Load temps at ambient temp theoretically possible?

[mof]

If you had enough rads,fans,high enough fan speed, big enough blocks, high enough flow rate,best TIM etc.
Could you get cpu/gpu load temps to be the same as the ambient temp or slightly above it?

What would the other limiting factors be?

 

[andy_mk3]

Thermal efficiency

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Not without a refrigeration element.

 

[MikeTimbers]

No, The blocks cannot move the heat with 100% efficiency, so even if you could keep the water close to ambient the chips would be hotter than the water due to the inherent inefficiency of transporting the heat.

So with the best liquid metal thermal compound, a gold block, a gold radiator with gold fins, there's still enough transfer inefficiency that you'd be multiple degrees above ambient.

 

[mof]

So in this video they get a 1080ti about 5c over ambient and I think the water temp is the same as ambient temp. Do you think that's about as good as it would get?
Edit-The water ends up a few degrees over ambient.

 

[Grim5]

No you won't be able to, You would need to achieve 100% energy transfer efficiency which is impossible

 

[Grim5]

So in this video they get a 1080ti about 5c over ambient and I think the water temp is the same as ambient temp. Do you think that's about as good as it would get?

You can get the water in the loop to ambient, but getting the components to ambient will be impossible.

That video is probably as good as its going to get

 

[mof]

I'd be be pretty happy with temps in the 20's!

 

[Shiari]

As above, no you can't. Also, there's no point. Great, you got them at ambient ... now you spent a lot of effort (and perhaps money, energy, noise, space) to achieve that, but the electronics aren't going to run any better than they would at say 50C.

 

[mof]

As above, no you can't. Also, there's no point. Great, you got them at ambient ... now you spent a lot of effort (and perhaps money, energy, noise, space) to achieve that, but the electronics aren't going to run any better than they would at say 50C.

That's true but it might make a difference to someone who's seriously into benchmarks.

 

[Shiari]

That's true but it might make a difference to someone who's seriously into benchmarks.

At that point you need LN2 however to be able to compete, i.e. sub-zero cooling.

 

[Rroff]

Only way to do it really, other than LN2 or phase is custom Peltier based setups and like the other more extreme cooling tend to be impractical and expensive for 24x7 use.

I ran a PC once in a temperature controlled environment that had very efficient and stable temperature management and got IIRC 14C idle and 40C load.

 

[MikeTimbers]

Easiest way is a water chiller

 

[mof]

I think that some people (like me) would enjoy just getting those temperatures even if it didn’t make a difference to performance.
I doubt I could tell the difference in games between non OC’d and OC’d. You could argue that spending money on any water cooling is not really worth it for the performance increase you actually get.

 

[MikeTimbers]

I think that some people (like me) would enjoy just getting those temperatures even if it didn’t make a difference to performance.
I doubt I could tell the difference in games between non OC’d and OC’d. You could argue that spending money on any water cooling is not really worth it for the performance increase you actually get.

You could but you'd be wrong

I don't overclock my cpus but my gpus are all cranked to the max because they're running Folding@Home trying to determine the ways naughty molecules work. How fast they return that science is relevant so the gpus are overclocked and with air-cooling that would be loud, with water-cooling the clocks are higher and the relative quiet is blissful

 

[Shiari]

You could argue that spending money on any water cooling is not really worth it for the performance increase you actually get.

Well, what performance are you talking about exactly?

Pure "horsepower" performance ... watercooling helps you achieve higher and/or more stable clocks, but in practical terms for fps in a game this won't yield all that much in the way of gains. This is mostly useful for benchmarking. If you need to do a lot of rendering or such, then watercooling that CPU can also help maximising performance, and that CPU might even cost more than your loop. So yeah, I would concur it's generally poor value for money for gaming performance, while it can help for productivity workloads.

Noise performance however ... there it helps tremendously. At idle I can't hear my fans, and at high load the noise is less than any air cooled GPU produces on its own. As I sit next to my PC all day, every day (working from home) it being quite quiet is really important to me. I can't stand the noise from any fans going at full whack for hours on end.

 

[mof]

I can see how it would be helpful for productivity.
I think you can get genuinely quiet air cooled set ups nowadays. I've had noisy gpu coolers in the past but the set up I've got now is surprisingly quiet.
Funny thing is that the noisiest thing in my system during gaming is the coil whine (which isn't that bad) and the PSU fan (which doesn't kick in until after an hour under load)
and neither of these would be fixed by changing to water cooling.

 

[ttaskmaster]

You could argue that spending money on any water cooling is not really worth it for the performance increase you actually get.

Depends how you define performance...
My w/c'd load temps are often lower than air-cooled temps at idle. Come Summer time that makes a LOT of difference!