H60 Questions/Concerns

6I bought a new rig for the most part, the H60 "High performance" was on sale so I bought it on Amazon, the motherboard I purchased has what is called TPU, a switch that according to the manual -

TPU

TPU (Turbo Processing Unit), offers precise voltage control and advanced monitoring mechanisms through the Auto Tuning and TurboV functions in your Asus AI Suite 3 Utility.

Link if you want the mobo specs.

http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z87PLUS/#support

 

So, I enabled this, blah blah installed everything, long story short initially I was running at idle doing what I'm doing now web browsing, maybe listening to music, nothing intensive at all at around 40C, and I want to make it clear that it has been enabled since Day 1 of installation, no issues. No crashes, no BSODs, etc. so I'm glad it works great but to my point.

 

Right now I'm running at 50-55C with a couple Chrome windows and Spotify (well, CPU-Z, AI Suite 3, and HW Monitor to confirm the temps from different sources) which seems like a bit much since my processor isn't doing a whole lot, but I haven't overclocked much in the past.

 

So the first few days it was down around 40, I was installing other things, didn't game for a bit then installed Battlefield 4, which I can run on ultra and I notice I get up to 90-95C while running this, which seems pretty warm to me.

 

First question is:, will the H60 be enough if I'm going to stay overclocked?

 

Second question is: would buying a better fan for better airflow to replace (if possible) the Corsair fan on the radiator work or be beneficial? I have a gaming case so I do have ventilation in the top, and I have a front fan. I have it setup so it is pulling in air from the back, while the front fan is blowing it out. I might replace the front fan since the case is fairly old and only seems to do about 1000~ RPM, regardless of me telling it to do more, so I'm not sure if that is normal or not as well.

 

I have until Jan. 31st to return it since it's the Christmas season and whatnot. I have reseated and made sure thermal paste is applied to the processor after I noticed the spike in temp but no change. I have not yet tried the stock fan that came with it to compare temperatures. I will turn off the OC switch and check temperatures, and possibly try the stock fan to compare as well but I'm looking for answers to the main two questions above.

 

Thanks in advance.

The h60 is not much better than using a after market air cooler I think. What size is front fan if it's at the bottom of the front I would have it pulling In and h60 blowing out my self as hot air rises so front fan won't be getting much out. I would try swapping the fans around and use the corsair fan has good static pressure hope this helps a little

First question is:, will the H60 be enough if I'm going to stay overclocked?

Depends...you didn't state how high your OC was. if your idle temps jumped 15c then ,no, i wouldn't leave it there. Especially with your load temps reaching TJMax.

 

Really your idle temps should even be lower than 40c at idle even with a browser or two open. But let us know what your temps are like back at stock settings. that would give us a better idea of which way to tell you to go with this.

 

I don't know if it's a case of you expecting too mich from your cooler or it's not working correctly.

its doubtful you'll find a better cooling fan than the stock one that came with the cooler

all builds are different but i wouldn't expect much more than a slight Oc with a h60...

Idle without OC right now is around 33-35. I had it auto OCing so I'm not sure what changes were being made, I could attempt again and if you let me know while watching on the AI Suite since it shows me whats going on and let you know how high it's going (I'm pretty new to overclocking and liquid cooling). So when I saw the H60, since it was on sale and said "High-performance liquid CPU Cooler".

 

So it sounds like I expected more than the H60 was capable of, and need better cooling if I want to OC at the rate it was at before. I could try the stock fan, I doubt I'd see a different but I'd really rather not since I'd have to pull the mobo out to remove the mounting bracket.

 

So, if someone more familiar wants to tell me what voltages or whatnot to look for while it auto OC's, I can let you know and maybe you can suggest a different cooler that would perform better.

 

I'm going to go play BF4 for a bit to see how high it goes non overclocked, and I'll let you guys know in a while.

 

Thanks for the replies, they've been helpful.

 

Oh, and as far as fans go, the specs for the provided fan are:

Fan speed: 2000RPM +/- 10%

Fan airflow: 54 CFM

 

But I was looking at other fans, and found a Coolermaster thats also 120mm that is:

Fan Speed: 800-2000 RPM +/- 10%

Fan Airflow: up to 95 CFM +/- 10%

 

So that was why I asked, but I don't think that, even if it was compatible to replace, it would make a different in the temps I was seeing.

the h60 is a high end cooler as compared to high end air coolers.,,,do real world tests,,not so much as prime 95 ect..but what you normally do such as gaming and check temps,,,if their low then bump up the oc gradually.

Well, honestly I'd rather not manually overclock incase I do something wrong. Auto seems like a lot better option to me, especially since I'm not very familiar with the process itself. I'll check some bios settings to see if there is a happy medium, rather than going balls to the wall OC or not so I don't have to manually do it.

i agree,you can use auto and still go lightly,of course you can also leave voltages alone and just lightly bump up the multiplier an increment at a time...

I would seriously consider learning how to overclock manually. Just about anyone that uses the auto OC features most MB's come with now often set voltages way higher than need be. That just leads to much higher than needed temps.

I'll look into it, temps are way lower (playing BF4 with 1 VMware workstation running at the same time I'm in the mid 60s, 73C being the highest spike)non-OC'd as expected so it's "fine" but I still feel that with liquid cooling I should be OCing if i'm not using a stock cooler, so I'll start testing things. Guessing these temps are normal, not sure as I haven't compared to stock cooler because it's really just a pain to add/remove for testing since I have to remove the entire mobo.

 

Also, if I were to return it and go for a new Corsair cooler, any suggestions? I looked at the H100I, however my case does not support top mounting, and I don't want to buy a new case as I have no problems with my current, and at this point have no need to go balls to the wall OCing. If I were to exchange this one, it looks like my options are the H90 or H80i. I don't really think the Corsair Link is all that neccessary and the main difference (as far as I can tell) between the two other than Link, is one is the H80i has a double thick 120mm radiator and the H90 is a 140mm wide radatior.

 

Thoughts? Opinions on the two? In the meantime I'll start manually OC'ing and see what happens.