AIO liquid cooler makes my room uncomfortably hot - wondering if I should go back to air cooling

Zeromus

Zeromus

Zeromus

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Joined
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Location
England
Hi OCUK,
I built a new PC in August last year. I decided to buy an AIO liquid cooler for the CPU, after previously only using air coolers. The AIO cooler I have currently is the Lian Li Galahad II Trinity 360. It includes 3 fans which are connected to the included radiator, installed at the top of the case. The problem I am having is that my room becomes uncomfortably hot when playing games. I understand that all electronic components (especially CPUs) produce heat, and that heat has to go somewhere, but the difference in the warmth of the room compared to when I had an air cooler is quite striking to me. It was 21c outside today, but the temperature in the room where the PC is located was 28c. That was after playing a game for about 30 minutes. I have to have both windows wide open and have a large desk fan turned to the highest setting to make the heat manageable. I am wondering if I made a miscalculation, or even a schoolboy error, in buying a liquid AIO cooler without realising how much heat they can pump out into a room. I live in an old terraced house with no air conditioning. I believe it's not an issue for US-based consumers, as AC is much more common in houses and apartments there compared to the UK.

I am wondering if anyone else has a liquid cooler and have you encountered similar issues with the heat they emit? It's manageable in the winter when it's cold, but for the rest of the year and especially the summer, it's definitely an issue. The only options I seem to have are going back to an air cooler, or moving the PC downstairs to the front room where temperature is usually much lower. Neither option seems particularly appealing, but as mentioned, the current situation is proving unsustainable for me.
 
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A normal gaming pc might be using 350 watts, maybe 200 watts just for the graphics card.

A chunk will also be used by fans and drives and motherboard and psu efficiency.

Then maybe 70 watts for the cpu.

Already you can see most of the power (which becomes room heat) doesn't even go near the cpu cooler.

If you swap an air cooler for an aio that cpu is still turning 70 watts into heat and the cooler is still transferring it to the air of the room.

You can prove it in a basic way to yourself by buying a cheap watt meter to plug between the pc and the wall socket. That wattage reading is the heat your pc is dumping in the room. Swap cooler if you want, it won't change that.
 
Zeromus said:
Hi OCUK,
I built a new PC in August last year. I decided to buy an AIO liquid cooler for the CPU, after previously only using air coolers. The AIO cooler I have currently is the Lian Li Galahad II Trinity 360. It includes 3 fans which are connected to the included radiator, installed at the top of the case. The problem I am having is that my room becomes uncomfortably hot when playing games. I understand that all electronic components (especially CPUs) produce heat, and that heat has to go somewhere, but the difference in the warmth of the room compared to when I had an air cooler is quite striking to me. It was 21c outside today, but the temperature in the room where the PC is located was 28c. That was after playing a game for about 30 minutes. I have to have both windows wide open and have a large desk fan turned to the highest setting to make the heat manageable. I am wondering if I made a miscalculation, or even a schoolboy error, in buying a liquid AIO cooler without realising how much heat they can pump out into a room. I live in an old terraced house with no air conditioning. I believe it's not an issue for US-based consumers, as AC is much more common in houses and apartments there compared to the UK.

I am wondering if anyone else has a liquid cooler and have you encountered similar issues with the heat they emit? It's manageable in the winter when it's cold, but for the rest of the year and especially the summer, it's definitely an issue. The only options I seem to have are going back to an air cooler, or moving the PC downstairs to the front room where temperature is usually much lower. Neither option seems particularly appealing, but as mentioned, the current situation is proving unsustainable for me.
Click to expand...

