Liquid cooling systems

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Jun 10, 2017 5:59 pm

So these come in 1 piece now. I should pay more attention. So I bought one for my second system that has had heat problems for the last 2 years. Reseating the cpu and stock heatsink with fresh thermal paste has had limited success, so I bought a cheapish liquid cooler. Guy at store said performance isn't that different from a good air cooler but I wanted to install it since I've never played with one before.

That system is poorly situated with poor air flow, hot room, no air conditioning. If I can keep the system from shutting off regularly I'll consider it a win.

It's a corsair H55 btw.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:22 pm

GreenGoo wrote:
That system is poorly situated with poor air flow, hot room, no air conditioning. If I can keep the system from shutting off regularly I'll consider it a win.

I have the same problem, plus lots of dust. As I contemplate buying a new system my first impulse is to load it up with big noisy fans, but wonder if water cooling could get me around doing that. Big noisy fans would just suck in that much more dust. I know nothing about liquid cooling and am interested in your results.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Sun Jun 11, 2017 2:50 pm

I use a Corsair 100 all-in-one liquid cooling. It's good way to cut down on the fan noise.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Jun 12, 2017 12:00 pm

I'll probably do it this week.

Turns out you need access to the back of the motherboard to install a backplate to screw the mount bracket to, so that's a potential headache. I think the case allows for access to the back of the motherboard (it's been a long while since I worked on this system) which means I won't have to completely remove the board, which would make things much easier.

There are a LOT of harddrives in the system in question, mostly because I'm too lazy to move data around so I just kept the old drives while adding new ones, so that's contributing to the heat and the cramped case and lack of air flow. I might as well see if I can clean up the inside of the case while I'm in there.

If you've ever installed a heatsink, this should be just as easy, or at least almost as easy. Once the backplate/mounting bracket are in place, it's actually easier to install the pump/thermal contact than to do the same thing with a standard heatsink. The radiator is as easy as finding a spot on the case and putting 4 screws in (the 120 mm fan is part of this process).

It really is shockingly easy, or at least appears so. I'll defnitely follow up in this thread after it's installed. I'm not taking any pre-install data (it gets hot enough to turn off on its own) but I will keep an eye on the post-install heat numbers.

I figure it's less than an hour's work. If it was a new system being built, it's probably all of 10 minutes work installing the cooler, but things are cramped in there.

edit: As Zarathud mentions, it should be quieter, which is actually a huge deal. I regularly turn this system off when no one is using it, because the fan can go freakin' nuts (presumably in an attempt to keep the chip from melting). While I hadn't considered noise when I decided on the cooler, it will certainly be a nice side benefit.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Mon Jun 12, 2017 1:02 pm

Also moving the hot air to a radiator at the edge of the case so that you push the hot air out should help if your case is cramped.

It's easy if the case allows mobo back access and free room to mount the radiator. You need slightly more than x2 height for the radiator+fan and about 1/2 inch wider than the fan for the radiator. Orientation can be annoying, but it is simple if you dry fit then install properly.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Jun 12, 2017 11:04 pm

Done. Total time was about an hour, but I was clearing dust, reseating some cables and just generally taking my time. I can easily see it being a 5-10 min job if it was a fresh build (no drives or cards to get in the way) and you had done it a few times already. It really was dirt simple.

After about 15 minutes sitting in the bios, the cpu seems to be stable at 45C (edit just ticked up to 46C), which is ok I guess. I was hoping for something in the 30's but that would almost put it at ambient temp which I guess is a pipe dream. That said, it's not actually doing anything, so heat generation should be low.

I'll set up some logs and let the kids at it this week, then check the stats to see what the peeks look like, averages but honestly as long as it doesn't melt and turn itself off, I'll consider it a win.

edit: Did a quick check to see what my cpu model typically runs at. The idle temp mentioned above is hot, but given that the room is a sweltering sauna during days like today I'm not too concerned, yet. What it hits under load is obviously the important numbers. We'll see. Specs show 61C as the highest safe temp it should run at, so anything over that would probably cause instability and/or damage. Again though, if it just runs I'll be happy. I'm thinking about a new system by the end of the year, so my primary could just take the secondary spot and the secondary could be recycled.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Jun 13, 2017 10:44 pm

Night #2. Idling at 45C, with an ambient temperature of about 6C lower than yesterday. Which means that ambient temperature is having little impact in this range.

That's pretty meh. As I've said a few times, there are a TON of unfavourable factors keeping the cpu from dropping lower, but I'm still disappointed.

That said, it's basically silent compared to the stock 'sink and fan. Which is pretty awesome.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Jun 15, 2017 12:36 am

Another night, idling at 43C. Ambient temp is probably a couple of degrees lower than last night.

I was sure I had an open source temp monitor on that box because I've had heat problems with it before, but I can't find it so I still don't have any log information. Will find something on the weekend, probably.

