Should i water cool my 2080?

[ElBurge]

Hi all


I have recently upgraded to a coffee lake system from Haswell. As previously posted I have a decent 8700k which is running at 5.2ghz now at 1.35v. I have a FE RTX 2080 which runs really damn hot.


My airflow isn’t great so I think the 2080 is really contributing to the heat build up which is limiting its performance. Caps out around 2000mhz which about 1980mhz being sustained with fans on full.


Now I hear that the RTX cards are mainly limited by power draw, but I am thinking I can get more out of my 8700k by cooling down the air in my case – so my theory is water cooling the 2080 may lower temps a fair bit – but I guess will add heat to the loop.


I have 1*280mm and 1*120mm radiators and a single res/pump combo.


My case is the inwin 805 so I have cool air coming in from the bottom, which is drawn in my the 280mm and exhaled in side the case, where the exhaust has the 120mm on it. I also have an 860i PSU which I have the fan set to run to use the PSU as an additional exhaust.


So is it worth the £177 to buy the block, back plate and couple fittings ???


On the fence!

 

[LuckyBenski]

I think you'll need additional radiator space. How are your 8700k temps? Obviously you'll be adding thermal load to the loop, so it's mostly case temperatures you'll be lowering.

I'm assuming that by bad GPU temps you mean 70+. Unless your CPU temps are insanely low I'd make sure to add enough rad space for the 1080 with headroom - minimum 240mm really.

That said, i fully recommend going full water if you're already doing custom water. Otherwise you're dumping heat from the CPU into the GPU's airspace or vice versa.

 

[ElBurge]

Cant fit in another rad and dont really fancy changing my case. My current gaming temps on CPU peak at 70C and 80 under stress load, my GPU is running in the 70s so think GPU boost is holding it back a little.

I am worried the RTX2080 is raising the case temp so much that its impacting the ability of the Rads to function properly as this case doesnt have a direct cool air feed, basically its pulling warm case air through the rad.

So putting a GPU block on will lower case temps, therefore the air through the rads will be cooler, and thus cooling the fluid down more efficiently - but as you say i then will be adding heat to the fluid.

Guess it would be a gamble

(i did previously run two GTX980s with a 4700k though the same loop and it was fine)

 

[wookiee87]

i've had first hand expereance with watercooled fe 2080's i havd 2 in nvlink and both were cooled via a ek 360mm pe rad, temps once overclocked were in the mid 50's for both but both cores were over 2.1ghz and the ram was happy at 7900mhz.
if your going for a watercooled fe card then minimun rad would be a 240, a 120 will be fine at stock speed but once overclocked the 2080 draw a fair amount of power and output a fair amount of heat, if i recall both my cards once overclocked were pulling around 288w each.

there are gains from watercooling the fe cards but you do need a fair amount of rad space if your planning overclocking.

you could certinally add the fe card at stock speed and have the order as

pump>cpu>280rad>2080>120mm rad, then back to the pump

 

[wookiee87]

just been looking at you case and it looks like you'd be able to mount a 120 or 240mm rad in the bottom of you case, personally i'd opt for a 120mm that way you've got one fan pulling in air to keep the internal air temp down, but if your fans move a lot of cfm you could put a 240mm there and enjoy the best of both worlds, plus a 240 would allow overclocking of the fe 2080.

found a post online and alought the 805 doent support 360mm rads, there is the possibillity to mod the front fan bracket to allow most 360mm rad to fit there, be aware that you'd loose your drive bays if going down this route, but if you have ssd's just place them behind the mobo tray were all your excess cables are hidden

 

[ElBurge]

thanks - i didn't want to add any rads to the bottom as the case doesn't have anywhere else to pull in cool air, same with modding a 360mm in there - it cant then really get cool air up through that rad. If i put a 120mm fan and a 120mm rad next to each other on the bottom - i would have thought the intake fan would just pull the warm air back in from an exhausting 120 rad?, unless they are both set to intake - ??

I have no drive bays anyway as that is where the res is fitted.

My 280mm is 45mm thick and the 120 is the 60mm thick EK rad.

I used to have my Haswell/980s system in that order, and it ran in the 60s with two 980s in SLI. I thought however after the Jaystwocents testing, order doesnt matter, beyond Res>pump?

I might just jump in and test it, and if i need too buy a bottom rad at a later date and try the front glass mod, by adding spacers to the front glass panel will allow cool air to be pulled in from the case front.

 

[wookiee87]

yeah when i said about the 2 bottom fans both would be intake to allow the airfolw to carry through the case, but adding a 3rd rad would boost cooling.
i've had a similar chip running in the past a 8600k at 5.3ghz and that thing dumped a crap tone of heat into my custom loop, it ran cool but still.
regaring rad thickness that doesnt really affect the cooling, its normally the size that does, however if you use powerful cfm fans then the benifits shrink back but at the cost of increased noise (thick rads need powerful fans to move air through the fins)

i have a custom loop and my order is pump/res>cpu>360mm>2080ti>360mm then back to the pump/res and my temps are awsome cpu in the mid 60's and my gpu is around the 40's under oc and full load.

at the end of the day adding the 2080 in wont affect too much but be aware if you oc the card then the loop will run warmer and to get around that is to increase fan speeds or add more rad capacity

 

[ElBurge]

OK cheers.

