Jump to content
Corsair Community

H100i Pro RGB with Ryzen 2700X, High Idle Temps?


diehardbattery

Recommended Posts

Hello. I am pretty new to liquid cooling. I've been looking around, and while I see issues that appear similar to mine, I'm not sure how they apply to my situation.

 

My build is only a couple of days old. When it was installed, my idle CPU temp was in the low to mid 30's. I overclocked the CPU to 3.9 using the EZ Tune software from Gigabyte. My idle temps increased to the mid to high 40's which sounded reasonable to me.

 

Fast forward a couple of days and I started experiencing issues in Windows that prompted me to go back to stock settings. The problem is my idle temp has not decreased. The AIO is installed in the front of my case, all front fans are intake, and the rear is exhaust. The fans and pump on the AIO are set to balanced. I don't think this is normal... or is it?

 

Thank you.

Annotation.thumb.png.3691c9fbe747415c8422a5e2eae61caa.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That was just idle.. The inside of the case does feel warm. I'm wondering if my 3 front case fans are just not spinning fast enough. I have them set to 100% not and the air feels noticeably cooler a few minutes so it might just be that. Maybe I can bring them down to say, 75% that way they're not always at 100. But when I put the side panel back on the temp starts creeping back up. The CPU seems to settle at around 40. and the fans are at a more reasonable speed...

Annotation1.thumb.png.0eefee5718435f6bce7e13090281f0e9.png

Annotation2.thumb.png.33a5b03a8c905c3b1ffe880c9259523b.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your coolant temperature (H100i Temp) is effectively the lowest possible or baseline CPU temp. When you are at a relaxed idle, the coolant and CPU temp should be roughly the same, although since the voltage never really turns off the package should be just slightly higher. This appears to be true in your screen shots.

 

Fan speed is not going to help with this. You can't take 10C off the coolant temps by running 300 rpm faster. What I can't see is any of your drive temperatures, motherboard temp, PCH temp, or anything else that might give some indication of the relative case temperature. See if you can dig up some more information, either with iCUE or another monitoring program like HWiNFO that will show the motherboard information more clearly.

 

You can also attack this from the other side. A bad cooler with a flow problem or faulty pump will start heating up the moment you power on. So if on cold boot you can watch that H100i Temp tick upwards at +1C every few seconds until it gets to 40C, then that might be a developing cooler problem. On the other hand, if your coolant temps seems dependent on what you have been doing or the time of the day, that is more likely to be case heat management stuff. If the coolant is much cooler in the morning, warm in the afternoon, or goes up a lot during gaming but then stays up, those are all signs the environment or room temperature is the root cause. What is the approximate room temperature? Most people will idle about +4-7C above the room temp.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I am seeing a lot of hardware temps around the 40C mark. Some things like VRM and the m.2 drive are rather thermally sensitive so I am not using that data, but the overall information suggests the entire case internal temp is in the upper 30s to 40C.

 

Can you describe how the Master Box Lite is set-up? Where is the H100i Pro mounted? Is it set to intake or exhaust?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Masterbox has 3 120mm fans on the front. They are set to intake. Currently each running at about 1000-1200RPM as I have set that manually. If I let the Smart Fan Control software run them, they never go above about 1000RPM.

 

The H100i is mounted directly behind the front fans as there is no way to mount it to the top. Both fans on the H100i are intake.

 

The rear fan is another 120mm Fan near the top of the case. That is exhaust.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the definition of idle. As I said in my OP, I'm new at this so as far as numbers go, I'm still not quite sure at what point to say it's idle, or under this or that much load.

 

I don't expect idle to be 0%, wouldn't that be considered off? The highest percentage I saw from my screenshots was 25% in iCue. The HWinfo ones, it's possible I might have been running a couple of other apps.

 

I suppose I could have just said what the percentages were, but the load was shown in the screenshots, so I figured that wasn't necessary. So you think my temps are normal then?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think momentary CPU loading is the problem and the most recent offerings from both Intel and AMD never settle down anyway without forcing on some higher C-states. In this case, the coolant temp is 40C and that can only happen from sustained load or environmental factors. I suspect it is the later.

 

MB Lite RGB has a front glass panel. While not an impossible obstacle, it is never going to be as free flowing as mesh panel. Try taking it off and see what happens to the H100i PRO temp. If the flow is restricted, it will impact both idle and load temps.

 

If you have a dust filter on the front panel, it needs to come off. Glass + filter + radiator is too much resistance. It would require you to blast the fans all of the time and it looks like that is happening already without any positive cooling effect.

