kendallb

Yeah I was not expecting that either. Its possible it's the fans, but they are pretty similar. I have changed to Silent Wings 3 fans now and I plan to rebuild my work rig this weekend in the P600S case also since I like it so much, with Silent Wing 3 fans also. Then I can compare apples to apples with the Asetek and Cool-IT pumps. Will be interesting to see how they end up, as to date they have also been in different cases and of course the fans are different. Mostly I was testing with the front and top covers and and off. With most cases you can notice a big difference. With the P600S you can have the covers on but leave off the extra panels and get excellent cooling and it still is nice and silent. Best airflow case I have tried so far. That's interesting. I don't think I spent much time on the quiet pump setting. I can barely hear mine (either the Asetek or the Cool-IT) so I generally leave it in either balanced or extreme and I usually can't see a difference between those two settings. I wish we could do custom profiles for the pump, but we can only choose presets at the moment. Yes, an update landed earlier this week and now I can see it's temps and use it as a control variable. Here is my fan profile I used with the Corsair fans, and then the profile I use via the commander pro with silent wings 3 fans

Also while iCUE recently got updated and can now read the Ryzen CPU temperature for the 3900X, it's not every useful to run fans against because the max temp on the custom fan profile is 60 degrees. One option is to plug the fans into a Commander Pro to get a wider temp curve (up to 100 degrees). I actually ended up doing just that for my gaming rig as I changed out all my fans two days ago for Silent Wings 3 fans to see how much of an impact that has on performance (I want more airflow for the same loudness level :) ). Unfortunately the RGB Platinum cooler does not seem to be able to properly interface to the Silent Wings 3 fans and while they are PWM fans, 95% makes them run about 50% speed, 40% stalls them out and the last 50% of speed seems to happen from 95% to 100% which is super annoying when trying to program a curve. But since I have a Commander Pro in there anyway to run all my case fans, I plugged them into that and that controls them nicely and I can set specific RPM values (not percentage values like the cooler requires for some reason).

Sure, my room is usually around 70 degrees Fahrenheit , so probably 21-22C. I have since changed cases to ones that provide a lot better cooling but I still use the 280mm AIO. I have also found it depends on the particular AIO in question as my gaming rig has the RGB Platinum with RGB fans which uses the new Cool-IT pump. My work rig has the RGB without RGB fans, which uses the Asetek pump. They do behave differently and my Cool-IT pump with identical CPU tends to run a little cooler. My coolant temps on my gaming rig now hover around 28C under load, maybe getting into the low 30's while my CPU temps now sit at or below 80C. With a case that allowed less airflow, my CPU temps were getting into the 85's (and performance was degraded). Coolant temps on that case would get to 35C or so. I actually tested the MSI Gundr 100 case, which has absolutely horrendous airflow and with the front and top panel on, even with the fans going full tilt my CPU would hit 95 degrees and the coolant would be well into the 40's, at one point getting close to 50. Yikes. That case was super cool without the covers on but naturally looks like garbage without the covers on so it went back to Best Buy. My old case was the NZXT h510 Elite (for home) and h510 regular (for work). The elite was actually worse for cooling as even though the designs are similar, for the RGB fan layout in that case NZXT pushed them a lot closer to the font glass, which choked them out a bit. It still worked decent, but was not great. The non Elite h510 case without the glass front panel allows the fans to breathe more as they sit back further from the front panel. Last week I rebuilt it all in the Phanteks P600S case, which with the covers off (which still looks good), has amazing cooling. So now I get the temps I want. As for the discrepancy between the coolant temp and the CPU temps, it's just how it works. My coolant temp seems to run lower on the Cool-IT pump version compared to the Asetek one for some reason. And CPU temps stay a little lower. Now as for how to control the AIO, since your temps are going to vary depending entirely on room temp, if you set your fans based on coolant temps you pretty much need to make your own custom curve to get it where you want. I still truly believe the optimal setup for AIO cooling fans is to run them from the average CPU temps, probably an average of the last 20 seconds or so. I always find that my temps will climb, then later on the coolant finally heats up, then the fans finally kick on, and then even though the coolant temp remains relatively stable, the CPU temps start to come down as the airflow over the radiator starts to have an impact. But for me that always seems to happen too darn late. But for the moment that's how it all works and its a whole lot better than having the fans spin up every time you open Chrome! But I am convinced there is a better solution if Corsair would allow us to set temps based on average CPU temps, not instant CPU temps (or motherboards for that matter; they always spin the fans up instantly). As has been pointed out by others in this thread, CPU temps rise and fall instantly based on load, and once they hit a high value under sustained load they will climb over time as the CPU and cooling apparatus gets heat soaked, so ideally our cooler needs to move heat away. But AIO's don't really function at all without fans. You get minimal cooling without any airflow, so unless the fans run, it won't cool the CPU much at all even with the pump running at maximum speed.