Zarathud · Post by **Zarathud** » Thu Jun 15, 2017 6:38 am

If the temps are high at load, I would reapply paste and reseat the fan. Had that problem once where the preapplied paste had smeared during install and left a gap--so the temp higher than expected.

Biyobi · Post by **Biyobi** » Thu Jun 15, 2017 4:54 pm

43c is high for an idling CPU. Some questions: Are you overclocking at all? Are you getting good air movement through the radiator? No kinks in the hoses?

Also, how confident are you that the PC is really idling? Check the task manager to see what's going on. For instance, if you're running SETI- or Folding@home-type things your CPU will be churning away during the "idle" times.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Jun 15, 2017 10:19 pm

As anyone with any experience in monitoring temps would probably know (although not me, although I had an inkling), my idle temps are unreasonably high.

I knew something was wrong, but hadn't had time to track it down. I've since done so. Here is what I did wrong:

With no app installed and no built in tools (that I know of anyway) I had nothing to monitor temps with. So I opened up the bios and just used those temps. I understood that there was something wonky about bios temps, but I didn't know what put off finding out. I saw one for the MB and another for the CPU. I figured the CPU one was "good enough". It's not.

With that knowledge as well as Zarathud and Biyobi scratching their heads at my posts, I tracked down some software. The first I used was OpenHardwareMonitor and while it seemed to meet my needs, I could not for the life of me find a way to log. Who builds a monitoring app that doesn't create a log? Wtf. So I moved onto SpeedFan. I do not want to mess with the fan speeds, so I'm hoping that if I don't bother to configure it, it will leave them alone.

With SpeedFan there was obviously logging, but I couldn't figure out HOW. I was getting time stamped log entries with nothing in them. Eventually I realized that checking the box beside the temp you wanted was not good enough, and that you had to actually select each temp sensor, bring up a summary page for it and enable logging for that specific temp by checking a different box (clearly labeled) to log that particular temp. I wrote that out in case someone finds it useful if/when they try it for themselves.

With that done, you go to the log tab and enable logging in general. This starts the file creation and entries. As far as I can tell, there is no way to pick a dir to put it (it defaults to the app install dir) or change the log name. I believe but have not tested, that the logs roll themselves. What rules they use to do this I don't know yet.

In any case, I've got the box logging now, and will see what it says after a couple of days of kid use.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Thu Jun 15, 2017 10:22 pm

I'm putting this in a new post to make it less likely to get lost in the above text.

SpeedFan is showing 30-32C for 2 motherboard temps, and 10-11C for core temps.

I assume the bios was showing me the socket temp and not the cpu temp. My bad.

So the system is idling around 11C. Much better.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Jun 17, 2017 11:06 pm

After a couple of days and some rough charts, it looks like the core idles right around 10-11C and it seems to max out around 35C. Which I'm perfectly happy with. We haven't had any really hot days since I switched over to the cooler. I'll turn logging back on when we have a 30+C day and see how that goes.

The GPU is a GTX580 I bought used and it seems to be maxing out around 80-90C, which seems insanely hot.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Jun 18, 2017 7:48 pm

Between 40-44C all day during use. Was a sticky, hot day though so that's got to be infinitely better than when the board would shut off to save everything.

Assuming it never gets above 50C all summer including the 33-35C ambient days, I'll be more than satisfied.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Wed Jul 05, 2017 2:24 pm

I use MSI Afterburner to monitor CPU/core temperatures, in addition to the GPU.

When you said you were getting CPU core temperature readings of 10-11C while idling, I assume that is the differential between the ambient room or motherboard temperature, correct?

stessier · Post by **stessier** » Wed Jul 05, 2017 3:18 pm

If it's not, I want whatever system he's got.

Edit: On second thought, his Canuckistan residence suggest perhaps room temperature really is 10-11C...

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Jul 17, 2017 3:22 pm

Max Peck wrote:I use MSI Afterburner to monitor CPU/core temperatures, in addition to the GPU.

When you said you were getting CPU core temperature readings of 10-11C while idling, I assume that is the differential between the ambient room or motherboard temperature, correct?

No/yes/maybe?

I've never investigated how core temps are recorded. I'm not sure how the temp values are generated and I'm not sure how they are reported.

Given previous experience, I would guess that the 10-11C is the actual temperature. At first I felt as you guys did, that it was far too low, but given the ambient temp that day, which I vaguely recall to be in the 18-22C range, whether it's the absolute temp or the delta, it would still indicate an approx. 10C temp, as 20ish (ambient) - 10ish (reported, possibly delta) = 10ish (actual).

This doesn't seem that absurd when you consider air conditioning can bring down a house's temp much more than 10 degrees below ambient, and I would expect a liquid cooler to be at least as efficient as an air conditioner, if not more so.

Bottom line, I think the 10-11C was actual temp. It was at idle on a relatively normal day.

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