Air/coolant-delta help :)

Norwaycool · 9 Nov 2020 at 19:29

Hello!

I have gathered tons of excellent advice and tips in this forum over the years, but this time I actually had to register and make a post myself. Go easy

I just finished my Level 20XT-build, and I went really overkill. But somehow the air/coolant-delta is higher than I would have imagined it to be. I'm not super-experienced, this is my third build, but something seems off.

When ambient is around 22C, my coolant hits upwards of 36C even with my fans around 80%. Thats about 1200rpm for the ML120s and 900 RPM for the ML140s. Kinda noisy!

I removed the dust filters, and tried ins and outs on all fan positions. Things did not change much. I obviously haven't tried everything yet, so I am really hoping for some good tips towards different solutions I could try out.

Here is the cooling:
Water:
TOP: 2 x 420 Nemesis GTS with 2 x 3 140ML Corsair - PULL (600rpm quiet - 900-1050 gaming)
Bottom 1 x 480 Nemesis SR2 with 4 x 120ML Corsair - PULL (600 quiet - 950-1200 gaming)
D5 corsair pump/res (2500rpm quietmode - 3500-4000 gaming) + corsair blocks for 3800x and 2080 ti on a 360W bios going full tilt.
Air:
Front: 2 x 200mm TT riing plus (going at 550 rpm)
Back top: 1 x 120 ML120 (AIO-one that goes to 2400RPM, usually sits at 600-1200 like the ones on the SR2)
Back bottom: 1 x 140 slimfan (not here yet, but it won't help much)

So the case temp sits around 32C when gaming for 1 hour+, but right now I'm having all three rad-setups drawing air from the outside, so temp inside the case shouldnt matter much for coolant was my logic. I can lower the case temp to 27-28 by just taking off the front housing. That gives those huge 200mm-fans actual air to suck in.

When idle the temps just stops at 27 for air inside case and coolant around 28, even if the ambient is around 21-22.

I have a small leak in the SR2-rad, one of the bottom caps is leaky - I ordered a metal replacement. Doubt it matters much, we're talking a few drops per day.

Wow. That was long. Sorry about that, and thanks so much for any tips.

Dominic-Toretto · 9 Nov 2020 at 19:35

Oh snap! Great case choice OP, I have the same one haha.

The level 20XT seems to have a heat build up issue, I noticed this with one of my watercooling setup previously. Just taking off the side panels dropped my temperature over delta by 10 degrees. The tempered glass really suffocates airflow in and out of the case.

Try taking off your side panel and see how much the temperature drops. Record the temperature over delta with the side panel off and see if their is a drastic difference. if it is significant you may have the same issue of the case getting soaked in hot air, in which case I would advise potentially revising your fan setup.

Edit: Personally I would flip your top radiator fans to exhaust to remove as much hot air as possible.

Norwaycool · 9 Nov 2020 at 19:43

Squidward said:
Oh snap! Great case choice OP, I have the same one haha.
.

Thanks man!

I have been running with all the glass off, and a quite a while with just the side panels off as well. That obviously makes everything a lot better, and my coolant drops to 31-32C in heavy gaming sessions - where I'm at 36C+ with glass on. I'm not quite ready to give up on having the glass on though, since everything does look a lot better with the panels on.

However, if 36C coolant is what I'm gonna get when gaming thats a dealbreaker.

First thing I did was actually push out on top and bottom. Tried doing that with the front/back blowing out, and in. Temps were pretty much the same. So I'm probably gonna swap back to push out, just to get at little less dust on my rads. Haven't tried just the top pushing out though, might give that a go!

Dominic-Toretto · 9 Nov 2020 at 19:45

Norwaycool said:
Thanks man!

I have been running with all the glass off, and a quite a while with just the side panels off as well. That obviously makes everything a lot better, and my coolant drops to 31-32C in heavy gaming sessions - where I'm at 36C+ with glass on. I'm not quite ready to give up on having the glass on though, since everything does look a lot better with the panels on.

However, if 36C coolant is what I'm gonna get when gaming thats a dealbreaker.

First thing I did was actually push out on top and bottom. Tried doing that with the front/back blowing out, and in. Temps were pretty much the same. So I'm probably gonna swap back to push out, just to get at little less dust on my rads. Haven't tried just the top pushing out though, might give that a go!

Yes the case definitely does look lovely with the glass on. Try just having your top fans as exhausts and the back case fan, so flow will be like so:

Front Fans -> Intake
Bottom Fans -> Intake
Top Fans -> Exhaust
Back Fans -> Exhaust

See how you get on with that and see if it helps.

Dominic-Toretto · 9 Nov 2020 at 20:04

How are you measuring your fluid temperature by the way?