Well there is more room for the GPU than I thought. Unless you have a monster graphics card, there would still be room for a long GPU and some space before the radiator. Not much, but it would work I think. Here it is mocked up with the 2080Ti that's going into my gaming rig: Here it is with the Radeon card I actually plan to have in there, and it has lots of room so I think I will build one out and see how it turns out.

Ok since this particular rig is not for heavy gaming, I only needed a 650W power supply so I am using the CX650M, which actually fits in there nicely with a reasonable about a wiggle room to stash all the cables. So I might build with this case after all. Have to see how the GPU fits in. I think if you were going to put a decent GPU in here you would be hard pressed to get an 850W power supply in there, probably even a tight fit for a modular 750W also. For that I reckon the 465X is a better option. Kinda like that case so much I might try it as a new face for my full gaming rig. Anywhere, here is what it looks like with the 650W power supply seated.

Here it is with the cooler mocked up. Its a bit cramped up the top of the case with the inlets up the top, but I don't think you can run the cooler with them at the bottom as then the lines would interfere with the graphics card, but it looks like it would fit just fine (like a 360mm would fit and extend all the way to the bottom with the hard drive cage removed). On the fence about whether I am going to build with this case or just get the larger 465X and go with a 240mm on the front of that one, as I need the hard drive caddy and this case is really small inside. Not a ton of clearance for large graphics cards nor much clearance for the PSU, so it might be getting returned :(.

Ok update for those reading this thread. I got the 220T today as that was the case I originally ordered, and as expected 140mm fans look ridiculous. Corsair (if you are listening!) need to update the specs for this case and not say that it supports 140mm fans nor 280 mm coolers, as it will just be a super sub-par experience for anyone trying to do that. Yes the mounting holes exist, but to do it you are going to lose the bottom fan and will likely end up with nasty fan noises due to the blades spinning right next to the cut out the overhang the fans. For the 220T covered up behind the grill, maybe losing a fan at the bottom is not a huge deal. It would look a bit odd if someone looked behind the shield, but probably doable other than the nasty noise you would get. Likewise I a 240mm cooler is going to fit just fine in there. I will mock one up shortly when I remove the 140mm fans I had lying around to test out the fit. As you can see it's not pretty with 2 x 140mm fans installed. It looks great with 3x120mm fans so I think the only viable radiator choice for this case is a 240mm mounted up top or a 360mm provided you remove the hard drive tray as there is no room otherwise (not an option for me as I need to put two hard drives in this rig for backups - SSD is just not there yet for price/GB for high capacity).

The 465X might be a better choice anyway though, as from looking at the case reviews on the 220T it's rather cramped in there. Not a whole lot of room for an AIO up the front.

