Temps advice

[sdavlaws]

I am relatively new to water-cooling, first set up was based on a 2700x and GTX 1080 and never really noticed high temps.
Now upgrading to a 5900x and 3080 following advice of some other members I added a fluid temp sensor which has highlighted a fluid temp of 45°, with my GPU been warm at 57° and CPU peaking around 85°
Setup is a O11 Dynamic

Intake EK 360 Slim with 3 Corsair ML120 RGB & 3 EK Vardar in push/pull 60% PWM
Exhaust is a EK 360 with 3 Corsair ML120 RGBs 55% PWM

If anyone has any advise as to why my temps are so high or if I am expecting to much it would be
appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[MikeTimbers]

the fact that the 3080 is doing well says the loop is working and the rads are removing the heat. The CPU being so hot is possibly simply that most new chips seem to get very hot - check BIOS settings, voltage, PBO, etc.

if there's a fault, it is likely the contact between block and cpu. What block is it?

 

[sdavlaws]

It's an EK supremacy block.

 

[LuckyBenski]

My liquid temp peaks at 44.x°C and from what I've seen that's quite high. For me I'm aiming for the closest to silence I can get so I live with it.

But with liquid temperatures this high, I wouldn't use PETG tubing as it might deform over time. I stick to acrylic for hard-line.

 

[D1craig]

Why are you using a slim radiator? It's far better to use a thicker rad than to go for push pull fan setup. The radiator is what removes the heat from the water so the thicker it is the better.

 

[sdavlaws]

It's a slim in the side as at the time this was the recommendation for that location to ensure they fit.

 

[D1craig]

I don't think you stated that it's a side rad. Is the other rad not a slim one then? Surely if you can fit push pull fans on you can fit a thicker rad in, fans being behind the rad would be bad for aesthetic? Or would you he OK with that? I personally would be OK with that.

 

[Drumroll]

Slim radiator for top end CPU and top end GPU, even if you're using 2, you're cutting close.
Radiator thickness doesn't matter as much as radiator area, someone may say, but there's a difference when you compare a 40 or 45mm thick radiator to a 60mm radiator and a 28mm radiator, infamous for it's performance, and a decent 30mm radiator.
For 30mm radiator I would go with HWLabs or Alphacool. EK is ok on PE and XE lines. Use them myself, but wouldn't go any thinner than the PE line.
Also, no need to push pull a thin radiator. Don't.
Unless vertical mounting the GPU, the O11 can do nicely with a PE top and bottom, no need for push pull.
Mine with fans at 50%, the 3090 which is a bit hotter and has the backplate dumping heat in the loop, the coolant haven't passed 33C, delta of 7ish Celsius, 10 hours playing NIOH 2 (mandatory self-isolation from NHS app, going crazy doing nothing).
A cheaper solution and possibly sort your "issue" would replace the radiators.
Overclockers have 3 Corsair 360 30mm B-Grade for 50 quid a piece, which I believe are rebadged HWLabs radiators, which are a bit more restrictive but perform great at lower fan rpm.
Also quite often some EK PE for 50ish, which would be nice.
As you mentioned side intake I assume you are not using a distro.
A third rad can be possible, but not necessary.
Replacing the radiators and selling the excess fans, you can offset the cost of the new radiators.

 

[MikeTimbers]

bigger fatter radiators will never be wasted investment and rads can be used over and over again so why skimp. same for pump/reservoirs. cpu blocks funnily enough can be as cheap as you like; £15 blocks from ebay will cool with a few degrees of blocks costing 5x as much.

 

[sdavlaws]

It's a PE in the top mount and SE in the side one, the SE was used due reviewers advising that would be better but its clear something larger would have fit.
I don't have to use the vertical mount anymore so may look at swapping the side SE for a better bottom mounted rad.

Thanks.

 

[Drumroll]

A PE on the bottom would be nice.
You may be able to squeeze and keep the side SE, not sure, but a top and bottom PE should be enough. Side intake fans may help the overall temperature in the case, of you have the fans for it.

 

[Hakanese]

Try keeping all the same type of fans on the one rad for Push/Pull.. my ocd and the fact that not all fans have the same rpm and airflow at % PWM could also be affecting your cooling through the rad

 

[D1craig]

The EK rads have like 30% of their size not used for cooling, they have a frame around them that must add atleast 2cm to the thickness of the rad but to the cooling capacity. I would look at something from other brands.

 

[sdavlaws]

So I am thinking.

Sell the slim rad and buy somthing like Cosair XR7 when the price is right use the current fans with the EK fans and PE rad in the base with the XR7 in the top and the ML fans in the side and top.

 

[Drumroll]

The EK rads have like 30% of their size not used for cooling, they have a frame around them that must add at least 2cm to the thickness of the rad but to the cooling capacity. I would look at something from other brands.

