Cooling problems in Coolermaster Cosmos II case (yes really!)

[TheBigCheese]

Hi everyone

I'm running CPU/GPU at stock but I'm having some issues with overheating. They are in a Coolermaster Cosmos II case which I have to leave the side off for to help the hot air escape (I didn't think it would help either, but it did).

I'm running a 2012 i7 and an AMD R9 290. On certain games etc., the CPU goes above 60 degrees and starts beeping a warning (it's set to 60 in the BIOS), the GPU gets to around 76 degrees and then hard locks up the machine, not even the reset button will work, I have to hold down the power button to restart.

I've had enough of this and I need to find some solutions.

I'm going to clean the PC tomorrow of all possible dust. There are a lot of HDDs in there so wires blocking air flow is an issue but I've tided as much as possible.


New CPU cooler
I think investing in a new CPU cooler will be a good start. I have a Phanteks PH-TC14PE CPU cooler at the moment.

It's huge, takes up loads of room in the case and isn't venting hot air outside so I'd like to replace with a water cooled unit with a radiator.

I'd like to go for a Corsair H series, I have an original H50 in an older PC and it's been perfect after all these years. I don't want to go half measures so I'm thinking of the H115, however, I've read that the Corsair H115 can be difficult to fit sometimes, blocking motherboard components.

OCUK sell lots of other similar designs, should I go for a Corsair or another manufacturer?
If Corsair, is there any easy way round the hard fit problems?


New case fans...maybe
I'm also thinking about replacing the Cosmos fans with some third party fans if they are better / quieter.
Can any one recommend good case fan replacements, or are the case fans good enough?

On the specs it says how quiet they are (17db), but doesn't say how much volume of air they actually push so that makes me think it's quite low!

Thanks in advance! I am literally five years out of date with computer hardware now and am having trouble sifting through what sort of purchase I should be looking at!

 

[mickyflinn]

Try Finding out what max temps you get but the above temps dont seem too high, make sure everything is a stock settings. If the gpu is hard locking then it may be faulty

 

[UnworthyBean]

Try Finding out what max temps you get but the above temps dont seem too high, make sure everything is a stock settings. If the gpu is hard locking then it may be faulty

I'd agree with this. 76 for a gpu isn't really that warm and Is very unlikely to freeze the computer.

Same for the CPU, however the phanteks should perform better. Try cleaning off and reapplying the thermal paste and reseating.

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've been having real issues with the fans working on the CPU cooler at times, not spinning, or trying to spin and then stop. I've hauled it all out of it's den in the corner today and found that one of the CPU fans isn't correctly balanced, it's vibrating so I've taken it out.

I now have one CPU fan between the heat sinks in a push-pull cooling config, we'll see how that goes!

As for the GPUs, that's not good news at all! Is there any particuar way I should benchmark/test the GPU to check if it's the card that is the problem? It was only in games I was trying it before so could have been an issue with that I suppose. I need to isolate the GPU to test as much as possible.

Regarding the case fans I said about, now I've cleaned everything I think I'm quite happy with the stock Coolermaster fans, I'm still going to swap the air cooler for a water cooled unit though, it'll take up so much less space in the case!

 

[UnworthyBean]

I've been out of the loop a little while with benchmark and stability software but i think heaven benchmark is still the one to go for.

Fairly sure most graphics cards can reach 100c, at which point most will sound like a helicopter and then start throttling.

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks UnworthyBean!

I've tried Heaven just now, it seems to not want to go past 2K resolution and having everything on ultra seems to top the GPU temperature out at...76oC, lol, honestly!

When I tried the fullscreen setting to hopefully push it to 4K it crashed the software, not sure why that happened.

I'm looking around for other GPU stress tests now, though they seem to be few and far between these days, I'm sure there used to be more choice!

 

[mickyflinn]

The 290 wont run games at 4k high AA its not powerful enough.

 

[tres_kun]

I use Superposition unigine give it a go
And if you have some decent thermal paste change the paste on the graphic card
That card should run really hot
76 degrees is to cool for its age and model
something wrong here

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the suggestion tres, I'll have a look at it today!

Something was definitely wrong! Last night I decided to wipe all instances of GPU drivers so I uninstalled everything and then used AMD driver cleaner to make sure everything was gone. Reinstalled a fresh set of the new driver and had a look today.

I haven't done any further benchmarks but I tried Crysis 2 (after it's DX11 upgrade), all settings on absolute max, except for motion blur, can't stand that) and had a test in game. It was running between 45-60 fps constantly at full 4K (though it was just in one area I tested, I didn't load multiple levels).
This time it pushed GPU 1 to 86C and GPU 2 to 68C - which wasn't working before. GPU 2 was barely getting warm when Crossfire should have been working, so I think there were some serious driver issues going on.

I'll try Superposition later on and see what happens! From what I've seen already though, there is a big improvement.

New CPU cooler has also arrived so I'm hoping that'll help with cooling and general case air flow!

 

[tres_kun]

To delete the remnents of display drivers
I use display driver uninstaller from guru 3d
Best resoults are done wen running the app in safe mode

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks again for the replies guys, and thanks tres for the suggestion of using the Guru3D uninstaller tool, I think that's helped!

So, when I'm testing it out now, this happens:
Temperatures of GPU 1 now goes up to over 80c and doesn't completely sound like a jet engine taking off when it's under load so that's better, it's not crashing at 76c!
Temperatures of GPU 2 now goes to around 60c so Crossfire is working correctly!

The problem I have now is I'm often getting this error message:
"The system has detected a link failure and cannot set the requested resolution and refresh rate. Your display might not support the requested resolution or there is a..."(I didn't catch the rest of it in the screenshot I took).

When it does that it:
Drops the screen to 30Hz instead of 60Hz (causing virtually instant eye-strain
Sometimes it will forget the colour profile it's using and default to a sickly green tinge burning out some of the highlights.

I can usually correct the Hz issue by switching the monitor off and on.
The colour issue I have to reboot for. If it happens multiple times a day (which it does sometimes) that becomes a real issue.

I don't know where to begin with that...is it likely to be a driver issue? A monitor connection issue? A cable issue? I'm at a bit of a loss!

Regarding the new CPU cooler, I still haven't had time to install it yet...maybe over the weekend!