Yeah I realized that myself after the case was already ordered (220T). Dang it. So the only two real options are 1) swap out all the fans on the 220T to LL120 fans that are PWM or 2) get the 465X and return the 220T. Cost wise it would be a lot cheaper to get the 465X case since a three pack of LL120 fans is a lot more than the difference in the price of the case. :[pouts: :biggrin:

Well I think this is the crux of the problem. I am using the Ryzen Master tool to measure the CPU temperature, and it's what I have been confused about from the beginning. I don't see how the CPU temp can rise at such a rapid rate when the coolant temp is not rising much, or that it can drop much more than coolant temp. Maybe the way Ryzen measure the CPU temp is that it's not at the coolant plate at all, so there is a big difference between what the Ryzen measures and what the coolant temperature actually is. It's clear that the cooling system is working. Oh well, for other reasons I have a Core i9 9900K system coming on Monday so when I get that put together I will be able to do some comparison testing. This is my first AMD rig in like 15 years so I am not just not that familiar with how their stuff works. Oddly as a completely separate aside to this original post, the whole reason I have a Core i9 9900K coming is that the reason I got the Ryzen 9 3900X was to have both a box I can game with, and also do software development on when I am at home. It replaces an Aurora R7 with Core i7 8700K. When I first got it all set up, no matter what I did it actually compiled slower than my 8700K (33s full builds on Ryzen vs 29s on R7). I could not figure it out for the life of me as I fully expected it to be much faster given I also have an MP600 Gen4 drive in there. So I eventually figured Ryzen sucks and ordered the Core i9 9900K to replace it. Then somehow it all magically got faster. Now I can do full builds in 19s? Go figure. I have never been able to get it to run slow again, and the only thing I changed is that it seemed to get fast the first time I ran Ryzen Master. Makes me think maybe it applied a firmware update to the CPU or something. Super odd. Anyway long story short, the 9900K arrives tomorrow (I hope!) so I plan to build that rig anyway so I can compare the two and return the slowest one :)

Right, this is the best I found so far for the front: You can clearly see that the fans have fan cut outs, so I honestly can't see how Corsair considers the font of the case compatible with 140mm fans? Sure there are mounting holes, but the fans would end up being behind the fan cut outs and would look ridiculous. Then there is this image to show how there is a big X in front of the center of the fans on the dust cover. That would also look a bit silly with 140mm fans in front: Yes I agree. I do not think a 280mm radiator is even an option on this case simply because the fan layout would be odd. Much better is to keep the 3x120mm fans up front, and bolt either a 240mm or 360mm behind the fans. I don't think the 360mm is an option for me as I need the hard drive caddy at the bottom, and it sure looks like if you had a 360mm radiator it would hit the caddy down the bottom. Which brings me back to my original post. I think the specs are wrong on this case and it would happily accept a 240mm radiator bolted to the back of the top two fans? This is what it looks like from behind the fans: I can't see any reason why a 240mm would not work just fine there?

Right, I get that CPU temps won't change with different fans speeds if the coolant is 28C. But the difference is how much of an impact the fans can make once the coolant starts to rise, and more importantly how quickly it can react. In my testing it's clear that the coolant changes temperature very slowly over time. If I run a test with my optimal fan profile, the CPU temp will get up to a high value long before the coolant goes up in temp enough to spin up the fans, then when they do finally spin up, the CPU temp stabilizes and starts to come down quickly. Then when the coolant finally goes down again in temp, the fans slow down and then the temps on the CPU go back up again. If I leave the stress test running for 10 mins I can clearly see the fans going up and down in speed and the CPU temp going up and down due to the extremely slow reaction time of the coolant temperature to CPU temp changes. But what is interesting to me is that although the coolant temp does not seem to change much when I crank the fans on, the CPU temp on the other hand *does*. I ran a test where I had the cooler fans running at 300rpm and my case fans at their lowest settings. Then I measured temps and run CPU-Z stress testing. @ 0 min CPU: 64.3C Coolant: 28.3C @ 10 min CPU: 92C Coolant: 46.3C Then I cranked the fans on maximum for both the cooler and the case and kept the stress test running. CPU temp started dropping almost immediately. @ 1 min CPU: 80C Cooland: 45.2C @ 5 min CPU: 63.7C Coolant 31.2C So clearly having the fans active is very effective at bringing down the CPU temps, and what I found very interesting is that after 1 min the CPU temp had dropped 12 degrees, but the coolant has only gone down about 1C. As I watched it, the CPU temps seemed to come down a lot faster than the coolant temps. Also interestingly after 5 mins the CPU temp was actually lower than when I first started the test, yet the coolant temperature was 3C higher. So the point I was trying to make earlier, is that using coolant temp as the fan control variable means it is always going to be very delayed in responding to CPU temps, both going up and down. Over a prolonged period of time the CPU temp is going to zig-zag up and down as the fans speed up and slow down in a delayed response to the coolant temps. But what if you just controlled the fan based on average CPU temps over a period of time, like say 15-30s. After prolonged CPU load, the fans would happily ramp up to 1200-1300 RPM and just stay there keeping things at a nice constant cooling and not too loud. I suppose you could set a fan profile to have the fans just sit at 1200-1300 rpm or so once the coolant goes over a non-ambient temperature (say 32C in my case) and then it would remain constant but then you are stuck with the unfortunate consequence of having to change the profile for summer and winter based on the ambient temperature of your room. I suspect the CPU temperature ranges, being so much broader, would be a better control variable. Ie: temps below an average of 50C would mean low fans speeds, and then ramp it up to 1200rpm @ around 80C and go full bore if it gets to 90C. I suspect that fan profile would work in both summer and winter without needing changes. Unfortunately I cannot test my theory because a) Ryzen CPU temp is not an available control variable yet and b) iCUE would need to be changed to support temperature averaging.