Most rads will have some "wasted" space, as it's easier and cheaper to make a deeper casing for the rad than complicate the usable area to allow screws to be used when fixing the fans without damaging the fin area.
The PE is a decent rad. The XE is good, but unless going with the perfect fan and possibly high RPM, has to be push/pull for performance.
Used XSPC in the past, 10/12 years ago, nothing special back then.
Recently used Alphacool rads and they are good performance rads, low restriction, but after the Brexit + double tax, expensive postage, hard to justify when a mint PE was £49 and the XE £59 B-Grade.
There's better rads, sure. But they're far from bad radiators.
Today just replaced the side rad with a distro. Bored at home.
Still holding a 3090 at under 50C during stress test. PE at the top as push, XE at the bottom push/pull, BeQuiet Pure Wings 2000rpm under 1200rmp.
Delta was under 9.
Slightly worse than 3 rads, but not far as I was expecting.
Maybe someone with a 3 x 8 pin 450W 3090 + heavily overclocked CPU may notice bigger gains with 3 rads, but I'm very pleased with the 2 rads at the moment and I'm keeping the distro.
Went with ZMT
No hard tubing, sorry.

 

[Chris Beard]

So I am thinking.

Sell the slim rad and buy somthing like Cosair XR7 when the price is right use the current fans with the EK fans and PE rad in the base with the XR7 in the top and the ML fans in the side and top.

Can I ask what happened in the end? Found this thread as I have the same situation with my 2700X - however I concluded that is because AMD artificially increased the temp readout by 10 degrees on this chip to drive the fan curve harder.

I have more than enough Rad capacity for my loop, so I'm not sure that is the cause of the (high?) CPU temps we're seeing.

 

[Drumroll]

CPU and GPU in the se loop, CPU will run hotter than on its own loop.
Despite being quite common 70+ Celsius under load, I can't see it happening under normal circumstances, unless the chip is overclocked.
The side of the O11 can fit a EK 40mm or even an Alphacool XT45. No push/pull, as it isn't needed anyway.
I would only bother with push/pull if the rad is 60mm thick or more. Gains are marginal.

 

[therealdippy]

I'm also new to watercooling but I think my first PC has been a success. I can give the OP my details for reference. My objectives were to have a near silent PC for when non-gaming and one that didn't sound like a jet engine when gaming. So that gave me a requirement to only use 140mm fans. I then chose the biggest case that could fit where I needed to install it, and one that could fit the maximum number of rads and fans. Then I read a lot about rads and carefully planned how I could fit my preferred ones in my chosen case. I have a Hardware Labs SR2 420 60mm rad at the front, chosen not just for its acclaimed performance but also that it has a relatively low fin density so that I can use it for intake, with least restriction on airflow. The 3 x 140mm Noctua fans are in pull mode. There are another 2 fans for "cold air" intake in the base. Then I managed to fit an Alphacool 140 45mm crossflow fan in the rear position and a longer 420 45mm crossflow at the top, with 4 x 140mm Noctua fans pushing air out.

With an EK dual pump setup I can run these at about 65l/h idle which is nice and quiet. If the room temperature starts low then my fans are off too, but my control gets them running at around 200rpm once the water heats up, but that's still inaudible. With e-mail and web browsing the water eventually settles at about 10C above room temp (so usually around 32-33C), and I think that's pretty much due to my 5900X which seems to live in the 40-50C range (it is undervolted but that didn't change temps much). Then when gaming the pumps ramp up to about 140l/h (much more and I get some audible vibration) and the fans get to around 800-900rpm, which of course I can hear but it doesn't sound any worse than my old air-cooled PC did in idle. Now the water temp reaches about 15C above ambient (so usually around 38C) - my RTX3900 GPU (also undervolted) gets to around 45C (the memory hits 85C due to the passive backplate) and the CPU is usually around 85C depending on the game.

Although this was my first watercooled PC I am not new to watercooling because in my job I deal with companies that build watercooled datacentres and HPC. In Europe at least, such systems need to recycle the heat so its used for heating which means that the system needs to deal with coolant which starts at around 40-45C and gets hotter. So for those who think that if their PC's coolant is 40-45C it is too high, I answer "based on what?". In my case I could get my coolant running at lower temperatures by increasing fan speed (and to a certain extent pump speed). But this would be noisier and for what gain? Similarly I could run the fans at lower speeds and not increase the pump speed. It would be quieter but the water would go above 40C. I have considered doing just that but I too have read the consensus of opinion on watercooling temperatures and for now accept the current level of noise to keep the water below 40C. The water temp doesn't matter as long as the CPU and GPU are kept below their throttle thresholds and the noise level is acceptable.

 

[Chris Beard]

The water temp doesn't matter as long as the CPU and GPU are kept below their throttle thresholds and the noise level is acceptable.

Your build sounds really well thought out and like it does exactly what you planned.

I really strongly agree with this statement. In laptops they go as close as possible to the throttle temp as otherwise they used too much space/weight on the cooling solution. For me if I'm running the chip cool that's additional noise I could have avoided.

What solution did you use for your PSU out of interest. The PSU fan is the final thing in my setup that isn't very quiet

 

[therealdippy]

Yes, although now that you've quoted me I feel I should clarify that it should be at the worst case, i.e. if the cooling control can keep below throttle when there is maximum load on CPU and GPU and with the highest ambient temperature that you should expect, then what the water temperature actually is doesn't matter.