Upgrade Water Cooler, or No?

To preface my conundrum, here are my current system specs with the overclock included:
-i7 5820k @4.3Ghz w/ 1.28 Volts
-32GB ADATA XPG Z1 DDR4 @ 2666 Mhz
-MSI X99A Tomahawk Motherboard
-Corsair H80i V2 120mm AIO

My temps while playing PUBg get to about 57c on the package–with the overclock scaling across all cores. I was wondering if a 240mm radiator would garner me better temperatures than that–and if so, what coolers you guys recommend. On the other hand, I wonder if some high static pressure, low decibel fans might improve temps and sound. I hate the Corsair SP120 fans currenty on the cooler, as they have to stay really loud to maintain respectable temperatures on my chip. Maybe some Phanteks F120SP fans will make things better? Leave your thoughts below. As a side note, I would prefer that the coolerr have some sort of red LED or accent on it.

Oh lol, I thought you were talking about water coolers, I have been planning for this all my life. But computers, how do they work?!

Firstly your temps are fine. You won’t get any noticeable improvement in clock speed per volt going from 60c to whatever you can get with a bigger water-cooler, nor will 60c cause any reduction in chip lifetime even if your doing long duration work like rendering.

That said, yes a 240mm (or bigger) rad will drop those temps or noise down if thats what you desire, but worth noting, most factory 240mm AIO’s are not silence optimized, so they tend to have fairly high fin density in order to maintain a smaller more widely compatible footprint while offering good cooling. Same goes for the H80i however, and its pretty thick, so its harder to use for silence than a bigger but thinner rad.

Swapping fans can give you lower noise, better performance or a very slight amount of both, but the Corsair SP120mm are not honestly bad (although are a little more upper RPM optimized), so your looking at top of the market type fans (like EK Vardar or Noctua) for noticeable improvements. I wouldn’t buy those Phanteks fans, they aren’t bad, but they are designed as general all rounders and not in the same league as the Noctua or Vardar, but looks are always a hard compromise. Regardless of what you choose, fan swaps are rarely an economical upgrade, its more squeezing the last few percent out of what you have.

I’d seriously consider staying with what you have unless the noise is annoying, in which case look at what will actually fit in your case, as a 280mm will be noticeably quieter than a 240mm, and a 360mm can be better again (although there is slowly diminishing returns per dollar). If budget no object the EK predator is basically the best AIO, being almost an open loop, but otherwise all the Acetek OEM AIO’s are pretty well priced with similar specs… only really the fans change, and even then they are pretty competitive between brands, so you can buy a corsair, fractal design Celsius or any other depending on price. Later on you’ll even get the exact same results if you swap the fans out.

Another option if your happy with temps but just want lower noise is to buy a larger Noctua tower cooler. The looks are polarizing, but you get absolute top tier fans on large surface area with some of the best mounting brackets on the market for a actually competitive price if your competition is AIO’s. The downside is even the biggest of them won’t keep in raw cooling with the really big rads, and depending on your board and cooler choice you may need to move your graphics card to the 2nd PCIe slot or check your ram height as the XPG Z1 looks pretty big.

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240mm rad should help with keeping the fan speeds more sensible. I don’t find a huge difference between my generic 240mm AIO or the large twin 140mm fan Noctua air cooler but the AIO rad/fans do look neater tucked away against the case.

I also had a 120MM AIO on the GPU and after putting the Noctua air cooler back in the case it’s bulk affected the air flow enough that I had to relocate the GPU AIO rad as the temps started to rise in gaming.

Big advantage of the Noctua though is it just keeps on going as I’ve been using it for several years in various systems but the unbranded AIO (think it’s CM OEM) has just started to develop a noisey pump after 2 years.

I do also love duel fan tower coolers for having no single point of failure, and with fan replacement possible and new mounting hardware options brought out for backwards compatibility the endurance of such a cooler is effectively infinite.

Worthing notign about your CM oem AIO: All the older CoolerMaster AIO’s are Asetek OEM, as is most of the new stuff, the factory intel solution, both options from Fractal Design, every Thermaltake, Corsairs (even with the square pump like 115gt), deepcool, arctic, swiftech and others. Also every singe GPU AIO on the market to my knowledge (from AMD’s stock solution to EVGA’s hybrid). There are only really 3 pumps that are common inside those coolers, and they are basically 100% reliable when they are running at full speed without excessing back-pressure and NO AIR in the loop (the factual kelvin and switch h220 ect both use a less common Asetek pump thats a bit more tolerant to bubbles, but still suffers in terms of endurance when they are present).

