Stuck on cooling issues

meaty987 · 16 Sep 2019 at 12:32

Hi folks,

So i got a prebuilt system around christmas time this year, Intel i9 9900k @3.6GHz, 32GB DDR4 RAM, RTX2080. However ... one thing i didnt realise is that it came in a small case. Now the issue is that under load everything starts heating up, the only things i've found it can run for more than 15mins without making me super nervous are minecraft and arma3, i tried subnautica the other day and withen 10 mins the fans were all 1200rpm upwards (the graphic cards ones were at 1500+) so i put my hand down to check the heat, and the case itself was warm to the touch .. i've never experienced that before so turned off and waited for everything to cool down.

Thinking that the fans werent coping/werent moving the air out quick enough i did the "stick your hand by it" test whilst they were running and they hardly moved any air at all :confused:

Now the case is small as i said so i'm wondering, can i just get "better" fans which arnt generic ones (they say A1225M12S on em if that helps, no brand visible) and replace them ... or is it more an issue with the size of case and its either transplant the system to a new case (a bit beyond my skills) ... or am i stuck with a very expensive hot monster?

Heres a pic of the system, as you can see .. not a lot of room to move ... https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0gu2d46j3b3r2m/DSC00977.JPG?dl=0 for what its worth airflow is sucked in at front of case, "blown" out the back. The area that gets hottest is top left where the fan is.

GuruJockStrap · 16 Sep 2019 at 12:50

What temps on the CPU and GPU are you seeing?

Anywhere else you can mount the HD? That HD bay is virtually blocking airflow from the front bottom fan.

Is the 5.25 bay populated? You can buy adapters that allow you to install the HD there, which would allow you remove that HD cage and allow unrestricted air flow.

My system is inside a cheap Thermaltake case thats looks identical in terms of size and internal layout to yours. I have 3 x 120mm low RPM fans plus the 2 x 140mm on my heatsink. Never had any cooling issues.

Grandmaster Fap! · 16 Sep 2019 at 13:17

What case is it? Does it have mesh at the front or is it closed off? Also your fans are important, they may be cheap nasty ones with very little pressure to bring enough cool air in.

EDIT: I see they are 120mm Corsairs with pretty bad static pressure. They will definitely not help if the front of your case is closed off.

meaty987 · 16 Sep 2019 at 19:38

GuruJockStrap said:
What temps on the CPU and GPU are you seeing?

hardware temp wise its pretty good CPU doesnt tend to get much above 50/60 under load, idles around 30ish. GPU varies massivly, some games it only gets above 60 every now and again, but more graphical games and it shoots right up to 75/80 within 5-10 mins .. then i get nervous and close the game.

GuruJockStrap said:
Anywhere else you can mount the HD? That HD bay is virtually blocking airflow from the front bottom fan.

Nope, its there or nowhere

GuruJockStrap said:
Is the 5.25 bay populated? You can buy adapters that allow you to install the HD there, which would allow you remove that HD cage and allow unrestricted air flow.

yea it is, blue ray drive.

Grandmaster Fap! said:
What case is it? Does it have mesh at the front or is it closed off? Also your fans are important, they may be cheap nasty ones with very little pressure to bring enough cool air in.

took a bit of digging, case is the Fractal Design Focus G - https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/focus/focus-g/black/ , front is metal meshed with dust filter insert thingi

Grandmaster Fap! said:
EDIT: I see they are 120mm Corsairs with pretty bad static pressure. They will definitely not help if the front of your case is closed off.

so it may well just be a fan issue then?

Grandmaster Fap! · 16 Sep 2019 at 20:13

As Guru said, if you can somehow move that drive cage that will help a lot, also get some better fans, if you arent bothered by rgb/led then something like Arctic P12s or Phanteks PH-F120s are great fans that dont cost the earth.

doyll · 16 Sep 2019 at 20:51

meaty987 said:
Hi folks,

So i got a prebuilt system around christmas time this year, Intel i9 9900k @3.6GHz, 32GB DDR4 RAM, RTX2080. However ... one thing i didnt realise is that it came in a small case. Now the issue is that under load everything starts heating up, the only things i've found it can run for more than 15mins without making me super nervous are minecraft and arma3, i tried subnautica the other day and withen 10 mins the fans were all 1200rpm upwards (the graphic cards ones were at 1500+) so i put my hand down to check the heat, and the case itself was warm to the touch .. i've never experienced that before so turned off and waited for everything to cool down.