I want to come back to this, as the more I test this and play with it, the more I think this method is not optimal and could be improved. More on that later. Firstly however I am surprised to not see a much more dramatic increase in coolant temperature when the CPU gets hot. Although I think part of what you are saying is that the measurement of the CPU temp I see in Ryzen Master is not necessarily the measurement of the temperature at the CPU cooling plate that bolts to the h115i cooling head? Is that correct? Because if the cooling head has 80C directly attached to it, I would expect the coolant temperature to rise rapidly, but it is not. What would be considered as reasonable rise in coolant temperature in practice? I am only really seeing 3-4C total rise as mine never seems to go over 34C. Is that normal? Or should I consider tossing the stock thermal paste and redoing it with something better? Some might consider a low coolant temperature to be a good thing, but I think its the opposite? If the coolant temperature is not rising much when the CPU is under load, then it is not doing a very good job at all of moving the heat away from the CPU and into the radiator. In order to properly dissipate the head from the CPU to the air, the temperature needs to transfer to the coolant, which is pumped the radiator and then released to the air via the fans blowing cooler air over the radiator. The hotter the radiator coolant is relative to the ambient temperature, the more heat is released and hence the more efficient the device is cooling. So why exactly is the coolant not going up all that much in temperature? From my testing I have noticed that the CPU temp starts to rise relatively quickly under load from it's initial load value, but once the coolant finally starts to rise and the fans kick in, then the temps actually go down. Which is because there is better head transfer away from the CPU once the coolant is hotter. I guess this all depends on where exactly the coolant temperature is measured as well (in the head block, at the intake of the radiator or at the outlet of the radiator?). Anyway getting back to the controlling the fans based on coolant temperatures, ignoring the fact that the coolant temp does not seem to rise much, if we base fan speeds on coolant temperature, because it takes so long to react to CPU load, the entire process is extremely delayed. The fans won't spin up for a long time after CPU load starts, and as mentioned above CPU temps will actually go up quite a bit until the coolant and fans start working, and then it comes down again. If we control the fan speed based on CPU temperature, then the fans will be asked to ramp up as soon as there is load on the CPU and already be providing better cooling capability for when the coolant does start to rise in temp, long before the point it does if we run the fans based on coolant temperature. I know it has been stated by you and others in other forums I have read, that modern CPU's see drastic temperature spikes all the time, and hence that's why basing the fans on CPU temp is considered a bad idea. You can clearly see that if you just leave Ryzen Master open and monitor the temps while you do stuff so I think that argument is sold. However, at least with the fans I have in my case controlled via iCUE, they actually take a while to ramp up to speed, so would inherently act to smooth out the CPU temperature spikes naturally. However what I don't get, it why we don't simply have the option to control the fan speeds based on average CPU temperatures? The easiest way to smooth out the spikes you see in CPU temps when you say, open windows explorer or launch chrome, would be to smooth it out and use the average temperature over a period of time, like 3s, 5s, 10s or whatever. That would eliminate all the spikiness from the CPU temperatures, and would allow you to ensure the fans are running and doing their job in advance of when the cooling is needed. You could fine tune the time window used to average the CPU temperature out to adjust how quickly the fan speeds ramp up, so small spikes won't budge them much at all, but prolonged CPU load could be producing your 'max' acceptable fans speed much more quickly than coolant temperature would. And it would likely ramp them down a lot quicker also, as what I have seen in my testing is that once the fans finally do get up to 1200-1300 rpms, when the load goes away they keep spinning at that speed for a long time when in reality they could be running slower as the load is gone. Also is stands to reason that perhaps average CPU temperature might be a better control variable as a default out of the box profile, since it's a lot less likely to be affected by ambient room temperature than coolant temperature is? Alas I can't test any of my theories here since the Ryzen temperature is not a control variable currently in iCUE :( Who would we ask to add the option to use average CPU temperature rather than instant CPU temperature in iCUE? It would be simple to add that as a feature :)