 

[ElBurge]

ok update, i went with a EK vector block, got it up and running last night. Purely for aesthetics and because Jaystwocents says loop order doesn't matter, i am running Res/pump > 280mm > 120mm > GPU > CPU

Immediately took all the heat out of the case and took the GPU down 25C+ (early 60s) under stress load, however on realbench under intensive CPU load it hit a spiked peak of 98c and BSOD. - CPU averaged about 80C during the test though

As i predominantly game at 1440p i might knock down the CPU OC to 5.1 and take it back down to 1.3v and then crank up the GPU OC to get more frames. Much quieter now though as those stock fans on the 2080 were noisy.

In terms of fans, the 280mm has the stock EK Vadar fans on, the exhaust 120mm rad has Noctua Chromax static pressure fan and the two intakes are Noctua Chromax air flow fans. I did have Corsair on there but they were MUCH nosier.

 

[wookiee87]

nice to see your temps drop but if you want to keep the cpu cool i would definatly split the loop and put the 120mm rad between the gpu and cpu, that way the 120mm rad can take most of the heat away before dumping that heat load onto the cpu, if you want the most out of your cooling setup, id go with the follwing
pump/res>cpu>280mm rad>gpu>120mm rad and pack to the pump. doing it this way will will split the heat load and most importanlty keep the cpu cooler, granted the gpu may run warm but if you want the 5.2ghz overclock that'll be the way to go.
just watch the gpu if applying a overclock the ram will be fine to oc as the heat genertaed isnt too bad, but with the core dont go all out and shoot for max clocks as that will dramatically increase power draw and heat output.
general rule of thumb with ek stuff they recommend the coolant temp dosnt exceed 50 degrees, so if you have a way to moniter this and push up to that point then you know how far to go.

 

[LuckyBenski]

Loop offer doesn't matter really so I would reassess the entire case airflow arrangement. It's not too clear how you have it configured, could you do a simple diagram?

A delid may help with those CPU temperature spikes, it will take the short term transients down while keeping the average temperature slightly lower.

As Wookiee87 says, coolant temp should stay below 50 or so too - most pumps have a limit like this. You don't want pump failure. PETG tubing can also deform and pop off its fittings above 60°.

How were your GPU temps? These are usually a bit closer in following water temps.

 

[ElBurge]

I have a digital probe i can get a reading from the res temp easy enough - I used to have a 4770k and two OC'd 980s in the same loop config and water temp never exceeded ~38C. GPU stress load temps peaked at 63C - so its just the CPU at 1.35V i need to cool down.

The pump is running at 50% - if that matters. I probably need to revisit my fan curves too as i can manually tune the PSU fan to add additional exhaust.

Took a photo last night when i was drip testing after re-filling.

 

[ElBurge]

A delis may help with those CPU temperature spikes, it will take the short term transients down while keeping the average temperature slightly lower..

I am seriously considering a delid. Never done it, appreciate the tools seem easy to use - assume also need liquid metal and what do you use to stick the IHS back down?

 

[LuckyBenski]

I am seriously considering a delid. Never done it, appreciate the tools seem easy to use - assume also need liquid metal and what do you use to stick the IHS back down?

Lots of people use an appropriate silicone sealant (RTV gasket stuff) as it's what Intel use. I prefer a dab of epoxy glue on each corner. Easy to remove again later that way

Liquid metal is the ideal, nowhere near as beneficial to use normal paste. I did my first using a vice but I've since bought a delid tool as it's worth it for repeat use.

 

[ElBurge]

ok so latest update is - I took down my 8700K OC to 5.0 at 1.26V and spent the time OCing the rtx2080 stable, i now have a 2055mhz OC with 1925mhz on the vram and only hit 68C max. Whilst the CPU peaked at 76C under load.

After i was happy everything was stable and sure my rtx2080 couldn't give any more (even +5mhz increase failed to run timespy/firestrike), i have put the CPU up to 5.1Ghz at 1.3v.

Temps are now 77C peak on the GPU and 86C peak on the CPU. The benchmark scores improvements are minuscule with the additional CPU clock, so i might just keep it at 5.0Ghz/1.26V for daily use - as at 1440p i dont think i will see any difference pushing this. After a weekend thought i might also bow out the delid - I always like selling my hardware after a few years - normally 4 or so years on the CPU, so i think leaving it will net me a bigger return. After all i just managed to recoup £140 on a 5 year old 4770k, which i only paid about £260 for new.