High CPU temps. Newly installed hydro x series components

I recently installed custom water cooling hydro x series. Water Block and the GPU block. I have the 360mm rad and I have 3 120mm corsair SP fans on them. mounted on the top of my case exhausting. So my issue right now is my cpu is running pretty hot to where my Game ( Star Citizen ) is crashing windows due to high temps. I have a i7 9700K oc to 5.0 voltage 1.320

i'm sitting around low 70 to high 60s most the time but when it spikes to high 70percent usage to 80 percent usage . the temp will spike to 80c. which isnt good. Probably the reason why my windows os crash mid game.

I come from thr h115i AIO and never saw over 71c on stress testing. I'm alittle disappointed with the temps to the amount of money I spent on eveything.

Any ideas? Anything I can try or do to help this.

My coolant temp sits at 42c when its running in game.

side note. I under clocked it to 4.9ghz to 1.31 volts. and the temps are way better and seeing better performance due to the lower temps. low to mid 60s at 100 percent usage. But I shouldnt have to go to 4.9 when I can achieve 5.0 but the temps are limiting me.

Thanks in Advanced!

If you get you coolant temp lower, you should see lower CPU temps as well. You mention that it's exhausting out of the top - is your GPU air cooled? And was the H115 installed with the fans as intake? Pulling GPU heat through the radiator isn't going to help your CPU temperatures and it will actually heat up the coolant if the air going through the radiators is warmer than the coolant temperature. If you have a Commander Pro, place one of the temp sensors on the intake for the radiators and see what the temperature of the air is that you are pushing through the radiator.

Those coolant temps are much warmer than I would expect to see and I suspect that it can be fixed by flipping to intake and modifying fan curves.

I have a GPU water block from corsair on my 2070 super so thats not the issue.

when I had my AIO it was the same setup just different fans. 2 140mm fans Exhausting out the top, compared to now . 3 120mm fans exhausting out the top. I have 3 120mm SP fans Intaking from the front directly on my reservoir And 1 120mm LL corsair exhaust fan. I have my temp sensor on my Reservoir. Youre saying to move it to my intake port on my radiator? Or to add one and keep the existing one on my reservoir. I dont know how i would be able to add a temp sensor on my rad though. Because of the line fittings.

side note. I just gamed for awhile and my coolant temp was at 43c

If you get you coolant temp lower, you should see lower CPU temps as well. You mention that it's exhausting out of the top - is your GPU air cooled? And was the H115 installed with the fans as intake? Pulling GPU heat through the radiator isn't going to help your CPU temperatures and it will actually heat up the coolant if the air going through the radiators is warmer than the coolant temperature. If you have a Commander Pro, place one of the temp sensors on the intake for the radiators and see what the temperature of the air is that you are pushing through the radiator.

Those coolant temps are much warmer than I would expect to see and I suspect that it can be fixed by flipping to intake and modifying fan curves.

Ok After doing some research I understand What you are saying now. And yes I do have a commander Pro. I will be flipping my 3 radiator fans as intake and putting a temp sensor there as well. Hopefully that makes a difference. Is a 360mm rad enough to cool down my cpu and GPU? Both being Overclocked. 2070 super and a i7 9700k OC to 5.0

Is a 360mm rad enough to cool down my cpu and GPU? Both being Overclocked. 2070 super and a i7 9700k OC to 5.0

Depends on what you mean by enough. I have 2x360mm radiators, one 54mm one 30mm, and it is not enough to cool my overclocked Ryzen 2700x (rated 105W TDP, ~120W reported in HWInfo) and RTX 2080 (~215W reported in HWInfo) when Folding@Home is keeping both pinned at 100% for hours and hours and the fans are kept at about 60%. If I jack the fans up to 100% it's fine but that's the opposite of why I got the loop to begin with. If I ease up on the overclock it's fine. At stock it's absolutely 1000% fine. But I decided to buy another 360mm rad because I don't want to ease up on the overclock or make my fans louder :)

Your specific results may be different than other people's setups on different equipment. Try all the possible combinations of intake/exhaust and push/pull. With mine, pull was nowhere near as effective as push and intake was nowhere near as effective as exhaust. I've read stuff to the contrary on many other websites so I was surprised by my results. Just try moving things around, running the same benches, and seeing which produces better temps.

Keep in mind that it takes a while to heat up the coolant and that your results aren't going to be accurate if coolant isn't the same temp.

Happy testing!

As jon said, everybody's situation is different so you need to experiment.

I would take Devbiker's advice and flip your fans and use the temp probes to measure your air temps so you can understand how well your rads and fans are cooling your liquid.

Another general rule that goes around when trying to assess this is is vaguely 1 x 120mm fan/rad space per component that you want to cool. And if you are oc'ing then make it 2 x 120mm fan/rad per component. So in your case you have 2 components, both being overclocked which suggests 4 x 120mm fan/rads is what you should have. I think you only have 3, but quite possibly by making DevBiker's changes and correcting your airflow you may find that's enough.

