I fail @ air cooling.

[CurseTheSky]

I had to put a halt to my watercooled setup. Moving into a new case, limited funds, etc. To make a long story short, the stock cooler wasn't great, so I bought a Freezer 7 Pro. I also managed to grab a Cooler Master Hyper TX2 out of another system, but I haven't tried it yet.

With the stock cooler + Arctic Cooling MX-1, I was getting 55-57C idle at 1.325 volts. With the Freezer 7 Pro and MX-1, I'm getting 50-53C idle at the same voltage. I've remounted twice. With my old, crappy Thermaltake 3/8" ID tubing watercooling, I was idling around 32ish, and loaded around 40C max. My GPU is idling around 62C, which is a little hotter than the old case, but with all the fans on low that's to be expected. Turning the fans on high makes a little dent in the GPU temps, but doesn't help the CPU. I don't think it's the case or fans.

To make a long story short, something doesn't seem to be right; I think I'm not mounting it properly. I'm seating it as flatly as I can, then pushing opposite corner pins down, one at a time. I may also not be spreading the MX-1 properly, as I'm used to AS5. Does anyone have any suggestions? I will try remounting one more time, and then try the Hyper TX2 to see if the Freezer 7 is bad (the fins were a little bent up, and the heatpipes have solder all over the top of the "closed" ones... is that normal?)

 

[DerwenArtos12]

Your temps are freakishly high, i would try pretty hard to not stress the system. It's been proven that using the blob and squish method is more reliable. I have a hard time agreeing, except with push pins. To be honest your best bet may be to get a backplate and actually bolt down your HSF. It's a $7 insurance policy that I have to insist upon whenever I'm building a system for myself or any of my customers.

What's your ambient/room temperature? 62C for your gpu is pretty high. I have an older 7800GT that been volt modded and overclocked that idles around 46 and a 8500gt thats been overclocked that idles around 42C passively. So I think there is more here than just a lacking HSF. A heatsink works on delta's even a really efficent(powerful) HSF can't adequately do it's job without cool air.

 

[Martimus]

Using a small blob of MX2 in the center of My Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro brought my temps down from about 40-45C idle to 30-35C immediately. It is now at 22-25C at idle after it has cured. I used the prespread MX1 on the Heatsink, and that was what gave me the 40-45C idle temps. I cleaned that off with Isopropyl Alcohol, then applied a small dollop (enough to make it spread to about the size of a quarter after pressing hte heatsink onto it) of MX2 and that worked like a charm. It runs downright cool now that the new thermal paste has cured, so I suggest that method! Her is a link to the method I used, as it really worked well for me: Application Method

As for the Solder on the Heatsink, yes that is normal. The poor quality on the manufacturing is probably why it is so cheap. It is still rather effective.

 

[CurseTheSky]

The GPU temp wasn't completely accurate. That was after heating up my case from gaming / CPU stress testing. Sitting here at a TRUE idle, it's around 54-55C. Temps in my old case (Kandalf LCS, with a much more open design and higher RPM fans) were only slightly better. I have a PCI slot cooler right below it, so I don't think I'll get much better on air. Water, on the other hand...

I'm going to try remounting one more time, this time with the dallop method. Last time I looked into TIM debates / advice, it was still split 50/50 between spreading and dallops, with AS5 being the most popular (and easy to spread). Now it seems things have changed greatly, and spreading MX-1 / MX-2 is NOT an easy task.

 

[PolymerTim]

I think I read that the problem with spreading is that it is too easy to trap air bubbles. I think it can be done very effectively, but it is easy to make a mistake. The dallop method is just more error proof.

 

[aigomorla]

curse i prayed to the air god to give you bad temps because you didnt finish your water.

Hurry and get back on your water project. :X


But im guessing the sink isnt flat. Try a razor test on both the sink and the IHS.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Yeah, I really want to get back to it. Between school, work, girlfriend, and '66 Mustang, not much time for computers.

I flipped the switch... on my fans. Going from Low to High on the rear and top 120mm fans bought the temps down by about 4C, which is pretty significant. So assuming the air flow in the case was decent was obviously wrong. I definately need to add a fourth fan for intake, which I'll be looking into in the near future.

Aside from that, I have to figure out what I want to do about a radiator. I have the Swiftech 3x120mm sitting here ready to go, but I'm not sure if it'll get in the way mounted at the back. I JUST got this case, so I really don't want to mod it... yet. Otherwise I'd look into dual 2x120mm radiators.

These cases are really nice, but coming from a open-designed MASSIVE full tower to this thing really puts a kink in a lot of plans. Hiding wires in this case is a breeze. Finding room for everything isn't. As it is, I have NO room left in the bottom compartment, so I'm stuck with two 5 1/4" bays open, and the top HDD cage free. I should be able to fit the pump and reservoir without too much trouble, but there's still the question of where to mount the radiator.

Since they included grommets that will fit my 3/4" OD tubing, I may just grab a RadBox and see what I can do about mounting it on the back. That huge radiator mounted externally is going to look so goofy, but oh well.

Any thoughts?