Right so that’s the other question, if you did use a 280mm up front, how is that going to work with the 465X case since from what I can see looking at the photos and review videos online, there are holes cut specifically for the 120mm fans. I don’t see how 140mm fans would fit up front without looking whacked and not lining up with the fan cut outs or the dust screen crosses?

Also how do the pump profiles work? It appears it's not possible to set your own profile there, so what would people normally set it to? Honestly I put the pump on extreme mode vs quiet mode and can't really tell the difference? Not sure I can even hear it, even over slow 450rpm fan speeds?

Thanks for the detailed info! I guess I should sit down and make a reasonable fan curve for my AIO cooler and like you said, probably set the max fan speeds I would see in normal use to the max I can stand, then full speed when something is clearly wrong. Anyway as for the Command Pro which controls the case fans, given that iCUE 3.23 does not support reading the Ryzen 3000 series CPU temp (it's not available as an option), what exactly is it using to program the fans? Honestly it seems as though the case fans just sit at idle all the time no matter what the CPU is doing, so I am thinking it is trying to tie it to CPU temps, but the sensor is not there so they just sit idle. Since I do have the four temp sensors installed, I need to document where I put them and which port they are in. One of them is on the bottom of the case at the rear close to the GPU, the other is next to the rear exhaust fan, the other is right behind the AIO cooler inside the case and the other I think I stuck down by the hard disk caddy (have to check). Sounds like the one I should use is the one behind the AIO cooler fans and make a custom fan curve based on that. I would assume that if I did not have the Commander Pro (I got it as I have some LED fans to replace the stock case fans and some RGB strips to install :) ), you would hook the case fans to the motherboard fan channels, and those would probably be tied to CPU temps?

Hi Guys, I am building a new rig for work, and am looking at using either the iCUE 220T case or the iCUE 465X case. I have not decided which yet, but am leaning towards the 465X due to the clean looking front glass panel but it costs a little more (better fans I am assuming and a little more room inside). Anyway my plan is to have a radiator in the front of the case with RGB fans, so both of these are good options as they come with RGB fans in the front and I can then relocate the ones that come with the cooler to other parts of the case. However according to the specs on both cases, while the front of the case supports both 3x 120mm and 2x 140mm fans, when it comes to radiator specs it says the front only supports 280mm and 360mm while the top of the case supports 240mm. That seems a bit odd to me in that the default fans setup is 3x 120mm fans? Surely a 240mm radiator would fit nicely behind the top two fans, but since it says it is not supported I am thinking maybe the mounting holes don't line up or something? But the fans normally bolt right to the radiator through the front panel, so it seems odd it says that is not supported? I don't really want to use a 360mm radiator up front as then you lose the hard disk trays, which I plan to use for my backup drives using ShadowProtect. So what gives? Can those two cases have a 240mm radiator up front behind the top two fans or not? The option of course is to use a 280mm radiator which it says is supported, but both of those cases have the front fans behind structures that match the 3x front fan layout. So if you put 2x 140mm fans up front for a 280mm radiator, the fans will move down on the front of the case and then it would look silly as they would not line up with the front panel grid? Probably more silly on the 465X which is the case I am leaning towards. Perhaps the grid on the 465x can be removed, or there is a different one to use for the 2x140mm fan config (I think it's the dust guard)?

