High Water Temperatures + High CPU/GPU Temp after heavy gaming?

Hi there!

I've been experiencing some potential issues which I thought i'd get an opinion on.. this is related to my Dark Base Pro 900 Water Cooling Build.

I didn't want to clog up my build log with this issue and any replies to it so I decided to start a new thread to keep the main build log clean. (I've also linked to this thread from my build log post.)

My issue:

After a few hours of heated gaming, mostly Battlefield 1 and Dragon Age Inquisition.. I notice my temperatures reaching uncomfortably high numbers:

CPU Temp: 78-80c
GPU1 Temp: 58-60c
GPU2 Temp: 58-60c
Water Temp: 48-50c

The Water Temp alone is too high for my liking, and with the amount of radiator heat dissipation I've got running in my build I would never expect to see these numbers get so high... ever!

I have also experienced a couple of hard crashes, audio locking up with a loud brrr sound and screen frozen. - this usually happens when my CPU temp hits 80c.

I've been gradually lowering my CPU voltages, keeping my fingers crossed that my overclock stays stable in order to try and lower the CPU heat dissipation due to the high voltage (I frequently see 1.42 volts under heavy gaming load).

But my question is, why is it heating up so much? I can feel the heat pouring out the back of my case like it's turned itself into it's own central heating unit for my room.

This sounds like a silly question, but do i have enough radiator space for my setup? 1x 420 rad + 1x 280 rad = 1x i7-6700K @ 4.7ghz + 2x GTX 1080 @ 2100mhz

I also have no idea about what my flow rate of my liquid is as I haven't installed a flow meter yet, but assuming there are no blockages, this shouldn't matter a whole lot surely? (the pump's always at 100%)

And there's the ambient temperature factor of course, I -have- noticed that when this happens i've been feeling relatively warm in my room, I attributed this to the large amount of heat coming out the back of my PC but it's entirely possible that my ambient room temp might have crept up towards the 30c mark - but surely an ambient 30c wouldn't warrant a 20c delta upping my water to 50c?

So yeah, enough rambling. - what do you think? what do you suggest I should look at or test? - I am going to get myself a room thermometer so I can check the room/ambient temp going into my case the next time this happens.

I'm not sure how I can help as troubleshooting is usually something that has to be done by yourself via experimentation, and I'm not very experienced. I'm really posting because I want to help out. Your build was the first water cooled system I saw inside the Dark Base Pro 900 and I was really interested in that acse. 30°C is high for ambient temperatures (I'd be sweating buckets in a room at 30°C), but that much radiator space is more than enough to cool your components, even with 1.42V being fed into the CPU. The 1080 is not a hot GPU and two of them can easily be cooled by a single 280.

Why not try turning your pump speed down as the water might be flowing too fast for it to be cooled properly.

Yeah thats the common sound ive had in the past when my loop got to warm, the CPU overclock becomes unstable and ya get them loud buzz crashes, i would just run with the fans at a higher speed so your water temp stays around 40. Could also be your VRMs getting a bit warm and causing unstable power delivery, i dunno if you can check the temp of them using HWinfo or summat but i would definitely get that water temp down first.

Your fans aren't really meant for rads,and lack static pressure.

Also the front Rad is dumping heat into the case then your pulling that hot air through the top Rad,very inefficient. Swap the top Rad fans to intakes rather than exhausts.Ensures your pushing the coolest possible a
ir through your radiators

30 degree ambient sounds extremely hot, are you sure that's correct?

I noticed in your log you said both radiators were set as intakes. I would try having the top rad as an exhaust at least.

I don't think lowering the pump speed would help. So long as there's sufficient flow, temperatures equalise throughout the loop - there's no such thing as the flow being "too fast".

MrMD said:

Your fans aren't really meant for rads,and lack static pressure.

Also the front Rad is dumping heat into the case then your pulling that hot air through the top Rad,very inefficient. Swap the top Rad fans to intakes rather than exhausts.Ensures your pushing the coolest possible a
ir through your radiators

Click to expand...

