Ridiculous temps on h115i Pro

Hi all, I've been a long time user of corsair radiators and just recently upgraded from an older H105i to an H115i Pro. I've been researching answers and possible solutions to my current problem to no avail.

After mounting the rad and pump head (Noctua NT-h1 paste and yes the block is seated entirely on the cpu) I tried stress testing to figure out my optimal fan curves and temp ceiling with this unit. I quickly saw temps on the cpu reach over 200F on full load and the fan+pump running max. I know this cooler is 'silence focused,' so I swapped out the fans with two higher speed SP140's (from the the 1000rpm ML140 fans) which didn't make much of a difference beside liquid temps.

 

When the CPU gets that hot the liquid temp on Corsair Link reaches about 95F but with the other fans it hits closer to 70f. Even then my cpu temps skyrocket.(Recently I put my rad right in front of an AC unit and while the liquid temp reads about 70F, the CPU sits at 140F...)

 

I've tried the SP140 fans alone and with the ML's, remounting the pump head, leaving the case open, using arctic silver paste, and nothing seems to help. The pump stays at about 3000rpm and I can't think of any other solutions. Maybe it's just a faulty unit but this is actually the second H115i Pro I've used now after RMA'ing the unit due to this same problem.

 

I love corsair's products and I'd just like to be able to use my PC's performance without worrying about melting my CPU (as i sit here browsing the web I'm seeing 85Fwater/140Fcpu,) so absolutely any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for taking your time to read this post.

Need to look at this a little more methodically. So, you are browsing the web and the coolant temp is 85F/29C. What is the temperature inside the case? Good chance it is also 29C and it's hard to keep the case under that in Summer. These things are always room/ambient temperature relative. You didn't have coolant temp as a data source on the H105. It is not going to react or keep in step with the very dynamic CPU temp changes. The coolant is the stage 1 dumping ground for heat from the CPU. The hard and longer you run, the more waste heat accumulates, less what you are able to dissipate via the fins and fans. If you knew the exact wattage coming off the CPU and the volume of the fluid, you could calculate the expected temp rise, but that is a little tedious. Most people go about +6-8C for H115i Pro Temp in 10 minutes before leveling off. This is wattage dependent, so a 22 core monster will certainly be more than a 95 TDP CPU.

 

Fan and pump speed changes are usually small factors in the overall temperature. For load testing, voltage will always be the dominant factor. I am going to assume this is still the 8370. How much voltage are you running?

So by browsing the web I meant I only have my browser open but my temp on the water/coolant is about 85F and the CPU is sitting at 140F, from what I've read that kind of temperature difference seems way too far off which is the only reason I brought it up.

Either way my PC sits in a room 'bout 75-80F and the inside of the case does get warm but it doesn't feel ridiculously hot as I would expect. As for wattage, it hovers around 42w idling on the web and about 100-110w at full load and about 1.3v at it's stock clock speed.

It's just so strange that a larger radiator where my h105i would never go above 140 on the cpu even in a similar environment.

I hate to be this guy, but many extremely similar setups I've seen online don't hit 200f :L

If the room is 75/80F, then an 85F water temp is as low as you can go. If you are in an idle state, the CPU temp should at or just above the water temp. If you are permanently stuck at +30C over the coolant, then your cpu is not in good contact with the cold plate. The only other possibility is extreme and continuous load, so as long as you’re sure you didn’t misconfigure a BIOS setting, then it is the physical contact. That can be a tedious and frustrating thing. Bracket or bracket position is a common fault, but you’ll have to deduce where it went wrong.

See, that's where I'm totally lost. I took a mirror and macgyver'd it into something resembling the ones dentists use, and from what I can see, it's on there 100% with absolutely nothing blocking it from doing so. I've tried reapplying the thermal paste and reseating it, but I guess I'll give it another go.

When you take it off, look for clumps that didn’t spread. However, based on your description of events, this is more likely to be a subtle miss rather than a glaring gap. You can also press down on the pump head with two fingers and see if the temp drops,although that will do nothing to solve the issue.