Norwaycool · 9 Nov 2020 at 20:33

Squidward said:
How are you measuring your fluid temperature by the way?

Got half the fans turned around now. Fluid sensor is on the reservoir, in one of the unused ports. A corsair part. Looks to be made by bitspower maybe?

Dominic-Toretto · 9 Nov 2020 at 20:41

Norwaycool said:
Got half the fans turned around now. Fluid sensor is on the reservoir, in one of the unused ports. A corsair part. Looks to be made by bitspower maybe?

Sweet, let me know how you get on with your temps. What fan speed are you running?

SirConfused · 9 Nov 2020 at 20:53

Out of curiosity what are the temps on your CPU/GPU? I have 1x 360 rad cooling a single gpu/cpu loop and I never run into temp problems :eek:

Norwaycool · 9 Nov 2020 at 21:06

SirConfused said:
Out of curiosity what are the temps on your CPU/GPU? I have 1x 360 rad cooling a single gpu/cpu loop and I never run into temp problems

Temps on CPU and GPU are probably what most people would deem "good". GPU, which is on a galax-bios and doing 2100/10.000 constantly was never over 44/45 when I had all the covers off. When covers are on and the coolant goes to 36, it climbs to 47 under load and drops to 2085mhz. Insignificant, I know, but I want my coolant closer to ambient, dammit

CPU is a ryzen, so its all over the place. Running auto-voltage atm whilst waiting for new ram, but it tops out around 70-75 depending on coolant in CPU-heavy stuff like CB20 multi. During gaming it tops out at around 60-62ish. When running at 1.3V steady it never climbs over 65C for anything.

Replacing CPU with 5900x which is on its way, and a 6800XT or 6900XT whenever those are possible to actually buy.

Squidward said:
Sweet, let me know how you get on with your temps. What fan speed are you running?

Alright, just started running 3Dmark in a loop.

At idle this was the setup:

Ambient 22,5C (but I opened a window to get that down a bit)
Air in case: 26C
Coolant at idle: 26,6

(it doesnt mean anything, I know. But still cool)
120MLs (pull): 1100RPM
140MLs (push): 1000 RPM
D5: 3450RPM
Intake 2 x 200 at 550rpm
Exhaust 1 x 120 at 1100RPM

Did a couple of cinebench-runs. Didnt put a dent in temps. Running a timespy extreme loop now. Gonna see what happens.

Norwaycool · 9 Nov 2020 at 21:54

Squidward said:
Sweet, let me know how you get on with your temps. What fan speed are you running?

So thanks! Awesome tip with the top-swap!

This shaves at least 3-4C off my coolant.

Alright, been doing timespys and played 45 minutes of Apex now. Temp in room is down to 20 (cold here in norway, open a window and yeah!).

Coolant maxes out at 32C. Goes down pretty fast between games.

Edit: Case air temp hovers in the 28-29C

GPU: Max 43 (which is good)
CPU: Max 62 (also good)

This is with all the covers on, and all the dust filters on. Pretty happy with this, but I'm thinking a 13C delta between ambient and coolant is high still. Am I hoping for too much here?

Dominic-Toretto · 9 Nov 2020 at 22:01

Norwaycool said:
So this shaves at least 3-4C off my coolant.

Alright, been doing timespys and played 45 minutes of Apex now. Temp in room is down to 20 (cold here in norway, open a window and yeah!).

Coolant maxes out at 32C. Goes down pretty fast between games.

GPU: Max 43 (which is good)
CPU: Max 62 (also good)

This is with all the covers on, and all the dust filters on. Pretty happy with this, but I'm thinking a 13C delta between ambient and coolant is high still. Am I hoping for too much here?

Okay sweet that's good progress!
I still feel like you can do better than 13 degrees delta with the rad setup you have and the fan speeds you are running. Should be able to dip under 10 degrees over delta.
Can you repeat the test exactly as you just did but with just the roof panel off this time?

Also your bottom fans might perform marginally better with them pushing through the bottom rads rather than pulling, but if that is a massive pain to change then don't bother as it will only be a marginal difference.

Dominic-Toretto · 9 Nov 2020 at 22:02

Also do you have any more pictures of your setup, a bit further back from the current view, and a view of the other side?

Norwaycool · 9 Nov 2020 at 22:31

Squidward said:
Okay sweet that's good progress!
I still feel like you can do better than 13 degrees delta with the rad setup you have and the fan speeds you are running. Should be able to dip under 10 degrees over delta.
Can you repeat the test exactly as you just did but with just the roof panel off this time?

Also your bottom fans might perform marginally better with them pushing through the bottom rads rather than pulling, but if that is a massive pain to change then don't bother as it will only be a marginal difference.

