Pull air in or push it out

[Stuka87]

I doubt the really thin (like scotch tape) would be think enough to fill any air gaps. If you are really that much of a stickler for air leakage, you want a thicker material with some give, like the foam tape. Although I would not use double sided, as that means removing the fans will most likely destroy the tape, so then you have to clean and reapply it. What I would do is use some felt or the like cut to shape as a gasket. It easily fills the gaps in, and is easy to remove the fans/radiator.

 

[Brian Stirling]

I doubt the really thin (like scotch tape) would be think enough to fill any air gaps. If you are really that much of a stickler for air leakage, you want a thicker material with some give, like the foam tape. Although I would not use double sided, as that means removing the fans will most likely destroy the tape, so then you have to clean and reapply it. What I would do is use some felt or the like cut to shape as a gasket. It easily fills the gaps in, and is easy to remove the fans/radiator.

Well I hope to have the case and H100i today so I should be able to dry fit to see what is or isn't needed. If the thin double sided tape isn't doable then perhaps some weather stripping will work. I'll not stress about now and wait to see how things look when I dry fit.


Brian

 

[tweakboy]

In,,,

 

[Brian Stirling]

Received the parts on Monday, built the system on Tuesday, but had to wait until Wednesday to get a DisplayPort cable to boot up. Installed Win10 Home on the 950 Pro and then installed my programs on it before plugging in the two 6TB WD Black HD's. I have the 950 Pro listed first in the BIOS boot order but boot times are still not very impressive at just under a minute. It takes 35 seconds before I see Windows begin to load so obviously the BIOS is doing a lot of stuff before that -- not sure how to speed that up.

Temps appear very reasonable during low activity periods with CPU core temps hovering in the 26C-28C range with the package temp at about 35C. The pump is running about 1100rpm but the fan is pretty much off though with the 200mm above pulling the fans still move. H100i temp runs about 28C under low load conditions -- about the same as the CPU core temps and about 7C less than the package temp. Under low load conditions the GPU which is also water cooled is around 22C-23C.

When I render for 20+ minutes with a mild OC to 4.0GHz the max core temps go to about 50C and the package to about 56C. The H100i temp increases to about 36C. The GPU seldom exceeds 30C during render, but so far I haven't really been pushing the effects that drive higher GPU usage. I wonder, is the 20C delta between the H100i and CPU package about what I should expect under heavy load or is the delta a bit on the high side. If so that would likely be the result of the CPU cooler not being perfectly flush with the CPU or problems with the thermal paste. It doesn't seem likely that the CPU cooler isn't flush with the CPU as the standoff mounting studs pretty much fix that and when you screw down the cooler you basically bottom the thumb screws to the standoff studs.

As I mentioned before I don't intend to push the OCing and will probably stop at about 4.2GHz on the CPU and at that freq I should be able to keep the CPU core voltage at 1.2V to 1.25V. I will also OC the GPU but will once again limit the OCing to moderate levels to limit noise and maintain the highest level of reliability.

Under normal operation the PC is pleasantly quiet and when rendering the noise increase only a little so I think the combination of case and water cooling has resulted in a good balance of performance and noise. It's certainly not silent, but well within tolerable levels.

The one thing I was hoping for that I need to work on is cooling the Samsung 950 PRO PCIe SSD. Both it and its predecessor, the 951, run real hot when being taxed and when the 950 gets to about 97C it throttles to prevent it getting any hotter. The 951 gets even hotter at about 114C but it does not throttle so I guess that's the reason it gets hotter. I need to arrange for a more direct blast of air on the 950 to keep in cooler in the hopes that doing so will prevent or limit throttling.


Brian

 

[Socio]

I can think of no application where you'd want hot air from the radiator to be blown into the case. Definitely have the top fans sucking air out. In most cases, front and side (used with ducts for spot cooling) fans should be inlets, while rear and top fans are outlets.

I have read where some are using push-pull on radiators with fans on top pulling and fans on bottom pushing that is reportedly keeping temps lower than just pushing or pulling alone.

 

[Brian Stirling]

One more update...

I've increased the OC on the CPU to 4.2GHz and have done a similarly mild OC to the GPU. Under prolonged rendering that drives the CPU to 4.2GHz and 100% the CPU temps increase to about 60C. The GPU, under heavy testing with Valley Benchmark goes to just under 50C. I'm sure I could push the GPU more but I'll leave it here for now and have no plans to go any further with the CPU.

I feel I'm near the right balance of performance, reliability and noise and going much further might make it a tiny bit faster but would also increase the chance it would crash 30 minutes into a 40 minute render and it would definitely raise temps, noise and power consumption above the reasonable levels they are at now. Again, I'm not looking for benchmark bragging rights -- just looking to maximize my investment.

I'd pushed the RAM up to advertised speed of 3200 but that crashed right away and I had to do a BIOS CMOS reset so after adjusting the CPU and GPU I increased the RAM to only about 2850 and figure that should be enough to prevent issues while gaining a small improvement over the default settings.

I've done some 4K video rendering and have had no problems. The noise level does increase a bit as the fans speed up but it's not a big increase and is quite acceptable. All-in-all I'm very pleased with how things turned out save for the slow 50 second boot times. It takes 35 seconds to POST before Windows even begins to load. I'd like to improve that but other than that I'm pleased with the build.

I do have some upgrade plans down the road but what I have is just fine for now. I want to get a larger 4K display than the 24 inch one I now have -- 32 inch is about where I'd like to be. The other thing I will add is another PCIe SSD when 1TB versions become reasonable. At present I use the 512GB PCIe SSD for OS and programs but my video and image files are on my 6TB HD's.

It would be faster to edit and render if the video files were on the PCIe SSD, but I don't want to put them on the same drive as the OC and programs for several reasons. I could add a second 512GB PCIe SSD now as I have a PCI board that came with the Asus x99 motherboard that would allow me to add a second PCIe drive, but I don't feel 512GB is the right size and will wait for a 1TB version.


Brian