My 2 x 560Ti SLI, i5 2500k @ 4.6ghz and a hard disk are cooled by one extreme liquid loop. Thermochill PA 120.3 plus fan shroud and until a few days ago I had 3 x cheap LED 120mm fans cooling the rad. The rad, reservoir and pump are all separate from the PC case and sit on a wooden mount beside bedroom window. I had been getting GPU temps of 41c on battlefield 3 in SLI. I realise that's probably lower than most liquid cooled 560Ti's but my liquid setup isn't conventional. I'd been using the cheap 120mm fans on the rad for more than 6 years. They were speed regulated by Speedfan utility under windows. 41c in BF3 was based on the fans running at full speed (a bit noisy). Because my Asus P8Z68-V Gen/3 has no less than 3 x 4 pin fan headers and because I could only take control of the CPU header fans if they were 4 pin PWM fans, it was time to replace the 3 pin fans with 4 pin PWM ones. I chose the Arctic Cooling F12 PWM design due to cost (£4.34 I paid at Kikatek). http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/case-fans/77/arctic-f.html I chose this fan because it enables multiple fans to be chained together (up to 5 fans on a single fan header). Each fan is rated at 150ma max current so 5 of them on a single header is no problem. My motherboard can drive 1 amp per header. After replacing the 3 x old fans on the radiator with the F12's I was rather shocked to find a drop in temperature in BF3 by no less than 10C! This I can tell you was totally unexpected. I had bought the fans simply because I wanted better control with PWM design. I hoped they might be quieter but I was really not expecting a temperature drop! I had to check and double check it wasn't my imagination and that these fans had actually dropped my GPU temps by 10c? I was monitoring the SLI gpu temps in game using Afterburner utility with the OSD enabled providing a temperature and GPU usage readout. The GPU temps in BF3 were no higher than 31c. With the old fans they would have been 41c! What's really ASTONISHING here is that during BF3 the rad fans were approx 30% speed whereas my old fans were 100% speed and 10c hotter! The Arctic fans even at full speed are much quieter but at 30% practically silent. I have now purchased another 5 of these fans and will replace all of my case units! Looking at my old fans, the motor hub was much larger and there were less fan blades. I guess someone who already has a more modern slim motor fan wouldn't get such a big drop in temp. For me the results are spectacular! My 2 x 560Ti were about 83c in summer on their original MSI air coolers. A drop to 31c in game is astonishing. With the F12's running at 30% I could feel a cool breeze more than 1 metre distance from the radiator. Smoke test also revealed the effectiveness even at this low speed.
The same thing happened to me i had just bought a H100 and was using some cheap fans as push pull my idle temp was around 35-38c i bought 4 gentle typhoons AP-15 and the temp dropped down to 26-28 idle i was truely shocked. thats why if im going to buy fans from now on ill do a little research and get the best
I guess we learn just how important fan design is! Looks like your AP 15's have similar blade design.
sometimes when you look at the price of high end fans it can seem like a lot of money, but i know from personal experience in my air cooled rig its well worth spending a few extra quid! plus the fact a good fan can last you for years just like a good case
@ flame, Idle temps mean nothing. Three of the cores on my 990X idle about 5 degrees below ambient... work that one out.
Indeed, the fans I chose have a warranty of 6 years which helped sway me. Unusual. In my experience inner core temps read much more accurately. Do you get the same readings with different temp sensing software?
i was just giving an example of how much the temps have gone down...is that OK with you??.....well is it???
Of corurse it's not OK You have to show a decreas in load temps for it to be of any value. It's not the software, it's the sensors themselves - under load, the hottest core is 13C above the coolest core. Sensors 2 and 4 are definitely borked, but that doesn't matter because I always take the highest reading anyways.
Makes me wonder just how crazy an overclock you could push with two 5200Rpm fans and a single 120 rad...
Thats quite an upgrade then! Even more if you consider the price you payed for them What do you mean by "my liquid setup isn't conventional" you made my curious
I reckon so. Will have 8 of these fans in total. 5 inside the case and 3 on the rad. My water pump, res and rad all sit at least a metre away from the computer case by the window. My water res is the 500mm heatsink tube from XSPC. It's a monster res that acts like a passive radiator. Rad sucks in outside air during summer. In winter I can close the window so the heated air warms the room. This setup means the rad always breathes cool air rather than recirculating heated room air.
Stuff that, I would rather get a car radiator mounted to the side of my case, with 2 full sizes car fans @ 100%...Might need some ear defenders tho...
I dunno. Eight 220mm fans on the 1260 would lead to some bloody quiet computing, depending on the fans.
Mines quite. F3 HDD is the loudest component, As all the fans on low, keeps everything cool and quite.
I once bought an old Mazda MX5 car rad and adapted the nozzles for 12mm ID. The 2 x 12 inch fans were actually quieter than 120mm fans when the speed was reduced. At full speed they had an amazing sound like a C-130. I got pics of it somewhere and a bit of video I think.