Physics says a watt is a watt; your room will be the same temp no matter if your use aio or air cooling. Turn on the AC
 
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It's also probably
Your new pc you built in August
Uses more power than your old pc did
So more heat is being dumped into the room
Which is becoming more noticeable as
The weather's warming up

X amount of power in x amount of heat out
Regardless of aio or air cooler is
Probably right from a physics point of view
But an aio with radiator and 3 fans directly attached
To case exhaust
Compared to air cooler where fans aren't directly connected
To case exhaust
Probably means the aio heats the room faster
Even if the air temperature would eventually still get there
With air cooler in a longer time
The radiator 3 fans are spreading warm air using convection
An air cooler partly convection
But possibly more radiating once case and components heat up

And as mentioned the aio vs air cooler
The aio has more fan area and may be dumping heat
From your gpu as well as from cpu faster

High school physics lol
Very very long time ago too
Basically you're moving same amount of heat
Just one methods spreading it around the room faster
 
Appreciate the responses guys. The CPU is a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and the GPU is a RTX 4070 Super. I previously had an Intel i7-8700k and RTX 2070 Super. I have noticed that the CPU runs noticeably hotter when idle, and also when under load, compared to the Intel. With the 7800X3D, CPU idle temps are around 53c, rising to 70-75c when playing games. I'm using the included L-Connect software to control the fan speed as I don't like using Armoury Crate (it's known for being bloatware). Not sure why the idle temps are so high as I've seen comments saying it should be around 40-45c.
 
Zeromus said:
Appreciate the responses guys. The CPU is a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and the GPU is a RTX 4070 Super. I previously had an Intel i7-8700k and RTX 2070 Super. I have noticed that the CPU runs noticeably hotter when idle, and also when under load, compared to the Intel. With the 7800X3D, CPU idle temps are around 53c, rising to 70-75c when playing games. I'm using the included L-Connect software to control the fan speed as I don't like using Armoury Crate (it's known for being bloatware). Not sure why the idle temps are so high as I've seen comments saying it should be around 40-45c.
Click to expand...

Try undervolting the CPU and the GPU
 
It's a bit high at idle maybe
But as long as load temperatures are OK
Is the main thing
And it's not always easy to get truly idle
Usually i sit in the bios for a few minutes
Or boot into safe mode
To get a better idea of when it's idle
 
Your idle temp is way to high for a 360mm AIO, mine is much less than that with a 240mm AIO with the pump fixed at 2600rpm and the fans running the silent profile as set in the motherboard bios. In fact my normal load temps while gaming is only a few degrees more than your idle temp. Even now my temp while browsing the net is only 39.8 degrees C and that's with a ambient temp of 20.4 degrees C. Last night my load temp was 58.7 degrees C after two hours of gaming. I should say I have a Honeywell PTM7950 pad on the cpu although temps were similar when using TG Kryonaut.

I know you most likely have but I have to ask, you did remove the plastic from the bottom of the block didn't you?

Have you played around with PBO at all? With the help of this forum I got some base settings to work from. They suggested the following:-

1. Enable PBO.
2. Set Scalar to x10.
3. Set auto overclock to +200.
4. Set all core negative curve optimiser to -20.
5. Test. If everything is ok keep tweaking negative curve optimiser until it becomes unstable then reapply the last stable setting.

All this is done in the motherboards bios. My 7800x3d is currently running -28 negative curve optimiser, it could probably do more by changing it to "per core" but that will take a lot of testing and I like to use my pc. The result of all these settings is less power draw, less heat, longer boosts and all cores overclocked to 5050mhz when loaded.
 
I definitely removed the plastic from the block. I've not tried overclocking the CPU or GPU. I would assume that if my temps are already too high at stock settings, then overclocking would just make the temps even higher. One thing I haven't tried yet is taking off the block and reapplying thermal paste. I'm using the stock thermal paste that comes with the AIO. Wondering if I should remove the existing paste and then try applying Arctic MX-4 or similar. Not sure if that would make much difference though.
 
You are not really overclocking though, you are undervolting (that's what the negative curve optimiser is doing) which as I said uses less power, less heat, boosts for longer and the 200mhz overclock is a bonus. You can do the same with a gpu as well. I knocked just over 100w power draw off my 7900GRE.
 
