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First Water Cooling build, massive heat issues.

8K views 55 replies 20 participants last post by  webdevii 
#1 ·
Hello everyone,

I've been roaming these forums for weeks researching the ins and outs of Water Cooling, and finally dove head first into my first WC custom loop. I thought I crossed all of my T's and dotted my I's, but I'm having serious heat issues on my i7 3770k.

Just a quick rundown of the build:

ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe
i7 3770k (Was OC'd before water, currently stock)
32 GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 Mhz
2x EVGA GTX 670 FTW (Stock)
64 GB Samsung 830 (Cache drive)
2 TB WD Caviar Black Sata6 (Accelerated by the 830)
Corsair 600T SE Case

I set this up originally with a H100 and a decent 4.4 Ghz OC with an offset voltage of + 0.045, was 72 hour IBT stable on MAX, 32 GB RAM, ran ~75c at full load.

Now, the water setup (In loop order):

XSPC Dual Bay res, no chambers or anything just a big empty box.
MCP-35x2 Pump
240mm Swiftech rad cooled by 2x Noctua 120mm fans in push.
Koolance 380i
Swiftech 120mm rad cooled by 1x 120mm Noctua in pull with a 25mm shroud.
2x Heatkiller x3 GTX 680 water blocks in parallel.
Phobya 200mm rad with 2x Corsair 200mm fans in push/pull
Back to res...

Using 1/2x3/4 tubing with all Monsoon compression fittings and recently remounted all of my water blocks with IC Diamond TIM. Seems to have helped a bit (much better than the white Koolance stuff).

Anyway, my issue is this, even at all stock my 3770k temps are ridiculous! I'm idling between 30-33c (hottest core) on average, and my load temps are getting into the 70's. I tried overclocking to 4.7 with 1.24v and it would run stable until it hit 105c and throttled.

Am I missing something here or did I just get incredibly unlucky in the 3770k lottery...

*EDIT*

Pics added:

















 
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#2 ·
Well, I had originally blamed the paste on the die, but I somehow missed the temps you got with an H100. My guess is either bad contact, or poor flow. Make sure your 380i isn't clogged up with anything. It may be possible that bits of crud from the rad were dislodged and pushed straight into the block.
 
#4 ·
Water flow is looks great from what I can tell. I have a fairly large res and the water is visibly disturbed quite a bit. Only thing I added besides about 2/3 gallon of distilled water was maybe half a cup (~4 oz) of glycol. I thought it was a TIM issue so I went and reseated and replaced everything. My GPUs idle as low as 18-19c and barely hit the low 30s under load. Only thing I'm not too sure about is if I have enough rad to cover all of the heat I'm generating.
 
#5 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by AddictedGamer93 View Post

Well, I had originally blamed the paste on the die, but I somehow missed the temps you got with an H100. My guess is either bad contact, or poor flow. Make sure your 380i isn't clogged up with anything. It may be possible that bits of crud from the rad were dislodged and pushed straight into the block.
I made sure to clean everything, especially the rads, days before they went in. I pieced this together from both the local Microcenter and online, so while I was waiting for all the little bits to arrive I got really anal about cleaning, etc.
 
#9 ·
he has a res so ait shuldent be a issue ... how are you checking flow ... i force air sometimes to check ... is the air from ur rads hot or cold it shuld be cold

just my .02

if ur other temps are good id take that block remount it and oppen u never know when i assed my maze 5 it droped plastic into my cpu block and jumped my temps 20c so u never know
 
#10 ·
Put a razorblade flat against the cpu block as well and make sure there is no gaps. I've had some issues where the surface wasn't flat and unless I filled it with a ton of added TIM it would be excessively hot, and even with all the TIM the cooling was poor.

Pictures would be very useful in this case though. Unless you're feeding the hot water from the GPU to the CPU it shouldn't be that hot.
 
#12 ·
As far as rads go you have plenty i have just a phoyba 200 now my self on i5 3570k at 4.7 and 2 gtx 670 sc my temps arnt good but less then yours and i even got a ****ty pump like said above i would check/remount the waterblock and make sure there is no air in the system that phoyba has a bleed screw on top should make bleading easy
 
#14 ·
Updated OP with pics. Went ahead and reseated the 380i last night with fresh TIM. This IC Diamond stuff is pretty darn thick. My idle temps went up a tad but my loaded temps went down into the low to mid 60's. Still think I should be doing better than this.

Someone mentioned something about the Noctua fans, I've got 3 of the NF-P12s which are advertised on the box as having a very high static pressure and a 93m^3/h airflow. Doing the math now however I see that this equates to only about 53f^3/m, which is a lot lower than a lot of the 75f^3/m I've seen on a lot of other fans. They are extremely quite though, lol.
 
#16 ·
Ok, messing around a bit the only thing that really comes to mind now is air flow. The 200mm rad is moving, the 120mm seems ok but even with both fans up top on full, in push or pull, they aren't moving any significant amount of air. Before I do some passive runs for comparison can anybody tell me how much airflow can affect temps like this?
 
#17 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by subsven View Post

Ok, messing around a bit the only thing that really comes to mind now is air flow. The 200mm rad is moving, the 120mm seems ok but even with both fans up top on full, in push or pull, they aren't moving any significant amount of air. Before I do some passive runs for comparison can anybody tell me how much airflow can affect temps like this?
It has a marked impact on temps,Noctuas are a free air case fan for me,they do one that does work with rads but in all honesty you can get far better performing fans for half the price.
If silence is your thing then Noctuas are hard to beat.
 
#18 ·
No matter how "pressure-optimized" they maybe, it's a poor performer for rads. What i'm basically saying it's overrated!
It's ONLY got 1.68 mmH2O
tongue.gif
My rad fans are 6.25 mmH2O in comparison (Yeah ... and 82.67CFM)
Even for case fans they barely work, you really need at least 2 mmH2O for front fans
 
#20 ·
Hmm, just as a little experiment I disconnected all of my fans, still testing now but so far I'm seeing only maybe a 5c increase on one or two cores... When I get off of work tonight I think I'm going to play around with some of the spare fans I have laying around and see what happens.
 
#21 ·
Wow, I ran OC Scanner to max out both GPUs and Prime95 on 4 threads to give me high CPU utilization (about 70% overall, so that I could keep the GPUs at load) with all of the fans disconnected and the loop started cooking! GPUs hit 50c and CPU temps went up as well. (Didn't have CPU at 100% so I can really make a decent comparison). I hooked the fans back up and could feel the heat leaving. It's been about 5 mins now with fans on full and my idle temps are still above normal. I'm beginning to think I either need a LOT more airflow, or more rad... Might have to hang a 50mm 360 off of the back...
 
#22 ·
Hey, I know it might sound stupid...it just I know may happen... but Is your front fan is intake and both top and rear rad as outtake?
biggrin.gif
 
#24 ·
Well the case is, your system may be lacking air inside especially, you 280 and 120 rads r in pull config

Also this is odd, but I thin kthere is a problem how you connected you GPU water blocks
I know it said in manul the way u connected but it is for one block, so just run you water in your mind how it flows in your systeHere is a picture I found, try to swithc botom tubing from GPU with stop fitting. I think this is might be your problem, no proper flow in ur second GPU card
 
#25 ·
Also can you psot a pic of your GPU set up, it is one that missing=)
 
#26 ·
I'll have to upload one later, GPU temps are equal, each idles around 20-25c, but last night with both at full load playing a game they both hit 40c after an hour or so. I have them in a parallel config, top right inlet, both GPUs connected on both sides, then bottom left outlet.
 
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