Pocah

Nope. It seems I have not solved it. This morning I ran the application. Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention for about half an hour, but when I did the temperature was back in the 70's. So further investigation. I repeated the same situation. With some interesting results. ( I think my initial data was incorrect! ). Running the application, the water temperature steadily increases. I get an overheat situation when the water temperature gets to about 40 degrees C. Why it is increasing is a mystery though, the fans are responding, everything seems to be working as it should. The CPU is under load, but the cooler used to be able to keep everything under 50C previously. Swtiching the pump to Extreme causes an immediate water temperature drop. Within a minute the temperature has dropped from 40 degrees to 30. I assume that the water temperature sensor is in the head? So to me that immediately says that the problem is circulation in the head. Something is blocking the flow and stopping the water reaching the radiators, but the pump is able to overcome the problem when turned to max. Does this sound reasonable? My thoughts are to leave the pump on extreme until I can replace it.

I am a huge fan of Corsair hardware, but I have to say I live in fear of their software. I am a software engineer, and I have spent many years working on low level stuff, and when you do that you find that invariably fixing one bug creates another. The only way you can be sure that a product is ready is detailed, organised and very comprehensive testing, which takes a heck of a long time. Honestly Corsair seem to skimp on this because they very often release the software with a ton of very obvious bugs, and it really makes me wonder about the professional nature of their development team or the management team that perhaps push them in to release. I get it, it's difficult, and it's expensive, but the only thing that's worse than doing all that is releasing it without doing all that. So yes, if you get a working version of iCEU I would hang on to it. If everything is working then disable auto updates. You know it should be made a general rule that you don't try to fix a problem unless you actually have one.

UGH! I think I may have found the issue although I am really struggling to understand it. The head was loose on the CPU. I tightened up the screws and the problem has gone. In fact I think I had forgotten how good the cooler was, the CPU is now running the same application about thirty degrees C cooler. It's about 45 now. Why it produced those weird results, I have no idea. I don't understand why it seemed to be affected by the pump speed. However, the problem has gone. It's perhaps possible that vibration had something to do with performance, I don't know. As I said, I struggle to understand it.

Yes there is definitely something very wrong. I ran the test again today. Under normal load there is not really anything noticeable. Under test load though the temperature fairly suddenly jumped from 55 to 75 degrees. Switching the pump to extreme and it fell again instantly to 55. Ten fifteen minutes later I suddenly heard the fans straining and it was back up to 75 degrees. For now I will leave it in Extreme mode for the pump while I sort out a replacement. Now that I have run it for an hour in extreme mode I have also noticed that the same was happening with the CPU idle but I never noticed. In fact even in idle the temperature jumps about ten degrees after a little time. The only reason I noticed this is running in extreme and allowed to full cool the idle temperature is way below what I am used to. I guess this happened over time and I just didn't notice.

It sounds like this, yes. Under load the temperatures ramp up when I ran a particular application and they sit there at about 55C CPU. But then an hour later its 65C still running the same application. If I switch the pump to Extreme the temperature rapidly falls to 55C again ( literally almost instantly ) . If I then turn the pump to Quiet mode again it then takes several hours to rise again to 65C. I am not particularly bothered if the cooler is failing, I will just replace it in a few months time. I was thinking about doing that anyway, because I want to change my case and the new case can only takes a 360x120 radiator, so I need a new cooler anyway. In the mean time I will just keep a close eye on it. Thanks for the answer!

I have recently noticed that my three year old H115i is behaving oddly. If left to it's own devices, my CPU temperature is going perhaps ten degrees higher than it used to in the past. When I look at this under iCEU, everything seems normal, but if run the pump for a minute or two in Extreme mode the CPU temperatures fall by that ten degrees, but when I go back to Quiet mode the temperatures stay low. Incidentally I have also noticed a few times that iCEU crashes. It just sits there reporting all fan speeds and stuff incorrectly. Restarting it does no good, it requires a PC restart to get it working again.

Oh that's good news then, thanks. Why are all the RGB LED fans slower than the non-led? UGH, yes, looking at the range it's really confusing.

I know and really like the ML PRO series of fans. I have loads of them. But I am about to buy a new Corsair cooler and I want to replace the fans. My question here is that I know the RGB ML PRO are ML PRO ( the hint is in the name! LOL! ) but there are some new fans I spy which are described as RGB Dual Light Loop. They seem to be based on the ML rather than the ML PRO, so I have no experience of those. Is this true? What are the ML like? Obviously they are same tech but are the ML PRO much better? And in what way?

Ah right yes. Thanks!

You are right, it will get warmer. You find that if you have the CPU radiator as an intake then the GPU gets warmer and if you have it as an exhaust the CPU gets warmer. There is no way to avoid one suffering! However, the CPU usually generates far less heat than the GPU so in my experience it's way better to have the CPU as an intake. But it will impact the GPU. I have always found that using the CPU radiator as a front mounted intake to be the best solution. Then just make sure you flood in lots of cool air from either the top or bottom. So the top two as intakes. I usually link those fans to the GPU temperature. Have them off normally and ramp up to 800~1000RPM during intense gaming. I also found that if you have lots of intake fans there is no need for an exhaust fan ( I have a testing case here with seven fans in it, LOL! ).