Regardless of cooling solution used, the wattage generated/wasted in heat form will be the same. The only difference is noise level.
Anything over 200W (whole system) will increase a small/medium room of the air doesn’t flow from the room. At the moment using a double bedroom as “office”. A 65” TV alone takes a while to heat the room. Using the PS5 at the same time, will happen more than twice as fast. If using the PC, even if the FPD is capped, would happens even faster than the TV + PS5 combo.
I’m using a cheap temperature sensor in the room, near the PC. From 20-21C it goes quite fast to 23-24C, then start to move slowly to 25-26C. The delta will be the same, but as the room gets warmer, the final “temperature” will be higher, until reaches saturation or the system thermal throttle, which never happened. Bear in mind it’s the north facing side of the house, which won’t get much heat from outside most of the year.
As pointed by others, is either cap the hardware and allow some extra ventilation or go exotic and move the heat to another room (external radiator, but that is too much hassle to be fair).
 
Limit your FPS to the same figure as your monitor hz. So if your monitor is 144mhz, limit your FPS max to 144fps in Nvidia Control Panel and your GPU will run cooler as its not trying to do 200+fps in certain games yet you wont see much difference in game to how smooth it is especially if you run games with unlimited FPS that go way over your monitor HZ rate figure. Also with the X3D CPU's not a lot of people realise this but make sure your AIO is optimised for it. The die on the X3D's doesnt just sit in the middle it also has a middle lower part and some AIO's account for this and sit it lower down on the CPU slot to accommodate the extra heat. The AIO I have (Arctic Cooler - see my sig) has holes specially for X3D CPU's so it sits lower down on the CPU and cools it better.
 
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I have enabled PBO in the BIOS as mentioned above. I used the settings provided by pastymuncher. So far I have noticed a significant improvement in CPU temperatures. Idle temps are now around 47-49c while I'm getting around 58-60c when playing games. What software do you use to undervolt your GPU specifically? My BIOS only allows you to undervolt the CPU. I couldn't find any settings for the GPU specifically.
 
Zeromus said:
I have enabled PBO in the BIOS as mentioned above. I used the settings provided by pastymuncher. So far I have noticed a significant improvement in CPU temperatures. Idle temps are now around 47-49c while I'm getting around 58-60c when playing games. What software do you use to undervolt your GPU specifically? My BIOS only allows you to undervolt the CPU. I couldn't find any settings for the GPU specifically.
Click to expand...

If you have a AMD, it's built into AMD control panel.
For Nvidia, you use MSI afterburner.
 
Lots of good replies. I would repeat what has already been said many times. CPU heat total is the same regardless of what cooler is used .. unless CPU and/or GPU throttle at lower wattage.
 
@Zeromus Hi there and welcome to the forums. Historically over the last few years intel idle at lower temps than AMD cpu's. There is nothing wrong that how it is. I use to have a 12900k that idled like 30c in summer and in the winter it would be like 19-21c. Even though I am on AMD now I still have the mindset of intel cpu's low idle temps.

I use to have a 7800x3d and I loved it. Undervolt it. it ever so simple to do and seeming as it a 80w chip hopefully you will see temp drops.

First go into your motherboard bios and there will a section called PBO. In this section you want to look for something called Curve optimiser. Select negative and input a number. 15-20 is a good starting point. It will now undervolt your cpu. And because the chip sees less voltage it gonna boost itself a little higher frequency wise.

Then go into Core overide and select positive and select 125. Why 125? That is the core overide limit for a 7800x3d. Hit F10 Bob's your uncle and Fanny is your auntie.

Now this should drop your temps a little. If you are stil not hapy with the temps just select the core overide number to 0.

But it is important you get out of the intel idle temps mindset as it will eat you alive. How do I know? As much as I love my AMD cpu's I still crave for the intel idle temps....

Good luck on your journey.
 
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