 

If I understand you, the front RGB fans that came with the case are still in place and controlled through the BIOS or other means. The ML-grey fans on the H100i PRO are on the back side, effectively creating a push-pull situation. First, slow those ML radiator fans down. I couldn't stand that noise under any circumstances. Additionally, I don't think it is going to help. If the front fans are at 1000-1200 and the rear are at 2000, then the front fans are part of the restriction as well. You can get some weird tones and a lot of baffling when running the front and back at higher speeds. For now, use the + symbol to create a new "cooling mode" in the iCUE H100i PRO panel. There you can make a custom curve, or perhaps for now set it to fixed 1200-1300 rpm for our evaluation purposes. That actually is viable way to run, especially with push+pull, but I would like to get some consistency in the data. Also, now you won't have to wear hearing protection while typing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MB Lite RGB has a front glass panel.

Are you referring to the side panel or the panel in front where the 3 fans are? That one is acrylic, but yeah, I was thinking about pulling that off as well to see if it made any difference. It is open at the top and bottom at an angle, maybe the idea is for it to pull in air slightly faster so that it's cooler than the ambient air? There is a small dust filter on the bottom part as well as on the bottom of the case itself.

 

So following that, I set the case fans back to auto calibration on a standard profile. Currently, they are running at around 700RPM. I set the custom profile and this is the result, with the front acrylic panel in front of the 3 fans removed.

Annotation1.thumb.png.cc86a7a3fa8af298b903919f3b7616fc.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, the front panel. Neither acrylic or glass is breathable. The slant design in interesting and should be better than simple front "slits" on the sides. You can leave those dust filters at the top/bottom alone. Those are not the kind I was referring to and I forgot that was how it is implemented on that case. Everything about your situation reads like air can't get through the radiator and an internal dust filter against the fans blocking airflow would have explained it.

 

Well, your coolant temp is -10C lower than the original picture, so something has changed. That is a significant difference and 30C is a lot closer to expectations. You also have the pump in quiet mode (1100 rpm). That's fine for the desktop, but make sure you put it back into "balanced" (2160 rpm) before gaming or any real load. It will cost you a few degrees of coolant temp.

 

I think the key is pay attention to when the coolant temp goes back up to that 40C mark. Is it all on its own at idle over a period of time? Is it after gaming and the temps just don't come down?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, the front panel. Neither acrylic or glass is breathable. The slant design in interesting and should be better than simple front "slits" on the sides. You can leave those dust filters at the top/bottom alone. Those are not the kind I was referring to and I forgot that was how it is implemented on that case. Everything about your situation reads like air can't get through the radiator and an internal dust filter against the fans blocking airflow would have explained it.

 

Well, your coolant temp is -10C lower than the original picture, so something has changed. That is a significant difference and 30C is a lot closer to expectations. You also have the pump in quiet mode (1100 rpm). That's fine for the desktop, but make sure you put it back into "balanced" (2160 rpm) before gaming or any real load. It will cost you a few degrees of coolant temp.

 

I think the key is pay attention to when the coolant temp goes back up to that 40C mark. Is it all on its own at idle over a period of time? Is it after gaming and the temps just don't come down?

Yes, mostly at idle, just surfing the web, maybe a dozen or so Firefox tabs open, watching the occasional youtube video. I did some gaming last night with Quake Champions and the max temp it got to was about 50 from the ~40 at idle.

 

As for the quiet mode, that was the result of what you had suggested about running the fans at a fixed RPM. I created a new profile, but could not find a fixed RPM setting so I set the fans to a percentage (40%).

 

When I switched back to default and set everything to balanced, the fans run between 550-600RPM, with the pump just over 2100. Package temp is 35, and liquid temp is 30. Should it be okay to just leave it running like this? I'm wondering about putting the front panel back on, or should I just leave it off? If I have to leave it off, I'm not sure I would like that in terms of appearance lol. I understand this case seems to be designed much more for air cooling than water cooling. I'm not ruling out getting a different case that would be more accommodating. Any suggestions?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No definitely put it back on and see what happens. If the coolant temp goes back up +10C, we know the issue and can try and work out an alternate solution.

 

It's hard to pick apart heat management issues from environmental changes, especially if you have a somewhat dynamic room temperature. My home office is all glass on one side and it heats up about +6-8C in the Summer afternoon, no matter what I do with the air conditioning. That is a huge swing and is larger than my normal load delta. I have to factor that into any analysis of performance. Seasonal changes and local environmental changes like putting the case under a desk or in a corner can have substantial impact, almost to the point of making it look like there is a hardware problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No definitely put it back on and see what happens. If the coolant temp goes back up +10C, we know the issue and can try and work out an alternate solution.