Hi Guys, I just built my first rig in a long time and back when I used to build rigs we never had water cooling. I have had a water cooled PC before, as the one that this replaces was an Alienware Aurua R7. That PC had a 120mm liquid cooling AIO installed and part of the reason I wanted to build my own was to get some cool RGB as well as make it quieter. The Alienware would spin up and sound liek a vaccuum cleaner under full CPU load, and when you put full graphics load on it the 2080ti from Dell also spins up super load (oddly it only has a single fan?). Anyway my new rig is as follows: - NZXT H150 Elite - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X - Corsair Force Series MP600 1TB - Corsair h115i Platinum 280mm RGB cooler mounted to the front as intake (fan RGB facing out) - Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB memory (2x16GB) - Stock case fans as exhast on back (12mm) and top (140mm) - Corsair Commander Pro connected to stock case fans - Four temp temp sensors in various areas of the case corners - Windows 10 Pro 1909 What I am confused about is exactly how these fans are supposed to be controlled because the case is always super quiet when I run iCUE and the fans are set to the Quiet mode. Which is exactly what I want, but what I don't understand is that when I run the CPU at full load using CPU-Z or Cinebench, the fans never really change speed. They just sit there not changing much, while my old Dell would spin up like crazy. Checking the CPU temps with Ryzen Master I can see that under full load the CPU is getting a little over 80 degrees, but according to iCUE the h115i cooler is not changing much in temp. The cooler sits about 30.30C degrees at idle and the CPU temp is in the very low 40's when doing nothing. I I leave CPU-Z running for a long time the cooler temp will rise a bit, but not much. Maybe 2-3C. Given that, since the cooler temp is not going up much, the fans really dont change in speed. If I create my own custom profile for the cooler and use the quiet mode it's at 30% speed at 31 degrees and goes up to 38% at 34C, but the cooler never really gets that high. I have had it running while posting this and my cooler is now at 33.90 degrees and CPU temp is at 81.59 degrees. But the thing is, if I spin up the fans to and pump to maximum, it does bring the coolant temp and CPU temps down a bit. So my question is, why is the stock fan profile not spinning the fans up much when the CPU is under load? It would seem in my old Dell the cooler fans spun up based on CPU load, but with the h115i they are tied to the cooler temp and I don't see any way to tied it to the CPU temp (the Ryzen 9 sensor does not show up in the list). I now have the fans running at full speed and the cooler temp is now dropping back down to the low 32's and the CPU temp is now 77C, so clearly it makes a difference. But the stock fan profile is not doing a good job of knowing when to spin up the fans? Also the case fans are not really spinning either. Now yesterday I was playing around with overclocking and the CPU was getting up to 90 degrees, but once again the coolant temp was not going up a whole lot, and hence the fans were not spinning. If I manually spin them up to full speed, then the temps on the CPU go down quite a bit. So, my specific questions are: 1. Why is there now way to tie the fan speed of the h115i to the CPU temps, so when I have it at full load they will be keeping it cool? Ryzen 9 is not an option in the drop down for a custom curve. 2. Why does the stock fan profile not really ramp up the speed until the cooler is at 44C, which is a temp my cooler just never seems to ever get close to? If it got that high, my CPU would be frying. 3. What controls the case fans I have attached to my Command Pro in the stock quiet mode profile? Are they attached to the h115 coolant temp, the temp probes I have installed or something else? They also cannot be tied to CPU temps either.