Stuck on cooling issues

[meaty987]

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.

 

[meaty987]

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.

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

Nope, its there or nowhere

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.

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

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?

 

[meaty987]

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)?

 

[meaty987]

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!)

 

[meaty987]

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?

 

[meaty987]

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

 

[meaty987]

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