Thinking that the fans werent coping/werent moving the air out quick enough i did the "stick your hand by it" test whilst they were running and they hardly moved any air at all Now the case is small as i said so i'm wondering, can i just get "better" fans which arnt generic ones (they say A1225M12S on em if that helps, no brand visible) and replace them ... or is it more an issue with the size of case and its either transplant the system to a new case (a bit beyond my skills) ... or am i stuck with a very expensive hot monster?

Heres a pic of the system, as you can see .. not a lot of room to move ... https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0gu2d46j3b3r2m/DSC00977.JPG?dl=0 for what its worth airflow is sucked in at front of case, "blown" out the back. The area that gets hottest is top left where the fan is.

Fractal Design stock case fans are almost worthless. I suggest getting some good fans like PH-F140MP 2-pk for 16.26 a front intakes speed controlled same as CPU fans.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/two-...140mm-fan-radiator-performance-bu-003-pt.html

Also remove all PCIe back slot covers to increase rear vent area and improve front to back airflow thus lowering air temp into both CPU & GPU coolers and lowering their temps.

You might find link below to basic guilde of how airflow works and how to optimize case airflow of interest.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...-i-put-my-temp-sensor.18564223/#post-26159770

gailjon · 16 Sep 2019 at 23:07

There's no need to worry about a 2080 hitting 75-80 degrees and no need to close the game. 2080s run hot, and temps us to 80 degrees under load are perfectly normal. Cases do heat up and that is normal.

You certainly don't have a 'hot monster', just a standard PC that theoretically could have lower temps with full water cooling, etc, but doesn't need to.

I would move the HDD to the drive bay and take the HDD cage out to aid airflow front to rear, or not bother and not worry about it as the temps are pretty average.

meaty987 · 18 Sep 2019 at 11:18

thanks for the suggestions guys!

its nice to know the situation is reducible! Before i go and get better fans, would i be right in thinking that you only need to run separate power cables to the fans if they have RGB? (which is beyond my skills), and that any non RGB 4pin fan would just be a "straight swap" for the current 3 pins? (that are in 4 pin slots on the motherboard)

I'm also assuming it wont matter one bit having two 140s at the front (case supports that cording to their webpage) and one 120 at the back (biggest case will support)?

doyll · 18 Sep 2019 at 13:55

meaty987 said:
thanks for the suggestions guys!

its nice to know the situation is reducible! Before i go and get better fans, would i be right in thinking that you only need to run separate power cables to the fans if they have RGB? (which is beyond my skills), and that any non RGB 4pin fan would just be a "straight swap" for the current 3 pins? (that are in 4 pin slots on the motherboard)

I'm also assuming it wont matter one bit having two 140s at the front (case supports that cording to their webpage) and one 120 at the back (biggest case will support)?

4-pin motherboard headers does not mean they are PWM headers. You can look in your motherboard manual to find out if they are PWM or not. PWM headers have 12v on pin-2 and PWM on pin-4 while variable voltage have variable voltage on pin-2 and nothing on pin-4

meaty987 · 18 Sep 2019 at 18:06

motherboard is a Z390 Aorus master, so i believe it does, at least that what i gather from the manual, which only mentions PWM with the fan pin layout

1 - GND
2 - Voltage speed control
3 - Sense
4 - PWM speed control

who'd have thought fans would be so complicated! (at least when new to them!)

doyll · 18 Sep 2019 at 18:46

Indeed! That is PWM header. If you need to run more than 2 or 3 fans on it, get a PSU Powered PWM splitter or hub. Gelid does a 4-way PSU powered cable splitter. and several others do hubs.
https://gelidsolutions.com/thermal-solutions/accessories-pwm-1-to-4-splitter/
OcUK have several different kinds of splitters and hubs.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=pwm+splitter

PWM motherboard signal will control 7-8 fans fine. Any more than that it becomes iffy.

meaty987 · 23 Sep 2019 at 09:08

so i went ahead and got new some phanteks (x2 140mm for the front, x1 120mm for the back) which at helped a bit, but using HWMonitor i noticed that the fans dont spin up past 1000, even under full load, which to me means they need tweaking, I'm not fussed about noise, i'd rather have a cooler pc than a quite one.

