Hello Tek Syndicate community I just wanted to share my experience. So about a month ago I got the bright idea to change over to a closed water cooled loop for my i5 6600k. My reasoning for doing so was that with a closed water loop (from what I had heard) I would get lower CPU temperatures, lower fan noise, and better aesthetic since my cooler master V8 GTS had red LEDs (In my blue and white build)
The V8 was performing great helping me overclock my 6600k to a stable 4.8 Ghz, and the fan noise was non existent unless under very CPU intensive tasks. Now since I was upgrading my computer I had decided why not purchase a few SSD's for extra space and faster boot speeds. From all the reviews and what I can read up online, I decided that the Samsung 950 Pro series was probably one of the better SSD's on the market in regards to read and write speeds. So I bought a 250 GB model to test the waters and see how she would perform.
So when it came down to the CPU cooler I went with the Corsair Hydro Series H110i GT 280mm loop, most reviews I saw and read were rather positive. The only quirk i could find was about the loop's fans becoming quite loud under load. Now as someone that doesn't really care about the noise coming from my PC I went on and bought it. Also the Corsair logo was RGB enabled which gave me some peace of mind when it came to the aesthetic. Later that day I installed the cooler, along with my new M.2 SSD (and two separate regular SSD's) into my motherboard and started tinkering with my overclock and profiles. Now for some reason the Corsair loop wasn't as cool as I expected it to be. Being a water cooled loop I hoped for maybe low to mid 50's for the temp, but for some reason it actually wasn't cooling my CPU properly and the heat would reach a high of 76 degrees. I looked around at loop and had decided that maybe I didn't seat the cooler right onto the motherboard, or it was a little loose and every other reason I could find online. After installing and uninstalling the cooler about 3-4 times I had accidentally pushed my z170 gaming m7 motherboards pins all flat on the board!! I grabbed a set of needles and took to the pins to try to realign all of them and only grew frustrated with the motherboard. After about 4 hours of trying to straighten the pins I gave up and drove over to a nearby Microcenter and bought the ASUS Z170-A ATX motherboard and rebuilt my PC from scratch again. After two or three days of frustration I came out with this.
The two SSD's on the bottom are crucial 500GB SSD's New motherboard, SSD's and cooler. Sadly I now have the Z170 Gaming M7 board collecting dust along with the Cooler master V8. None of the pins on the Gaming M7 motherboard are broken luckily, and the V8 GTS cooler works perfectly, except now I dont know what to do with them. The Corsair Hydro gives me temps around the low 60's but wasn't much of an improvement over the V8 GTS, and also under load the fans do get rather loud so clear waste of money there. My overclock did not get any better. Also, I'm pretty sure my motherboard wont let me boot off of the Samsung M.2 SSD so I chose to just install the games I play most on the M.2. Just in case someone wants to help me with some advice here are a few questions. Should I run my SSD's in raid 0? I hear that can cause some reliability issues. What should I do with my Z170 Gaming M7 motherboard and V8 GTS cooler? And is straightening on the pins on the motherboard going to get it to work again? Thanks in advance for any advice given.
1st re boot from your 950pro, I have one as well on my asus X99-pro it worked but like at HDD speed, my only advice is make sure you have the latest EFI/BIOS coz that solved my issue.
P.S. fair warning as an Australian we only use and understand metric and Celsius Temps: Some might disagree with me but I always like to understand my systems baseline. SO I have a IDcool heatsink on my 5820k and at stock was 34c idle and 50 to 60c load. Put it on water and idle 24c and 39 load. But I crank the voltage to 1.25v (not massive) temp shoot to 70c load. So my real question on your OC what voltages are you using ?
SSDs RAID 0 well you need to ask yourself what data is going on there and do you care if you lose it ? I would says mostly raid is fine. But if one drive fails you lose the whole array. So with you drive you double you chance of failure, albeit they still might be small.
I think your Gigabyte board is probably frelled, but you would need to test it to confirm. Maybe if you put a cpu in it and it works; don't take it out just sell cpu,mobo and cooler as a combo. On website of your choice
Thanks for the advice I actually lowered my overclock because of that exact reasons, I'm sitting at around the mid 50's under most stress tests. My voltage before wasn't enough to cause problems alone though. As for the RAID 0 I guess I'll give it a shot.
