Guys been lurking for a while soaking up all the great information. Need some views on this. Decided to finally upgrade my C2D rig this week as I've started to get into PC gaming again and it was struggling with newer games. So new setup is Case - Antec 1200 PSU - Antec TP-650 MB - Gigabyte - GA-P55A-UD3 (Would have gone UD2 but they seem in short supply now) CPU - i7-860 GFX - XFX 6970 1MB RAM - 4gb Corsair Dom PC-12800 (1600mhz) All running a stock speeds and voltages right now. I'm running a watercooling setup just for the CPU. D5 Pump >> Apogee XT Block >> Black ICE 240 RAD >> XSPC Drive Bay Resovoir >> Back to the D5 RAD is mounted outside the case at the rear with 2 120mm fans pushing air through. All using 1/2 tubing and fittings. Ambient in the room is usually 18-20 deg. And the sides are off the case. I'm checking temps with realtemp, HW Monitor, speedfan etc all report the same temps. Idle is high 30's low 40's. Under load with prime95 small ftt it jumps to about 64 (all cores within 1-2 degs of each other) then gradually creeps up to 72\73 after about an 30 mins. Turbo disabled and other power management functions disabled in BIOS as well. But HT is still enabled. The setup runs stable at load for 8 hours and benchmarks fine, but from reading other posts this seems a bit hot for a WC setup at stock speeds. Seems hot even if it was air cooled at stock speeds. I want to make sure cooling is optimal before I start OCing this thing. I've checked themal compound (arctic silver 5) and seems to be applied ok. CPU Block looks seated fine. Under load I've tried a few 'experiments'. Turned D5 speed down (temp goes up a few degs) Turned the D5 back up to max (Temp didn't come back down !!!) Turned off one of the RAD fans and then the second (Temps again went up 3-4 degs) Turned them back on and temps didn't really drop at all Added a 3rd Fan to the RAD (didn't have the screws for the 4th) pulling air through. No temp change. It seems once the CPU reaches a temp at load the WC setup is having trouble cooling it. When I stop the prime95 load, the temp will drop to about 55, then after about 10-15 mins will gradually creep down to low 40's again. I'm gona strip the WC setup down later today and give it a good clean and some new coolant and re-check the block and cpu mounting again. Also get some screws for another RAD fan and fit that. Any other ideas ? I would have thought this setup should run the CPU at least 10degs cooler. or am I mistaken ? Because at these stock temps I'm not sure I want to OC it that much if I need to add any more voltage. Any advice would be greatly received. Thanks Westy
you didnt put to much thermal paste on did you? i did that a long time ago thinking it would be better but it seems less is better :S not entirely sure about the i7 860 but on mine the idle temps are around the same and my load is around 80. i had trouble with my i7 not long ago.i took the block off and paste and did it again. and seemed ok. the rad at the back of the case above the gpu? does it push air into or out of the case? if its into it might be sucking the gpu exhaust back in? perhaps. perhaps get faster fans?
Thanks Chris. When I strip the WC system later I'm going to re-seat the cpu block. I usually only use a small amount of thermal compound. But I'll try a bit less. The system probably needs a bit of a clean as it was cooling my C2D rig for 2 years and my old AMD athlon X2 4200 before that. All I done was swapped the CPU block over so could probably do with a spring clean. The rad at the back is directly behind the two rear case fans on the 1200. The GFX card doesn't vent out the rear but into the case. I guess the two rear case fans blowing air from the case onto the RAD fans, which then blows it through the rad, plus thew other fan pulling might not be the best config. Although with the case open I wouldn't expect overly hot air to be blowing out the back of the case right now. If I put my hand between the air is cold. The fans I use are all run at 1400rpm and shift about 60cfm. I've got some 1700 rpm fans somewhere I might try, but I think they only shift about the same iirc. All are Akasa.
id personally say 1400rpm fans are sufficient but experimenting wont harm. like you said when you pull it apart again, have a good clean and reapply, if it still seems high id be tempted to overide the vcore from auto to a low setting and see if that helps perhaps? again thought through my experience of a i7 930 they dont need much power at all. but i think its just in need of a good clean. i also have my cooling setup push/pulling air from outside into the case. air outside will be colder than inside i always thought so thats y i did that. erm..trying to think of other things you could maybe try... does the temp reach 72/73 after 30 minutes then stop. is it the highest it goes?
If it's the Black Ice Stealth Rad then it'll benefit from high speed fans. I recall that I got a roughly 5ºC drop when I switched from Noctua 1200rpm to Scythe Slipstream 1900rpm fans although they were too noisy. Make sure you strip down the block to make sure there's no gunk in there? You might get a 1-2ºC drop if you switch the fans to blowing cool air into the case rather than using the warmish air from inside.
Thanks again guys. It pretty much tops out at 72\73. I forgot got a presentation to go to tonight. Looks like I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning. I'll have a play with the fan directions and see what I get as well. I disabled HT and got about 5-6 deg drop in loaded temps. But CPC benchmark lost about 70 points. ~5% drop Image editing: 1179 points - 1147 HT Disabled Video encoding: 2047 points. - 1928 HT Disabled Multitasking testing: 1290 points. - 1226 HT Disabled Overall score: 1505 points. 1434 HT Disabled. RAD also looks pretty dusty so i'll give that a hoover I think vcore seems ok. It's reporting 1.09v in CPU-Z and HWmonitor, everything is auto in BIOS right now. That does seem low though, but the system is stable.
ok it's official I'm a dumb ass. Stripped everything down Sunday and put it back together. Changed the loop order from PUMP >> RAD >> CPU >> RES >> PUMP and swapped the rad fans round. Idle still sitting at ~40deg. But under load jumps to 70 now then onto 78 after about 30 mins. Also put less thermal paste on which I thought could have been the issue. Stripped the block off and gave it a clean ready to put a bit more paste on then noticed a little bit of plastic film. The block had a thin plastic film protector on it. Practically invisible. ok, in my defence the install guide didn't mention removing the film but I should know better by now. All connected back up again. Ideling at 23 and 40 under load. I'm going to leave it under load for 8 hours. Then some overclocking
Plastic film! Thanks for having the courage to share; most people would have just slunk away after that howler! My thoughts exactly. My mate Daves says 'is got one......
I know. I let out a huge DOH when I realsied. Plus a few other choice words I probably shouldn't repeat on a public forum. I've only been building PC's for nearly 20 years so an easy mistake. Well couldn't wait for 8 hours before starting to OC. I'm up to 3.9ghz (21*186) with 1.25v vcore. temps at load with linx (20 times with full mem) are 61degs. I'll push it to 4ghz in the next hour. Then I'll leave it running prime or linx overnight.
