Corsair H80i undesirable temperatures :(

[xauth]

Using a Corsair H80i GT, my idle temps are running anywhere between 30 °C and 40 °C (mostly stays around 32-35 °C idle with spikes up to 45 °C,) my air cooler would stay steady at 26-30 °C which was a Hyper 212 EVO, and this thing can't even hit anything below 28 °C.

Ive used several different thermal compounds thus far all with a small to decent size amount seeing almost no difference (i.e cooler master, arctic silver 5, and noctua)

Something just doesn't seem right at all after looking at other people's temps/setups.

My ambient room temperature is 20-22 °C (68-70 °F).

Now many would say it's not about the idle and all about the load temps, but when stress testing with prime95 my load temps are worse than with my air cooler hitting up to 100 °C, with gaming and other programs it usually sits around 50 °C and spikes up to 65 °C with games like Fallout 4 or Witcher 3.

Another thing I noticed is that it also takes a long while for the temperatures to come down from where they are, like maybe 20-30 minutes before it comes down from like 50-60 °C to it's idle at 32-35 °C.

Any tips/suggestions or help on this matter is much appreciated, thanks!

System specs are
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97 Gaming 5
CPU: Intel Core i7 4790k
CPU Heatsink: Corsair H80i GT
RAM: G.Skill 16 GB 1600 DDR3
GPU: GeForce GTX 970 FTW ACX 2.0
PSU: EVGA SuperNova 850 Watt
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit
Case: Corsair Air 540

Monitoring Temps with HWMonitor (As many have told me it's the most reliable for accurate temps.)
Testing temps with Speccy the temps are much lower, same goes with Corsair Link (similar but not the same,) and with Gigabyte's software for the motherboard tuning the temps are identical if not higher than HWMonitor's temps.

 

[Techhog]

Is your CPU overclocked? If so, those temps sound about right.

 

[MongGrel]

Taking 20-30 minutes to drop to idle temp sounds odd to me, but I have never used any form of water cooling, so not sure if that would be a normal thing.

I wouldn't think so.

The temps in games do not sound off to me, 50-65 sounds probably normal.

I'm not familiar with the newer Intel CPU's, still using an X5680 @ 4.5 with a ND-H14 here, but someone mentioned Prime95 has problems with the newer chips for stress testing. I have no experience there also, but thought I would mention it from reading others posts.

 

[xauth]

Is your CPU overclocked? If so, those temps sound about right.

CPU is not. At default of 4.0 Ghz, no turbo boost either

 

[Techhog]

Taking 20-30 minutes to drop to idle temp sounds odd to me, but I have never used any form of water cooling, so not sure if that would be a normal thing.

I wouldn't think so.

The temps in games do not sound off to me, 50-65 sounds probably normal.

I'm not familiar with the newer Intel CPU's, still using an X5680 @ 4.5 with a ND-H14 here, but someone mentioned Prime95 has problems with the newer chips for stress testing. I have no experience there also, but thought I would mention it from reading others posts.

Yeah, the time it takes to drop is really odd...

CPU is not. At default of 4.0 Ghz, no turbo boost either

Is that because you disabled Turbo Boost, since it should boost to 4.2GHz with all cores active by default.

Are your fans spinning? At what speed? Does anything change if you force them to run at 100%?

Also, you didn't add any thermal past in addition to what was on the block already, right? (Though you will need some thermal paste if you end up needing to reseat the block.) And you cleaned the old paste off of the CPU thoroughly before installing the new cooler?

 

[xauth]

Yeah, the time it takes to drop is really odd...



Is that because you disabled Turbo Boost, since it should boost to 4.2GHz with all cores active by default.

Are your fans spinning? At what speed? Does anything change if you force them to run at 100%?

Also, you didn't add any thermal past in addition to what was on the block already, right? (Though you will need some thermal paste if you end up needing to reseat the block.) And you cleaned the old paste off of the CPU thoroughly before installing the new cooler?

Fans running at 100% doesn't do much aside from a 1-2 degree difference less, and unfortunately doesn't solve the issue of the time it takes to cool down either.

As far as the thermal compound goes I removed the stock thermal compound after using it the first time with it getting too high of temps, upon doing that the stock one that comes pre-applied on the heatsink was way too much and I had cleaned that off with 99% isopropyl alcohol, and other times using ArctiClean, with no real difference there either.
So far it seems as if I've tried everything I know on this and the temps are just not right at all, same goes for the time to cool it down. I had done other builds with the same cooler (not the one I currently have,) and have seen much lower temps, around 2-4 degrees above ambient in most cases.

Perhaps it's the airflow pattern of my case maybe?
The case is the Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 Arctic White.

