For those who have a temperature sensor in your water loop, what kind of temperature deltas do you see between an idle system and one fully loaded after the water temp has stabilized?
For example, on my system (with a 360mm radiator as intake and fan speeds maxed at 1200rpm and only cooling a single i7-7700k) my lowest water temp (after hours of the machine in standby) to highest temp deltas are usually no more than 5 degrees Celsius (after an hour of linpack.)
I'm trying to figure out if there are any reliable patterns that could be used as a guideline for when it's time to install an additional or better radiator (or just crank up the fan speeds.)
I'd set this up as a poll, but there are many variables in regards to what is being cooled, how much fan noise is tolerable, and the total radiator surface area.
For water temps, over the years it's been a general consensus that <10C DeltaT is good, 5 is the great, and <5 is negligible...
I've personally never paid any attention to it. In recent years I've had noooo shortage of rad space, lol. As long as my system stayed cool and SILENT I didn't care about the smaller details.
2008-2013 I'd say DeltaT was a bigger talking point...
A good rule to follow is to try and keep the delta T between the ambient air and your fluid at or less than 10C. Once you start going over 10C, it is time to start looking at adding additional radiator space or increasing air flow over your current setup.
The numbers are fairly consistent and follow well with other temp sensors. I wish the Asus m/b gave a way to calibrate thermistors, but no such luck. I'm guessing that "30" on this sensor is actually closer to "29", but the numbers track fine.
I'm starting to redo this loop, piece by piece, so I wanted to know that my previously considered <10C rule was still "valid." Tomorrow, a D5 and reservoir will get delivered (to replace an EK "SPC" pump.) Within the next month, I'll replace the EK S360 rad with a hwlabs GTS 360mm (which is supposedly much more efficient.) Eventually, a GPU block and if that causes temps >=10C over ambient, I'll add a slim 240 radiator to the top of the case.
(I started with EK's "slim 360" kit, and replaced the CPU block on day one. Soon, the entire kit will just be spare parts.)
Obviously, I'm trying to plan ahead a bit with the "long term" upgrade. The D5 won't get me anything "today" other than taking up more space and perhaps being more reliable. However, it should allow me enough power to add anything else I might be able to fit in the case in the future.
Oh, and I'd consider hard tubing, but that really wouldn't make any sense until I stop adding/changing things.
I'm cooling an i5-4670k @ 4.4ghz and a gtx 780ti @ 1400mhz and while idle (locked frequency, no speedstep) my coolant is about 4'c above ambient and while gaming for a few hours it hits 8.6'c. I've got 360 and 280 thin rads and my pump is a 10w DDC-1T PWM. Flow rate is around 0.92 gpm.
I'm using a single PE 240 rad to cool a 980ti and 4790K and see 15C over ambient quite commonly playing Battlefield and other intensive games.
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