Hi guys, I think I'm having an issue either with my CPU, H60, or perhaps the bios settings.
Now, my problem the overclock on my CPU, the highest I would dare to go is 4.2GHz, the reason is because of heat, *note: I overclock all the turbo cores to a ratio of 42.* When I test with OCCT, my temps go as high as 72C-75C, now for a water cooler using Arctic Silver 5, I think that's pretty hot, or is it normal?
I only tweaked the voltages once and that made the temps increase.
So I guess my questions is, is my 3770k bad? Is my H60 cooler bad? Or do I need to tweak things in the bios more?
Side Note: I have noticed that apparently tower coolers seem to perform better than the H60. My friend has the Xigmatek Dark Knight II on his FX8350 and it cools it amazingly well. Better than my H60.....much better.
Those temps are a little bit high, but you didn't say what case you have, what cooling options you got for it and what are your ambient temperatures. However, remeber = Ivy bridge overclocking gets hot, H60 is not better than a nice air cooler, and you also rely on the motherboard stability (although your mobo is good).
So the consensus seems the be that the H60 sucks lol. From my experience, it seems so. I should have gone with the Dark knight II.
As for the ambient temps, during the fall/winter it's around 68F - 72F and spring/summer 72F-78F. When it's the former, my cpu Idles between 26C-27C, when it's the latter, it idles between 32C-35C
My case is the Zalman Z11 Plus and I have 6 fans running on it.
2x 120mm in push/pull pulling in air from the back, outside, in towards the front of the fron fo the case
2x 120mm pushing air out through the top of the case
1x 120mm pulling air in from the front of the case, from the bottom where the HDDs are at
1x80mm at the side panel exausting hot air from the HDDs
All in all, the case has good air flow, in my opinion at least.
At this point, I really think that the H60 is just not as efficient as many have boasted it to be in the past. Perhaps I'll dump it and switch it out for a Dark knight 2 during the summer.
Actually I was looking at that cooler yesterday. But it is HUGE! I need to make sure I have the space and that it clears my ram and top fans first before I decide to go with such a huge cooler.
But I'm open to other, not so big, suggestions as well :P
The Scythe Grand Kama Cross Rev.B is a huge cooler but has a lot of clearance and good motherboard airflow, and it's not expensive. It has more than enough cooling performance for a 4 GHz overclock on a 3770k IF you have a high airflow case. If you don't, don't overclock with any cooler, but with a carppy toy like the H60 only running up to 75°C at 4.2GHz, I think you'll be just fine, you would have had higher temps than that if your case airflow weren't good. In practice though, if it were high summer, your CPU would definitely throttle with the H60. Get rid of it as soon as you can, it's no better than the Intel stock cooler.
I would definitely also recommend the Noctua NH-D14, or if that's too expensive, the Coolink Corator DS, which is the same heatsink, but with a single high performance impeller fan, made by the same factory than Noctua, but about half the price of the NH-D14. It's a little louder than the complete silence of the NH-D14 though, you can actually hear it if you're up close and don't have a hearing problem.