Roof off = wow.

Air: 27,36C
Coolant: 28,81C
GPU: 41
CPU: 66 (but that REALLY jumps around a lot)

Edit: Ambient had crept up to 20,7. So that gives me a pretty nice 8,1C delta. This I can definitely live with. Top off looks... iffy, but not as bad as front or sides off.

Dominic-Toretto · 9 Nov 2020 at 22:36

Norwaycool said:
Roof off = wow.

Air: 27,36C
Coolant: 28,81C
GPU: 41
CPU: 66 (but that REALLY jumps around a lot)

Edit: Ambient had crept up to 20,7. So that gives me a pretty nice 8,1C delta. This I can definitely live with. Top off looks... iffy, but not as bad as front or sides off.

Okay so 8.1c delta is an improvement. Ideally you would like to keep the roof on I assume. It is clear that their is still excess heat trapped in the case, especially with the tempered glass roof on.

Can you try putting the top panel back on, and changing the 2 front fans to exhausts? See how that runs.

So fan setup would be:
Bottom Radiator -> Intake
Front Fans <- Exhaust
Top Radiators <- Exhaust
Back Fans <- Exhaust

Also any further pictures of the setup?

Norwaycool · 9 Nov 2020 at 22:40

Squidward said:
Okay so 8.1c delta is an improvement. Ideally you would like to keep the roof on I assume. It is clear that their is still excess heat trapped in the case, especially with the tempered glass roof on.

Can you try putting the top panel back on, and changing the 2 front fans to exhausts? See how that runs.

So fan setup would be:
Bottom Radiator -> Intake
Front Fans <- Exhaust
Top Radiators <- Exhaust
Back Fans <- Exhaust

Also any further pictures of the setup?

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar! This really helps.

I'll try swapping the fronts tomorrow, gotta get some sleep - early start. I'll update with new temps tomorrow

Norwaycool · 10 Nov 2020 at 11:20

Squidward said:
Also any further pictures of the setup?

Sure

Really gotta fix that long tube going across from top to bottom. Gonna try my hand at a single hardtube there I think, would probably look a lot better. Cable management in this case is a bit of a challenge with the amount of fans and fancontrollers I'm using as well. But it doesn't really show from "my side" looking in.

Temps atm with same config as last night, but roof mounted back on are:

Ambient: 23,2C
Case air: 28,2C
Coolant: 29C

All fans @ 600rpm, pump at 2500. Whisper quiet. But not putting any load on the GPU. Just doing work stuff, some lightroom, mail, teams and a lot of chrome.

gonna try and turn those big boys in the front around after work.

Norwaycool · 10 Nov 2020 at 15:11

Squidward said:
Can you try putting the top panel back on, and changing the 2 front fans to exhausts? See how that runs.

OK, so I ran it today with top off, push through roof, pull from bot, push out back and push out front. Used extended Apex Legends-play again to test. Temps are pretty stable.

Ambient 22,6
Air in case 28,21
Coolant 30,85

So the delta is clearly within margin of error here. No real difference. So I'm currently swapping the ML120s in the bottom to push out

Dominic-Toretto · 10 Nov 2020 at 16:16

Norwaycool said:
OK, so I ran it today with top off, push through roof, pull from bot, push out back and push out front. Used extended Apex Legends-play again to test. Temps are pretty stable.

Ambient 22,6
Air in case 28,21
Coolant 30,85

So the delta is clearly within margin of error here. No real difference. So I'm currently swapping the ML120s in the bottom to push out

Ideally you should be running the same test every time, something synthetic like 3d mark, uninengine, p95 etc.

Norwaycool · 10 Nov 2020 at 16:26

Squidward said:
Ideally you should be running the same test every time, something synthetic like 3d mark, uninengine, p95 etc.

Yeah, you're right. I just don't have the patience for it. Apex gives the overall system a pretty hefty workout though. Swapped the ML120s on the bot rad now. Testing as we speak.

Norwaycool · 10 Nov 2020 at 16:35

Norwaycool said:
Yeah, you're right. I just don't have the patience for it. Apex gives the overall system a pretty hefty workout though. Swapped the ML120s on the bot rad now. Testing as we speak.

So yeah, seems this config hits around 7C delta.

22,5C ambient - 29,5C coolant.

Wonder what will happen when I put the top on again

Edit: After an hour with the top back on, delta is 11,2C and still rising (albeit very slowly). Coolant at around 33,5C. So this ain't so good. It will be interesting to see, since gathering hot air seems to be the problem, if the new 140mm ultraslim-fan I'm getting for bottom exhaust (or maybe intake?) might help here.