If you look at the second picture in post #19 in his thread you can see that the top radiator is drawing air in. He actually specifically says they're intakes—wnless he swapped the fans around at the last minute.

I would personally say that that much intake of hot air isn't good. It could be heating up the motherboard. One exhaust is nowhere near enough for that much heat.

kaku said:

30 degree ambient sounds extremely hot, are you sure that's correct?

I noticed in your log you said both radiators were set as intakes. I would try having the top rad as an exhaust at least.

I don't think lowering the pump speed would help. So long as there's sufficient flow, temperatures equalise throughout the loop - there's no such thing as the flow being "too fast".

Click to expand...

I agree with this.

AngryGoldfish said:

If you look at the second picture in post #19 in his thread you can see that the top radiator is drawing air in. He actually specifically says they're intakes—wnless he swapped the fans around at the last minute.

Click to expand...

Ahh ok,was on my mobile and just looked at the OP in the build log thread

Swapping the top rad to exhaust will just make matters worse tho imo

MrMD said:

Ahh ok,was on my mobile and just looked at the OP in the build log thread

Swapping the top rad to exhaust will just make matters worse tho imo

Click to expand...

Yeah, I think the problem is something else, something inside the loop maybe: clogged blocks, malfunctioning pump, something like that. I think the fans are perfectly fine. The Silent Wings 3 may be better suited for cases but they're still perfectly adequate for radiators too.

I am really not sure.

The thing you need to know as you have said is Room temp increasing or not?
If it is not , then you have a heat soak issue and you are simply just not getting enough cool air in and over cooling surfaces to remove the heat.

If it is, and your room is over 30'c (Crikes !) then you have other issues, like boiling to death

The fact it works well and its not until SUSTAINED gaming that you notice the issue indicates everything must be working at least to some degree.

Only other thing I have vaguely similar was on a friends build where he somehow despite supposedly "Moving it all about to get the air out" we found he had a massive air bubble in his top rad causing it to only work at about 50 %
Once that was clear his system ran flawless.

You said in your build log that you ended up turning all your rad fans as intakes into the case. Is this still the case? If it is you are probably cooking the liquid in the loop. I would go back to front as intake and roof as exhaust and see if it makes much of a difference.

That water temp is scary. In the past any problems I had with heat were down to either air in the loop or gunk build up blocking the channels in a block.

I'd recommend adding a flow meter like one of the Aquacomputer ones so you can measure the actual flow rate, it makes it easy to spot when a blockage starts.

Turning down a D5 isn't going to help, turning it up might if it's not at full speed.

Did you flush the rads out before you fitted them?

Bone9 said:

Why not try turning your pump speed down as the water might be flowing too fast for it to be cooled properly.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion mate, but it's well documented that faster pump speed only helps increase your cooling ability, not lower it

BluD said:

Yeah thats the common sound ive had in the past when my loop got to warm, the CPU overclock becomes unstable and ya get them loud buzz crashes, i would just run with the fans at a higher speed so your water temp stays around 40. Could also be your VRMs getting a bit warm and causing unstable power delivery, i dunno if you can check the temp of them using HWinfo or summat but i would definitely get that water temp down first.

Click to expand...

My VRMs are cooled by the motherboard water block so It's probably not the VRMs getting too hot... the water temp is definitely worrying me though :/

MrMD said:

Your fans aren't really meant for rads,and lack static pressure.

Also the front Rad is dumping heat into the case then your pulling that hot air through the top Rad,very inefficient. Swap the top Rad fans to intakes rather than exhausts.Ensures your pushing the coolest possible a
ir through your radiators

Click to expand...

My top rad is actually an intake now, I did mention this in my OP

also the Silent wings 3 have 2.16 H2O static pressure which I think should be adequate enough for my low FPI radiators which are optimised for 800 RPM fans...?

Saying that, I will increase the base speed of the Fans a little more to see if how fast I can push them before they become audible and annoying.