Agreed.

I try to keep temps well under 60c as most pumps 60c is their max operating temperature. So being at or close to that may effect their life span. However I do not have a lot of experience with AIOs.

If you do not like the Corsair fans, try Noise Blocker. One of the best for rads. Corsair MLs are great and I am using them in my new build I am working on. I trust them enough to have 15 of them.

Sounds right to me as it was fine but the CAM software I was using to control the fans via a Grid+ fan hub crashed a couple of times and the water temp reached 60 Deg C for a while before I spotted it. I reckon the cheaper rubber hoses leeched out fluid a little faster at the same time and air eventually started to circulate.

I cut the hose and re-filled the system and put a small barbed flow indicator in-line to reseal the hose but despite bubble free constant flow it only needed another long gaming session to start grumbling again. Hence the dependable Noctua is serving again in my main system.

I may put the 240mm rad on the EVGA hybrid pump and get a 280mm CPU AIO as I’m a glutton for punishment AIO!

@Raziel : I couldn’t actually find a recommendation from either Asetek or CoolIT (the other common AIO OEM till the lawsuits started) that limits the temps to 60°c, as far as I can tell everything including the warranty is perfectly happy above that. However I doubt you made it up, so I just probably missed something somewhere…

So moving forwards assuming that I just missed something and 60°c is the limit, keep in them the core temps will be MUCH higher than the fluid temp. Exactly how much varies on application, with graphics cards with their high core counts on larger dies doing better than CPU’s, and server CPU’s doing better than overclocked lower core count brothers of the same wattage. However the low end of difference is still greater than 10°c, and at the extreme end >30°c is possible, which can be clearly in newer Asetek coolers made for Corsair (GTX series) which measure fluid temp and by default base fan speed off it, although these controllers are actually less well liked than the older GT series which was produced by CoolIT.

Either way your core temps you be >70°c before its possible your exceeding the 60°c fluid temps, and honestly its more likely >75°c before you actually are, so you probably have much more overhead than you think.

@bimbleuk : lots of the hoses found on common AIO’s are part of the Asetek catalog, and they have charts for the evaporation available… assuming there numbers are not just rubbish evaporation shouldn’t be a problem… but if a fitting leaks thats another story. Indeed the factory loop isn’t actually totally air free, it uses the design of the rad as an air trap to separate air out, and serve as a expansion are as the fluid heats.

Also on another note the factory coolant contains glycol and critically a corrosion inhibitor. With copper waterblocks, aluminum rads and other metals present, unlike most enthusiast open loop setups you WILL get galvanic corrosion in your loop if you refill without these, you probably already know but if not drain, flush and refill with bottled coolant (from concentrate or otherwise).

That is why I said “most pumps” and “I do not have much experience with AIOs”. I can’t say with certainty what the max temp consistently for an AIO. A D5 for instance does have a 60c limit.

Sorry for the confusion.

Sorry about that, not wanting to sound angry about it, just a shit communicator =P

Regarding the D5, its actually used industrially for pumping a great many things, including hot water. The temp limits are based on the softening of the housing or pump top with temp, so the manufacturer (Xylem) says there is no loss of life expectancy right up to max temp, and those temps are 60°c in the standard PC trim, or 95°c with brass. Acetial and acrylic are not offered factory, but many companies do use them, they are limited to a ~80°c, although even 50°c is actually an usually hot fluid temp for a open loop (although delta to CPU will be slightly lower than an AIO).

The DDC is more interesting, its housing limits are the same as the D5, and like the D5 its an air cooled motor, however they are known to run pretty darn hot, but do so basically irrespective of the fluid temperature (unlike the D5, which is basically always at fluid temp thanks to large surface area of metal in contact with fluid internally). Thus you can be overheating a pump based off airflow, or getting away with a hotter fluid temp if the airflow is sufficient and cool.

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No offence taken. Did not think you were angry. We are both just keeping it real.

I do not like DDC pumps. Never needed the extra head pressure and find them to be louder. YMMV.