New system, what temperatures should I be expecting?

[snugglepilot]

Heya!

 

My first time using liquid cooling. I have no idea what to expect, and wanted to sanity check some temperatures.

 

My system is a Ryzen 9 threadripper, plus a GeForce RTX 2080 (both liquid cooled). I've got a mid-tower case, with air intakes on the top and the radiator at the front - with two fans mounted blowing outwards. I've got normal room temperature (~24c).

 

Temperature readings at idle;

 

Resevoir: 34c

Sensor near CPU: 32c

Below GPU: 31c

HDD (outside of airflow area): 33c

 

That's with the pump running in iCue on the pump profile, and the radiator fans on a 100%-always setting.

 

As soon as I fire up, say, Flight Simulator at full quality settings - it'll quickly rise to a 50c temperature in the resevoir. I can't seem to break that limit.

 

If I put the radiator fans on the "hydro series x" setting, the temperatures will rise 2-3c across the board.

 

I'm not sure how normal any of this is. Thanks to marketing, I was picturing this scenario where I'd be wiping frost off my case. Being warmer than room temperature was unexpected, and my case fans (the highest end corsair models) are still whirring away as loud as my last PC.

 

How far off base am I? :) Anything I can do to improve? Maybe I should draw cold air in over the radiators instead of blowing out of the case?

[c-attack]

Room temperature is always going to be the minimum base temp. No going below that without some external chillers and that is a whole different game. Idle coolant temp typically runs 2-6C over the ambient room, with variance based on idle power, case layout, radiator size etc. That’s not really the concern because you can start at different idle points, but end up at the same load temp. That is the one to be interested in.

 

+16C rise seems high for dual 280mm. Or is it one 280mm? I hear the new flight sim is quite a load and you have a fair amount of watts to dissipate. One thing you can try for now is to use fixed pump speeds to assess if that has any effect on your coolant temp. The Corsair curves tend to be very relaxed at lower temperatures, then rise quickly at later on. Try fixed speeds at 2000 and 3500 on the pump to see if it matters. The more complicated the loop, the more pump speed you may need.

[snugglepilot]

It's a mid-tower case, so all 120mm fans. I have two on the radiator at the front of the case, and one at the top sucking air into the case.

 

If 2-6c over ambient is normal, then 30c is my "minimum bar" I need to clear at idle. And here I am typing on a forum, just waking my computer up, and iCue is reporting 35c, so I'm a pretty big chunk over. I feel like I'm doing something wrong somewhere.

 

What's a "load" norm? I'm currently +26c over room temperature at load, which seems way higher than the +16c you cite :/

[c-attack]

I'll make a general estimate that the GPU is using 300W and the CPU 125W during Flight Sim. I don't have a Threadripper to compare and I am not sure which model you have, but we'll call it 425W and you can scale from there. I don't know what you have up front and I don't what fans you are running or their max speed. This is a big fat 240x60mm thick radiator at a customary 300W load. You're looking at +11.6C for 300W with 2x120@1300 rpm. 425W would put you right around +16C. The +16 is the difference between the original idle coolant 34C and the 50C peak stated. Your radiator is on the inside of the case and exhausting. It's the case air temperature that is important and your other data suggests most things are in the lower 30s.

 

As for shrinking the difference between ambient room and internal case temperature, it's hard to make any specific recommendations since the case model is unknown. Dust filters on the radiator will cost you. There is enough resistance there already. After that, it's largely down to case design. From what I gather you are running reverse flow, but with only one active fan on top and no fan at the rear. The front radiator fans will pull whatever air they need from wherever they can get it, but you have a very low air cycle rate for the case as a whole (air in, air out). The radiator cuts the normal air flow rate of a fan in half. Would you be better off as intake on the radiator and exhaust top/rear? It's hard to say. It does give you better cooling efficiency on the radiator, but at the expense of dumping waste heat into the case. The exhaust air temp from the radiator will be close to the coolant temperature. You would likely see a rise in temperature on things like your RAM, exposed m.2 drives, etc. You most certainly would want 3x120 exhaust for that and it may help for the current configuration as well. The +16C rise is going to stay, so attacking this aspect of the total temperature is likely the only place to make gains other than adding another radiator.

Edited August 29, 2020 by c-attack
Corrected radiator size error

[LeDoyen]

c-attack, i believe it's a 240mm radiator as it's only 120mm fans.

If that's all the radiator to cool a threadripper (or R9) + RTX2080, i'm afraid the radiator is pretty overloaded. That would explain the difference with the numbers you gave for a 280mm.

 

snugglepilot, could you detail what parts you have? mostly the case model.

A photo would help a lot.

[c-attack]

Yeah, I don't why I keep trying to interject new hardware into this. Must be the lack of detail. I will amend the prior post.

[snugglepilot]

Sorry folks, I wasn't sure what details were relevant. I'm thankful for the system analysis, but I was moreso wondering what a "normal" temperature range would be. I guess it's all system-dependent, huh?

 

Here's a PC Part Picker list of the whole system,

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/snugglepilot/saved/C7h9rH

 

The cooling was done from the "automatic cooling configurator" on corsair's site.

 

But to directly answer the questions --

 

The case is a mid-tower, Corsair iCUE 220T.

 

Radiator is 360mm. This covers the entire front of the case, but there was only room for two fans when it first appeared that 3 fans would fit. The radiator doesn't fit on the top of the case. This is frustrating to me. :)

 

Hydro Series X XG7 GPU water block

Hydro Series X XR5 Radiator

Hydro Series X XD3 Pump/Resevoir

 

I was running Flight Simulator for a few hours last night and the entire time was at 50c while the room was at 24c. (though the room probably won't stay at 24c for long. This thing is a space heater!)

[snugglepilot]

And a photo —

[LeDoyen]

Ouchies ^^

So yea it's not a threadrippe but a R9 3950x then ^^ still a hot beast.

Well with only two fans (and QLs are not exactly stellar in front of radiators), you basically have the equivalent of a 240mm radiator.

 

If you didn't have the 1tb mechanical drive i'd have advised you to remove the HDD cage and slap a fan on the radiator.. The 360mm could hold reasonable coolant temps, but with two fans only, the temperature you have make sense to me. Too much heat, not enough air flow to dissipate it.

Unfortunately, there's not much i can see that could be done in a 220T. The top fan placements always collide with something, wether it's VRM heatsinks, or the pump here.. it's a really small case for watercooling such components.

 

I thought the front fans ran as exhaust was odd, but with such heat, it wouldn't make too much sense to make them intake, as they would heat up the whole system even further and make it even harder to cool down.

 

If you are really liking the case, i would try as a last ditch resort to remove the hard drive cage, just to test how the computer does thermally with 3 fans on the radiator, and keep the fan speeds fairly high, like 75% and up, see how it goes in Flight simulator.