 

It's hard to pick apart heat management issues from environmental changes, especially if you have a somewhat dynamic room temperature. My home office is all glass on one side and it heats up about +6-8C in the Summer afternoon, no matter what I do with the air conditioning. That is a huge swing and is larger than my normal load delta. I have to factor that into any analysis of performance. Seasonal changes and local environmental changes like putting the case under a desk or in a corner can have substantial impact, almost to the point of making it look like there is a hardware problem.

Just by putting the front cover back on and not doing anything else, the temps on the liquid are up to 38 and slowly climbing, temp is now 44 and climbing, so I think we know what the issue is. Fans have increased to almost 1600RPM on the radiator. Case fans have only gone up ~150RPM because of what the fan tuning app for the MB calibrated them to.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't believe the front is so restrictive. It doesn't look like it should be, but maybe there are things I can't see in the pictures. Regardless, the evidence is pretty clear. Even more amazing this is in push-pull as well and still can't get air through. Ideally, the top two case fans would run the same speed (more or less) as the radiator fans. I have no idea how the board 'calibrates' the fan speed, but usually these are arbitrary pre-programmed values. You probably don't want the front 120x3 running 1600 (if they even can), but maybe a little more speed from them and a little less from the radiator pair will be slightly better.

 

As for alternatives, I suspect the top is too shallow for any kind of radiator mount. That really puts you in a bind with your current gear. You would need to switch to a 120mm radiator for the rear and those are always GPU affected. I don't want to tell you to go get a new case, but the options are limited. It's possible a pair of top exhaust fans might help get some of the waste heat out faster and also with the overall intake/exhaust ratio, but I would not expect miracles from. Frankly, it should work with the heat drifting out the passive top venting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I guess it is what it is. I overclocked back to 3.9 and now I sit at around 48-50 when idle. I put the front panel back on but kept it open a crack and that seems to help somewhat, down to about 45 with all fans running around 1kRPM. I played some Quake Champions and Fortnite and never went above 60 on the CPU. It's not exactly quiet, but no more noisy than having a small fan running. Maybe that's just the price to pay LOL.

 

As far as cases are concerned, I just wonder if I went with something different would the airflow be better. Because now I'm seeing this as the front panel being an obstruction. But if I have a couple of intake fans mounted inside the case, that would eliminate that and I could still do a push/pull configuration?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But if I have a couple of intake fans mounted inside the case, that would eliminate that and I could still do a push/pull configuration?

 

Isn't that what you are doing now? The 3 RGB case fans are in the front. Radiator mounted behind those. The 2 gray Corsair fans are in the back of the radiator on the inside?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Isn't that what you are doing now? The 3 RGB case fans are in the front. Radiator mounted behind those. The 2 gray Corsair fans are in the back of the radiator on the inside?
Yes that is the current configuration. I was thinking in terms of the removable front acrylic panel that is causing the temp spike.

 

For example, if I got a case that did not have a removable front panel, and had intake fans mounted in front on the inside, to install the radiator behind those fans, and to put the 2 radiator fans that Corsair provides in front of it.

 

My theory is that my front acrylic panel only has 2 points that are capable of taking air in. See my 2 attached photos. For air cooling, this might be sufficient. But now there's a radiator in the way. A case with internally mounted front fans might have a large enough gap between the fan and the front of the case that it would be able to pull in air more freely.

8882887_casepanel1.thumb.jpg.d704d927c4f7381943cc4aa53fc45d32.jpg

1974391875_casepanel2.thumb.jpg.955399ac0b1ed46faab12e2021701eff.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You might be overthinking it a little. Basically drawing air through a straight line with minimal restrictions (dust filter, radiator, thick plastic mesh, etc.) is easier than bending it through an indirect path with the same obstacles. However, both of those are preferable to slapping a tight fitting panel or dust filter right on top of the fans. That is a killer and it is also why I am so surprised at your results. Your coolant temp is being affected like I put plastic wrap over the radiator. This is more impactful than expected.

 

What you are doing with with fans on both sides is adding the positive pressure from both sets of fans. This should be enough. I am not sure why it's not. But yes, any direct open path is going to offer better flow through and should be viable with only one set of fans. The other option is to get a case big enough (tall enough) to make the top exhaust a secondary option. I am not advocating for one location or the other and best performance may hinge on usage and other unique factors to your environment. However, it gives you a choice and right now the only one you have it yank the front panel off --- and that is a $$^# choice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...