Cooling help required.

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Woodles
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Cooling help required.

Post by Woodles »

Hi all,

I'm having a bit of a heating problem at the moment, not helped by the unseasonal hot weather during summer!

One of my hosts is a midi tower case with an i7-4790K and two GTX970s in it and just recently, the CPU has been re-booting during the day (runs fine through the night)

Nothing is overclocked and I've dropped the core voltage as far as it will go (any further and I get random BSOD instead of reboots) but the CPU core temperatures are still hovering around the high 80s/low 90s when I can check them. The CPU currently has a Noctua NH-L12 cooler on it, I previously tried a larger Artic Cooler i30 but that actually performed worse as it blocked too much of the airflow.

The case has a 120mm fan on the lower front pulling air in, a 120mm fan on the top rear pushing air out (just behind the CPU heatsink and fan) and a 120mm fan on the side directly above the GPUs also pushing air out. I've tried it without the side panels on but that appeared to disrupt the routing of the airflow and was marginally worse.

It doesn't help that the room it's in hasn't got much air circulating, not south facing and the windows are always open but the ambient is still probably around the mid 30s.

For reliable operation, I've had to underclock it by 10% but at least it runs all the time now.

Finally to my question(s):

Are there any better low profile air coolers that anyone would reccommend?

I could probably remove the unused drive bays and bodge a second inlet fan at the front top of the case. Would it be of any benefit to segregate the airflow internally between the GPUs and the CPU? Two zones separated by some sort of barrier, in at the front top, past the CPU, out at back top and in at the front bottom, past the GPUs and out at the side.

Would I get any benefit from switching the CPU air cooler for an all-in-one water cooler (I'm thinking of the Antec H2O H600 Pro)?

Regards,

Mark
nick
Active UBT Contributor 1+ yr
Posts: 383
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by nick »

Woodles wrote:Hi all,

I'm having a bit of a heating problem at the moment, not helped by the unseasonal hot weather during summer!

One of my hosts is a midi tower case with an i7-4790K and two GTX970s in it and just recently, the CPU has been re-booting during the day (runs fine through the night)

Nothing is overclocked and I've dropped the core voltage as far as it will go (any further and I get random BSOD instead of reboots) but the CPU core temperatures are still hovering around the high 80s/low 90s when I can check them. The CPU currently has a Noctua NH-L12 cooler on it, I previously tried a larger Artic Cooler i30 but that actually performed worse as it blocked too much of the airflow.

The case has a 120mm fan on the lower front pulling air in, a 120mm fan on the top rear pushing air out (just behind the CPU heatsink and fan) and a 120mm fan on the side directly above the GPUs also pushing air out. I've tried it without the side panels on but that appeared to disrupt the routing of the airflow and was marginally worse.

It doesn't help that the room it's in hasn't got much air circulating, not south facing and the windows are always open but the ambient is still probably around the mid 30s.

For reliable operation, I've had to underclock it by 10% but at least it runs all the time now.

Finally to my question(s):

Are there any better low profile air coolers that anyone would reccommend?

I could probably remove the unused drive bays and bodge a second inlet fan at the front top of the case. Would it be of any benefit to segregate the airflow internally between the GPUs and the CPU? Two zones separated by some sort of barrier, in at the front top, past the CPU, out at back top and in at the front bottom, past the GPUs and out at the side.

Would I get any benefit from switching the CPU air cooler for an all-in-one water cooler (I'm thinking of the Antec H2O H600 Pro)?

Regards,

Mark
before you go spending any more money is sounds like you have more than enough air flow in the case. might be something as simple as to much, to little or dried up thermal paste. bar that if you have the space do a push pull on the cooler should give you a decent boost in cooling (make sure there the same speed fans).
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UBT - Timbo
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi Mark

Here's my 2 cents:

1) The GTX's produce a lot of heat. If they are being used for BOINC, then you can still get good results by underclocking and undervolting both of the GTX's. Use MSI Afterburner to lower Core Voltage, and Core and Memory Clocks. You can also change the profile at which the GTX fans work, by making them go faster, if the GPU temp goes over a set limit.

2) I think you have enough fans inside the case, but I would be inclined to ensure that any fans on the front of the case are sucking air into the case and then make sure the rear facing case and PSU fans are pushing air out.

3) I had a similar issue when my work PC had 2x GTX580's installed inside...fortunately, Windows didn't crash but the case got very, very hot...and that was with the left side panel removed. I'm not using twin GTX configuration now, simply due to this.

regards
Tim
Woodles
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by Woodles »

nick wrote:
Woodles wrote:Hi all,

I'm having a bit of a heating problem at the moment, not helped by the unseasonal hot weather during summer!

