on those radiators to keep up the pressure, and help move air around in the case. I was initially suspecting that your TIM might not be applied very well, but then I saw your Mobo temps which proves that air is not moving properly.

Edit: When the res is below the upper rad, its possible for the air to settle at the top portion of the rad, while the coolant flows underneath the air. Make sure when you are bleeding, that you are tilting the case all around, especially front to back, as this will help the air move to the barbs, and out of the rad. The fatter rads like the XSPC RX rads, this is especially true. more room in the rad means more room for air to get trapped too. Excess air in the system will also make the pump more noisy.
 
Ok, one more thing. If what I am looking at there on your radar is the fan profile, then it is WAY too steep.. first off, dont idle your fans at 40%. Without push/pull, there simple isnt enough air moving through the rads to still supply the air cooled components (memory, sandybridge, mobo etc) with air. Secondly, you dont have the speed of the fans climbing until the temps are already way too warm. Make your fan profile more linear, and idle the fans at no less than 60% in my opinion.

This is common where people get this idea that watercooling is all about pure silence, which is absolutely not true. Gaming and silent water cooling do not go hand in hand unless you have a massive Mountain Mods case with a couple of quad radiators dissapating air over a large surface area, with a ton of slow moving fans. In your case, you have 2 rads and 3 blocks. A lot of heat is getting dumped in to your case also by the front rad, so you are already trying to cool air cooled parts with warmer air.

There is a science to water cooling, and it takes some tweaking.
 
nice setup, but might need more fans too cool down the motherboad.
 
Thnaks all for the tips - will play around more tonight

JLangevin - I have all the rad fans attached to the fan controller - which I keep on min the whole time as I am aiming for silent operation during non-gaming operation. I'll play around with these too.

The fan profile above was just for the side and exhaust fans that blow directly in/out of the case.

How do you modify the pump control setting? Is there a switch on the pump itself or do you do this through software?
 
It is actually unnecessary to control the speed of the pump or to vary it by temps. I did tests on my D5 and whether it is set to 1 or 5 the temps are the same. I leave mine at about 3 24/7
 
Did you find that reducing the pump speed also reduced noise/vibration?

How do you actually lower the speed?
 
To reduce the noise, the only way is to increase the surface are of heat dissipation, hence add more radiator...

The idea of liquid cooling, is to be able to take a dense heatsource, carry it over a distance and spread it out with a radiator. The pump speed is near negligible here, but rather the size of the radiator matters most. For example, comparing a stock HSF to an aftermarket Noctua HD14, you'd have to change the HSF. For liquid cooling, you can stack radiators. :)

I have yet looked into liquid cooling, but I would get a small sized radiator from a car or motorcycle, hook up a super silent 130mm fan. Or perhaps, even just put the radiator outdoors in the winter and run passive cooling.
 
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