The fans are set to 100% at 70c CPU temp btw.

Mikey C said:

That water temp is scary. In the past any problems I had with heat were down to either air in the loop or gunk build up blocking the channels in a block.

I'd recommend adding a flow meter like one of the Aquacomputer ones so you can measure the actual flow rate, it makes it easy to spot when a blockage starts.

Click to expand...

Good idea on the flow meter, I do want to get one in there, I just didn't like the gaudy inline spinney flow meters as I thought they looked tacky...

VKleita said:

I am really not sure.

The thing you need to know as you have said is Room temp increasing or not?
If it is not , then you have a heat soak issue and you are simply just not getting enough cool air in and over cooling surfaces to remove the heat.

If it is, and your room is over 30'c (Crikes !) then you have other issues, like boiling to death

The fact it works well and its not until SUSTAINED gaming that you notice the issue indicates everything must be working at least to some degree.

Only other thing I have vaguely similar was on a friends build where he somehow despite supposedly "Moving it all about to get the air out" we found he had a massive air bubble in his top rad causing it to only work at about 50 %
Once that was clear his system ran flawless.

Click to expand...

Okay it's possible I exagurated on the room temps... then again, in summer my room does get REALLY WARM like 28-29c warm, I've seen this number display on my room fan. - at the moment it's showing 25c room temperature though i'd guess near my case/desk it feels more like 26c.

That air bubble issue is something that concerns me, I did my utmost to ensure that there were no bubbles in my radiators, I even filled the loop with my case on it's front down, so the top rad was standing up with the ports at the very top to try and ensure there was no bubbles at all... I've been running for a few weeks now and I haven't seen, or heard any bubbles what so ever, so as far as I can tell i'm bubble free..?

pastymuncher said:

You said in your build log that you ended up turning all your rad fans as intakes into the case. Is this still the case? If it is you are probably cooking the liquid in the loop. I would go back to front as intake and roof as exhaust and see if it makes much of a difference.

Click to expand...

I highly doubt i'm 'cooking' the liquid by having my radiators as intakes, It's been well documented (JayzTwoCents/other water cooling YouTubers) that running both rads as intakes makes next to no difference on case temperatures and can actually help increase your cooling performance by doing so.

HOWEVER! - I will admit that I currently have 1 exhaust fan in my current configuration... so I'm probably running some very high static pressure and the hot air that's being pumped inside my case is probably not getting out fast enough, this I will admit... BUT I HAVE A PLAN!

I'm installing a new PSU this weekend, and I am going to install the PSU upside down with the PSU fan facing upwards, thus acting as another case exhaust fan and helping to remove the hot air from inside my case, which should lower my static pressure down a bit...

Thanks everyone for the replies! - I am going to be doing some more maintenance and configuration changes on my build this weekend so I'll let you know how it all goes and if my temps improve

Sounds to me like fans for sure. Either restricted somewhat, not spinning fast enough or as others have suggested a combination of the above and room temps.

Mine in this type of weather with a 15-20c room max out at around 40c on the GPU's and low 50's on the CPU. All be it I have 2 x 480s and a 240.

Thats with all fans on minimum speed by the way (400rpm), they dont even spin up under load normally. Only if the GPU's get over 42c, which isn't that often.

Doesn't sound like a blockage or anything otherwise id expect the GPU/CPU to be hot and coolant temp to be cold.

And yeah top fans definitely as an exhaust. Keep your front ones as intake.

Leave the front rads as intake, make the top rads extract. The problem you have is that you are pulling all the heat into the case and nothing is pulling it back out. You need to leave the front fans pulling cool air in through your rad, but make sure all other fans including the rear fan is set to extract.

What rpm do you have the fans set at? You want them at around 700 on idle and as much as 1200 when under load. Go into BIOS, hit F6 and make sure your fans are set to pwm and not dc. Set them all to "turbo" and that should take care of the rpm.