The big problem with rules like that though is they are very generic and your version of reality will vary. The key is being able to measure, which you should be able to do now.

And, just because your GPU is water cooled, doesn't mean the air around it won't be hot so ensuring you don't get hot GPU air in the way of your CPU is good advice too !

If I understand your description correctly, you went from a H115i 280mm cooled CPU and air cooled GPU to a combined CPU+GPU loop on one 360mm radiator? If so, you are being out-watted and I’m not sure there is much you can do with this configuration. Your 9700K likely was averaging 150-175W gaming. That’s no problem for a 280mm radiator. Now you are folding and running both cpu and gpu at maximal load. Now you have potentially ~205W cpu and 300w gpu in a 360mm. You have more than doubled the load, but only increased the dissipation size by 10-15%. The math is not on your side here and as suggested above the single 360mm is a bit light for maximal load from both components.

Almost anything can handle the cpu. It’s load is rarely pinned at maximum and during the lower load moments an overworked cooler can catch up a bit. You usually don’t get those breaks with a gpu and it is heavy hitter at more than double most cpu wattages. In a perfect world, you’d keep the cpu and gpu on completely separate loops so it didn’t share its heat with the cpu. Not very practical in most cases. However, what you really need here is another radiator to help shoulder the load.

With a single rad and this configuration, it's fans at full speed or nothing tbh.

43° on coolant is pretty high, there's not much headroom with so little radiator space.

The more you'll add radiators, the slower you'll be able to run your fans (which to me is the goal with watercooling).

I have a similar configuration to yours, and for example, with an ambient temperature of 29°C which is pretty warm to start with, while gaming, my coolant temp never exceeds 36°C under full load (9700K OCed to 4.9, and overclocked 2080).

That is with two 360 and one 280, with fans at 1100rpm max.

I'd guess adding a 360 to your H500P would make your rig run smoothly without too much noise. Also remember those 200mm fans are mighty pretty but have very low static pressure, so if you have the non mesh case, the radiator will struggle to breathe a bit.

If I understand your description correctly, you went from a H115i 280mm cooled CPU and air cooled GPU to a combined CPU+GPU loop on one 360mm radiator? If so, you are being out-watted and I’m not sure there is much you can do with this configuration. Your 9700K likely was averaging 150-175W gaming. That’s no problem for a 280mm radiator. Now you are folding and running both cpu and gpu at maximal load. Now you have potentially ~205W cpu and 300w gpu in a 360mm. You have more than doubled the load, but only increased the dissipation size by 10-15%. The math is not on your side here and as suggested above the single 360mm is a bit light for maximal load from both components.

 

Almost anything can handle the cpu. It’s load is rarely pinned at maximum and during the lower load moments an overworked cooler can catch up a bit. You usually don’t get those breaks with a gpu and it is heavy hitter at more than double most cpu wattages. In a perfect world, you’d keep the cpu and gpu on completely separate loops so it didn’t share its heat with the cpu. Not very practical in most cases. However, what you really need here is another radiator to help shoulder the load.

Hi, sorry to revisit this. I read your response and it makes perfect sense. today was a warm day and my room was very stuffy. gaming for a long time my coolant temp hits 48c. as seen below in the picture. now my cpu temp was sitting around the 70s but never really being stressed past 50 percent in my game. my gpu pegged at 98 percent usage hit around 63c. which is semi normal. usually sits around 56c normally. So I could add another rad but it would have to be a 280mm rad on the front because i cant add a 360 rad on the front because of the storage bays. adding a second rad should really help me here? dedicating each block to its own rad.

The radiator can be any size that fits, but 280 or 360mm would be preferable. You could run two separate loops (one for each device), but that requires two pumps and two reservoirs. That is not likely what you want to do. Taking the CPU out of the cooling loop and putting the AIO back on is one option and the more sensible one for this approach.

Option two is what most people do and that is a combined loop. The difference is you have doubled the ability of the system to release heat.

The GPU-Hydro X, CPU-AIO set-up probably gives you slightly better CPU temps, but slightly warmer GPU temps. The combined two radiator set-up benefits the GPU to the slight expense of the CPU, since they share the same coolant. Either choice should be an improvement on what you have now.

When your rad can't dissipate, you hit thermal runaway.. coolant keeps increasing out of control until something crashes, usually the CPU. So you really don't know yet how your loop performs since it.. doesn't perform ^^'.

Adding a 280mm rad will start to make the loop work, to put it bluntly.

If i was you i'dd put both rads in serie. If you make a dual loop, you waste the thermal overhead of one loop that could be used on the other. It's fine on big cases where you can have the luxury to install several big rads.

Here i'd be more inclined to advise making a series loop to get the coolant temp as low as possible.

Edit : i looked but i don't remember you mentionning what pump speed you used? when i see the temperature difference between radiator in and out it really surprises me