The 120mm radiator is in a push pull config positioned at the back of the case.
The case has two 140 mm intake fans in the front, and one 140mm noctua fan at the top of the case directly above the CPU. Disabling the fan at the top just makes the temps higher by 2 degrees as opposed to having it on.

Thermal compounds I've used so far have been Arctic Silver 5, Cooler Master High Performance Thermal paste, Noctua NT-H1, and Gelid GC Extreme Thermal Compound - All with around the same results, Cooler master brand being the lowest I've gotten with temps.

 

[Techhog]

It could be a faulty pump not pushing enough water. The pump is definitely in the CPU fan header, right?

 

[MongGrel]

Could be the pump I guess. To be honest the temps did not sound to bad for a 120 to me, just one of the reasons I never have tried out an AIO over the ND-H14, unless you went with at least a 240 it seems it wouldn't make a huge difference from what I had read in the past.

It's just not that large of a radiator, even if a deep version.

I'll leave it at that, as I do not have enough experience using one personally.

You'll get more responses I'm sure.

 

[Techhog]

Could be the pump I guess. To be honest the temps did not sound to bad for a 120 to me, just one of the reasons I never have tried out a AIO over the ND-H14, unless you went with at least a 240 it seems it wouldn't make a huge difference from what I had read in the past.

It's just not that large of a radiator, even if a deep version.

I'll leave it at that, as I do not have enough experience using one personally.

You'll get more responses I'm sure.

I thought they were normal too at first. However...

... something is clearly off. (This is using WPrime, which should produce higher temps than gaming.) The fact that the CPU is taking 20+ minutes to cool down is an obvious red flag. There's something wrong with heat transfer somewhere.

 

[MongGrel]

I'd suspect the pump myself like Techhog said.

I've been tempted to try out a 240 in the past just to push this thing, I could probably fit it inside this big case even with no problem, just never felt the motivation to mess with it really.

The Carbide is supposed to be a very nice case from everything I'd ever read. Still use a old version Antec 1200 myself, but it's been modified a lot over time.

 

[xauth]

I thought they were normal too at first. However...

... something is clearly off. (This is using WPrime, which should produce higher temps than gaming.) The fact that the CPU is taking 20+ minutes to cool down is an obvious red flag. There's something wrong with heat transfer somewhere.

Yeah, on my current setup with this right now I had run wPrime with the 1024M test and my CPU hit around 63-66C. After that test, it was taking around 15 minutes to get down to 35 °C for an idle temp, hit back to 32 °C after 20 minutes.
The pump is plugged into the CPU fan header, with the two fans for the radiator attached to the Y splitter that it has with the h80i GT (unless that's supposed to be used for something else?)

At this point I'm unfortunately considering shipping this back and just sticking with air cooling for my setup, possibly just going with one of Noctua's air coolers. I had tried the 240mm radiator with the h110i in the past with my case but with heat rising, the temps while gaming were just awful in comparison to my air setup prior.

Figured since this would be in the back as a 120mm, and after seeing the temps others builds I used it in, I thought that I'd get similar results.
Would be nice to at least understand precisely why my temps are that way with water cooling, but sadly I suppose I'll have to settle with air for now.

I'd like to thank everyone for their responses, suggestions and help here, I really appreciate it.

 

[Techhog]

Yeah, on my current setup with this right now I had run wPrime with the 1024M test and my CPU hit around 63-66C. After that test, it was taking around 15 minutes to get down to 35 °C for an idle temp, hit back to 32 °C after 20 minutes.
The pump is plugged into the CPU fan header, with the two fans for the radiator attached to the Y splitter that it has with the h80i GT (unless that's supposed to be used for something else?)

At this point I'm unfortunately considering shipping this back and just sticking with air cooling for my setup, possibly just going with one of Noctua's air coolers. I had tried the 240mm radiator with the h110i in the past with my case but with heat rising, the temps while gaming were just awful in comparison to my air setup prior.

Figured since this would be in the back as a 120mm, and after seeing the temps others builds I used it in, I thought that I'd get similar results.
Would be nice to at least understand precisely why my temps are that way with water cooling, but sadly I suppose I'll have to settle with air for now.

I'd like to thank everyone for their responses, suggestions and help here, I really appreciate it.

It's also possible that the pump isn't running very fast due to the PWM header not being configured correctly in the BIOS. Your temp isn't insanely higher than it should be, so it's hard to say.

We need someone who knows about water cooling to chime in.

 

[Stuka87]

What does the Corsair software say for the pump RPM? And make sure you have the latest software if you are running Windows 8 or newer.

Their software will tell you if the pump is running as it should. It will also tell you what temps it is seeing, as the pump/fan speed is dynamic based on fluid temperature.

My H100i drops my OC'ed chip from peak to idle in about 2 seconds or so. Its nearly instantaneous.