I don't know the case but would it be possible to use the top as the intake instead?

Whats the difference between the iCUE H150i RGB PRO XT Liquid CPU Cooler and the Hydro Series™ H150i PRO RGB 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler the latter is older and I assume is being slowly replaced with the former?

Yes, as suspected, the 3080's are really BIG. Not even an Asus will fit in the 740 with a front mounted radiator and the Asus is one of the shorter ones. Many of them won't even fit in the 740 with front fans only. I am afraid I may have to abandon the case altogether and it seems the 680 is just too short. Oh well.

In passing one thing I would like to see is the ability for iCEU to switch to the higher mode triggered by an event ( such as me playing a game and the CPU temperature going above say 50 degrees ).

I was just wondering, which has the greatest cooling capacity ~ a 280mm x 140mm cooler or a 120x360 cooler? According to my maths they should be almost the same.

I have no idea why the cooling configuration I have works so well but it does. By the way, I do use six ML PRO's. They made a significant difference. They are quieter and much better than the stock fans that came with the H115i that I bought ( a few years ago ). There is hope because gigabyte seem to go to great lengths not to make their GPU cards longer than 290mm. Even their 2080ti Extreme is 290mm. MSI are a dead loss though, lol, theirs are always bigger than 300. Asus often wander over 300 too. I guess I will just have to see what's what and try some different orientations in my existing case. If I can't sort out a good solution in that one then there is little hope in the 680.

You know looking at this Corsair could have done something about this when they designed the 680. By mounting the fans the other side of the front mounting plate it would have given 25mm more room in the case. All they had to do was ensure there was enough room in the new plastic front panel moulding to accommodate the fans. I don't think it would have made the overall product any bigger.

It's a shame. The way I have it configured is two 140mm fans in the bottom, two on the top, creating a chimney type flow of air through the case. The radiator is on the front with two 140mm fans blowing in. For some reason this gives me way better results than any other configuration I tried, so I was really keen to keep that configuration. But alas as I said the problem is that the graphics card can be no larger than 300mm. I currently have a 2070S in there but I want a 3080 and looking at the designs I think they are all going to be larger than 300mm. I am not even sure that a 330mm card will fit in a 680 even without the radiator. Certainly the 3090 is not going to fit at all. So yes, love the case BUT it needs to be 50mm longer. 80mm to accommodate a 360mm radiator on the top for you! It's a real shame because there really aren't many cases like that and a premium case like the 680 just shouldn't suffer from this problem.

Currently my main PC is sat in an Air 740. Love that case! I am considering moving to a Crystal 680X. My one limitation with the case is that the cooling solution I love (front mounted Corsair radiator) slightly limits my choice of video card. I think the limit is 300mm, which is the distance between the front fans and the back slot covers. There are some 330mm video cards so you see the problem. It would be really nice to gain that extra 3cm so I am completely free to choose whatever video card I want, including the almighty 3090! Checking the dimensions and the 680 depth seems very similar to the 740. And I know this is an impossible question, but is the distance from the front fan mounting plate to the back slot covers any different between the two cases? In the 740 I believe the answer is 350mm. Taking off 25mm for fans this only leaves 325mm. Even that is too short for some 20 series cards. Taking off another 25mm for a radiator, and there is a serious problem. And to make matters a lot worse, most 30XX GPU cards are going to be really long.

Just a thought here, where is the radiator relative to the pump? I am just wondering if you have a circulating bubble of air.

Oh thanks. I will probably replace it when the warranty runs out then. I do that with a lot of equipment. My main PC is very important to me so I don't like waiting for failures. I have had zero problems with the h115i so I will just get a new one in a few years time.

It seems to be stable now. I think it probably was a bubble. The PC was moved yesterday so I am guessing that's what caused it. Anyway, I will do as you say and keep an eye on it. It's certainly working well right now. Thank you for your help :D

Yes, it's weird. Switching it back to quiet it's recovered in that it is now cooler than earlier results. I am not sure what happened. There is a difference with extreme but it's perfectly acceptable at quiet. There was a significant difference earlier which makes me think that perhaps there was a bubble trapped in the pump or something that cleared when I switched it to extreme, unless you know of some other issue that might have caused this.

I'm very puzzled because it made a huge difference. It probably took about fifteen to twenty degrees off the CPU. I am wondering if there was an air bubble stuck in the pump or something. I will try switching it back to quiet ( 2000 ) and see what happens.

I have an H115i. I have had it for three years now, and I am just wondering what a reasonable working life for these things is? I don't really want to wait until it fails. I guess the limiting factor is the water pump.