You haven't mentioned excessive noise which makes me think your fans are not set to ramp up with the cpu? Do you have them plugged into a third party controller? If so, get them plugged into mobo fan headers and set up as detailed in previous paragraph.

String said:

Leave the front rads as intake, make the top rads extract. The problem you have is that you are pulling all the heat into the case and nothing is pulling it back out. You need to leave the front fans pulling cool air in through your rad, but make sure all other fans including the rear fan is set to extract.

What rpm do you have the fans set at? You want them at around 700 on idle and as much as 1200 when under load. Go into BIOS, hit F6 and make sure your fans are set to pwm and not dc. Set them all to "turbo" and that should take care of the rpm.

You haven't mentioned excessive noise which makes me think your fans are not set to ramp up with the cpu? Do you have them plugged into a third party controller? If so, get them plugged into mobo fan headers and set up as detailed in previous paragraph.

Click to expand...

I have all my Rad fans connected to a PWM 8-way splitter.

I have the fan profile set to around 800rpm at idle, and 1500rpm at 70c CPU.

That's another question, I notice my CPU spike from 40c up to 70c for a split second, randomly... is this normal?

Circular heating loop surely with all rads in and one exhaust fan...

*nvm about the psu

I read through your build thread and this thread and to be honest with you, the temps you list in either of the two threads, are way to high for a custom watercooled 6700K system and your 1080 gpus.

Your gpu's should be around 35-40 degrees under max load and your cpu at 4.7ghz under gaming load, should not go above 50-55 degrees. Unless you are using a very high vcore voltage, if your cpu is not that great at overclocking.

For starters, you need to reverse the fans on your top radiator, to exhaust hot air out of your system. The way you have it at the moment, you are going completely against the natural air flow of your tower.

Hot air rises, so therefore having fresh air come in from the front, the bottom and if applicable the side and then having it being exhausted out the top and back of the tower, will create a flow that is bringing fresh air in and pushing the hot air out.

The way you have your fans set, is that the top fans bringing in air are basically pushing the hot air trying to rise up, straight back onto the board and all components.

Plus you don't actually have any air intakes that are not going through a radiator. So in effect all your "fresh air" coming in is already preheated. It appears your case has fan mounts on the base, you should look at putting in two fans that are just blowing in fresh cold/colder air, which would also aid in creating an even better air flow, which will help the hot air get pushed out from the top and rear of the case.

Once your loop is cooling your system correctly, there is only a 1-2 degree difference in cpu temps, from having the radiator being an intake, as opposed to exhausting air out of it.

Do not get fixated on the idea, that intaking air from the top radiator is making a huge difference to your cpu temps, because it is not.

Also your idea of trying to use the PSU to exhaust hot air out of the system, is not a good one. You do not want to be intaking hot air into your power supply. Leave the PSU with the fan at the bottom, where its able to take in fresh air to cool itself down when needed.

In order to help you solve the heat issue, it would help to know the following :

1) How are you measuring your water temperature of your loop ?

2) You have said your 6700K is overclocked to 4.7ghz, what vcore voltage have you set and what LLC level ? Also what is your cpu cache set to, is the cache multiplier the same as your cpu multiplier?
Have you overclocked your cpu manually through the bios, or did you use Asus' overclocking software suite ?
Have you overclocked your memory as well ? Are you running at 2133mhz or have you set either the XMP of your ram, or manually overclocked the memory timings ?

3)For the purpose of helping diagnose the issue, can you return both your cpu and gpu's back to stock clocks and voltages, and start from the point of seeing what temperatures you get at stock clocks, so there is a base to work with?

4)How have you applied the thermal paste to each waterblock, both cpu and gpu's? What method have you used and how much paste did you apply ?
What thermal paste did you actually use?

5) Did you actually test the stability of your overclock, by using stress testing software such as Prime95, AIDA Stress Test, ROG Realbench etc ?
Because going off what you have written, where you are just lowering the vcore voltage, and just playing your games hoping it doesn't crash, is not the way to go about it and is also your cpu trying to tell you, that things aren't right.