Yea everybody goes thru that teenage PC enthusiast phase. What I would call, "Don't fix what's not broken". It's the** Mhz fever** I get being a PC elitist and we didn't take our time. It's like you're 20 again and you're always speeding on the road cuz you feel like you're late for things all the time.
One thing I've noticed. Intel seems to break or bend pins way more than AMD enthusiasts. Which is VERY weird since you would think the cpu with pins should have more issues. I've always thought the sandwiched Intel FCPGA socket would be almost fool proof. Considering there's almost every little height difference between the socket cover and the socket itself. I've clamp my Air heastinks and water blocks tight before but really never thought that it could bend or break pins.
Your V8 at 4.8Ghz is a HUGE OC. Not gonna lie most people are fine with 4.5-4.7Ghz OC. I'm sure you were shooting for that 5 Ghz OC on water badge too like most first timers.
Get an EVGA SLI bridge... they're like $20 and look amazing... won'te improve performance but it sticks out like a sore thumb...
Also, no reason to push the OC to obtain said number... I'll take free performance all day but I'm not a big fan of upping voltage to achieve a particular number... Specifically with Skylake, it's meant to run at a lower voltage than Haswell and previous iterations... that's why it uses DDR4... there's motherboards for Skylake that use DDR3 and higher voltage ram, but it's not good for the Skylake CPU...
If the fans are loud, change them out...the H100i comes with notoriously shitty fans... but fans aren't expensive... and most high-end air units DO cool within a few degrees of AIOs (Kraken x61 and higher will start to give noticeable differences, but the x61 is fairly pricey and massive, and the ones beyond that can get upwards of $300)
Regardless... cooling on water without a custom loop is mainly an aesthetic thing...
I can't help with any advice on the motherboard but as for the AIO cooler; I have a H80i in my system and the fans that came with it were horrendous. I changed them out for a single Corsair SP120 in a pull configuration (this would be two in your case obviously) and the fan noise has gone completely even when playing games. However, the lack of fan noise has brought forward a rattling noise that no matter how many times I re-install the radiator, will not go away (it's very clear that it's coming from the rad). It's now getting so annoying that I'm thinking of changing for a a high end air cooler!
If you do decide to change the radiator fans out, I'd love to hear whether or not you experience the same issue because if not I'll maybe look into upgrading to a H110GTX.
can you please link the sli bridge your talking about so i can order it? I bought one and it wasn't long enough to bridge accross my sli set up. Also I was trying to find the kraken x61 but it was sold out in my area lol, i was going to drive to a micro center in another state to get it and they sold out on the day I got payed.
I was shooting for that 5Ghz lol, btw i am in my early 20s and it does feels like im rushing. Regardless I was pretty lucky to not ruin my cpu, I've heard before that older models of mobos and cpu's would ruin both.
@pizzahontas i'll purchase new fans by next week and tag you in a post about the new things in my case :]
make sure you pick the right length for your GPU setup... it comes with red/green/and blue stickers to go over the white LED "EVGA" logo...
It's completely nonsensical to get a Kraken x61 when you already have it's direct competitor... the Kraken cools a little better and has much better software... but there's no justification for spending that money... for an extra degree or two...
EK makes a 360rad AIO which would make a pretty signifcant difference.... but for the price of it you could do a CPU custom loop
For 5 GHz you'll likely need a custom loop with a 360MM rad or dual 240-280s... and then it's up to the silicon being capable of a clock that high (which is most likely your problem anyways)
There's also phase cooling but it's impractical cause you have to wait like 5 minutes for the phase cooling to get to temp before booting your computer...
Well I'm sorry for you, all of this work for just disappointment. Anyway hope's not lost so things I would do if I were in your situation: 1) Update the BIOS to enable NVME and so being able to boot from that smoking fast M.2 SSD 2) If you're totally sure you want to stick with watercooling sell the V8 and the GTX110 and try to get a Predator 240 from EKWB, if you can 3) Ask for some help to fix the MSI board and try to sell that too, you won't get a huge amout of money out of it but it's better than nothing 4) If you have time and a spare buck or two try to put some of those tiny heatsink for VRAM used on videocards on all the memory chip of that M.2 SSD, can get pretty hot, slow down and short is life span so give it a shot.
They recalled the predator due to leaks. I could swear that is a v10 not a v8 cpu cooler which either or is not the best cpu cooler on the market. So the aio is the better option but consider getting an highend aircooler for backup. D15 or anything along that lines.