Now, i'm not a coder in any way and playing with curves, speed at XX temp etc etc and playing in the BIOS is beyond me, so, is there an easy, graphical, software that will allow me to tweak them? The motherboard manual says to use smartfan5 to control the fans, google comments say its naff (because only the serious overclockers play with fan speeds?) .. any suggestions?

Grandmaster Fap! · 23 Sep 2019 at 10:32

Have a look at Speedfan, nice little program that is pretty easy to use(loads of guides online) Only problem is will it work with your motherboard.

doyll · 23 Sep 2019 at 11:18

meaty987 said:
so i went ahead and got new some phanteks (x2 140mm for the front, x1 120mm for the back) which at helped a bit, but using HWMonitor i noticed that the fans dont spin up past 1000, even under full load, which to me means they need tweaking, I'm not fussed about noise, i'd rather have a cooler pc than a quite one.

Now, i'm not a coder in any way and playing with curves, speed at XX temp etc etc and playing in the BIOS is beyond me, so, is there an easy, graphical, software that will allow me to tweak them? The motherboard manual says to use smartfan5 to control the fans, google comments say its naff (because only the serious overclockers play with fan speeds?) .. any suggestions?

What motherboard are you using? Most have fan control software you can dl from their website that allows you to set temp to rpm with mouse. Looks something like this:

Each of the grey squares is a set point. Put curser on spot, hold mouse button and move up/down / side to side to set temp and % of total speed. Can't get much simpler than that.

I set 25-28c@10-20% (runs fan at it's lowest speed), 40c @ 40%(runs fan at about 640rpm on 1600rpm fan), 60-65c @ 70% (1120rpm) and 65-70c @ 100%. This kind of curve keeps system quiet unless it's working extremely hard with dirty filters in hot weather.

meaty987 · 25 Sep 2019 at 11:15

Ta guys, been doing google based on your guys suggestions, from what i can tell speedfan doesnt work with the Z390 Aorus Master (or if it does, its hit and miss), so i tried the one recommended by gigabyte, smartfan 5, however its not picking up ANY fans ... not at all (i also noticed HWMonitor shows no PWM fans, but shows them under normal fans) ... now i've seen a few vids and in the bios you can select between voltage control, or PWM control (which i believe the software uses to control the fans?), now considering the old fans didnt have PWM, i'm guessing they were set to voltage in the bois and i'll need to go and change that? Just want to make sure as i dont want to cause a headache i cant get out of!

and yes ... i have double checked to make sure they were plugged in the right way

doyll · 25 Sep 2019 at 15:35

meaty987 said:
Ta guys, been doing google based on your guys suggestions, from what i can tell speedfan doesnt work with the Z390 Aorus Master (or if it does, its hit and miss), so i tried the one recommended by gigabyte, smartfan 5, however its not picking up ANY fans ... not at all (i also noticed HWMonitor shows no PWM fans, but shows them under normal fans) ... now i've seen a few vids and in the bios you can select between voltage control, or PWM control (which i believe the software uses to control the fans?), now considering the old fans didnt have PWM, i'm guessing they were set to voltage in the bois and i'll need to go and change that? Just want to make sure as i dont want to cause a headache i cant get out of!

and yes ... i have double checked to make sure they were plugged in the right way

Strange problem.

PWM fans on variable voltage controlled headers should be functioning as variable fans .. same as your variable voltage fans did.

When header is setup for variable voltage pin-2 on fan header is power with variable voltage.

When header (must be 4-pin) is setup for PWM control pin-2 is constant 12v and pin-4 is PWM control signal and pin-2 is 12v constant power being pulsed inside of fan to control speed.

If your old fans were changing speed before you changed fans the new fans should also be changing speed.

So it shouldn't matter what the fan header is setup as, the fans should still change speed.

The reason many of us prefer PWM fans is because their is no heat buildup at low speeds like there is with variable voltage fans.

meaty987 · 25 Sep 2019 at 19:51

old fans changed speed, as do the new ones, i was just wondering if the bios etc auto picked up PWM fans (after possibly being told it didn't have any, this is a prebuilt system so i have no idea), or if i had to go in and tell them it now had them to make them work as intended?

... is that or i do actually have them plugged in wrong after all :confused:

doyll · 26 Sep 2019 at 11:53

While there are a few motherboard fan headers that have a switch on them to detect PWM plug most need to manually set in bios. Below is image of two 4-pin headers with one having the PWM detection switch.