... snip ...

Regards,

Mark
before you go spending any more money is sounds like you have more than enough air flow in the case. might be something as simple as to much, to little or dried up thermal paste. bar that if you have the space do a push pull on the cooler should give you a decent boost in cooling (make sure there the same speed fans).
Hi Chris,

Good idea, I'll have a look at the paste tonight. It's only been assembled about six months but it has been running flat out for those six months and as mentioned, been quite warm during that time :D

The current cooler is a dual fan arrangement, admittedly, one is 80mm and the other 120mm but they're the fans that come with it. I'll see about setting them to full speed all the time instead of auto and see what that achieves.

Thanks,

Mark
Woodles
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Posts: 11757
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Location: Cambridgeshire

Re: Cooling help required.

Post by Woodles »

UBT - Timbo wrote:Hi Mark

Here's my 2 cents:

1) The GTX's produce a lot of heat. If they are being used for BOINC, then you can still get good results by underclocking and undervolting both of the GTX's. Use MSI Afterburner to lower Core Voltage, and Core and Memory Clocks. You can also change the profile at which the GTX fans work, by making them go faster, if the GPU temp goes over a set limit.

2) I think you have enough fans inside the case, but I would be inclined to ensure that any fans on the front of the case are sucking air into the case and then make sure the rear facing case and PSU fans are pushing air out.

3) I had a similar issue when my work PC had 2x GTX580's installed inside...fortunately, Windows didn't crash but the case got very, very hot...and that was with the left side panel removed. I'm not using twin GTX configuration now, simply due to this.

regards
Tim
Hi TIm,

1) They do indeed! They're only being used for BOINC so I'll have a look at turning them down, they're just on default settings at the moment. The GPU fans themselves seem to be working fine, the temperature monitoring reports a nice steady temperature regardless of what they're doing so I'll probably leave the profile as it is.

2) Air comes in at the bottom front and out at the top back (and the side) I may look at the bigger picture and fit some fans to the windows to get the hot air out of the room.

3) Whilst investigating the crashes, I did find the rear plate of one of the GPUs was uncomfortable to touch ... and that was using the case as a heatsink! (How much is liquid nitrogen these days? :lol:) It seems a little extreme to build another host just to separate the GPUs ... but if that's what it takes :twisted:

Regards,

Mark
UBT - Timbo
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi Mark

Another thing to check:

I bought my GTX's 2nd hand off fleabay and installed them straight away - this is a couple of years ago.

When I got the Xeon mobo and CPU a while back, I had a spare case so I put the mobo, CPU and CPU fans etc into the new case. I then looked at the spare GTX580 I had, and saw that it might need a quick hoovering. In fact I took the main heatsink off...and found loads of dust inside. :-(

Some pressurised air and a fine paintbrush and I was able to clean most of the dust and detritus out. When it all got put back together, the nominal running temp (without BOINC running) went down from 50+ deg C to under 30...and even with BOINC running, it runs about 20 deg C lower than before.

So, might be an idea to check the GPU internals, esp the fan and air inlet/outlets.

regards
Tim
nick
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by nick »

Woodles wrote:
Hi Chris,
should i change my name? :lol: :lol:
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Woodles
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by Woodles »

Hi Tim, I think the GPUs are alright as they're both pretty consistent and stable but I'll check anyway.
nick wrote:
Woodles wrote: Hi Chris,
should i change my name? :lol: :lol:
If you wouldn't mind, remembering all these different names is getting confusing (sorry :oops: )
UBT - Timbo
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Woodles wrote:Hi Tim, I think the GPUs are alright as they're both pretty consistent and stable but I'll check anyway.
Hi Mark

My line of thought is if the case temp is getting too warm, then so are most if not all the internal components...which could then lead to the CPU rebooting.

So, it's not so much the GPU's or the fans per se, but the "effect" of the heat they produce, affecting other components....whether it is RAM wobble, or stressed components...might be an idea to check the temp of the Southbridge and Northbridge chips, as they could be over-stressed if running 2x GPU's within a "hotter than average" environment.

It might even be an idea to remove one of the GTX's and see if the lower temp helps a bit - the fact though is that with a higher ambient day temp and cooler night temp, the CPU/mobo are not happy at the higher day time temps.

regards
Tim
Woodles
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by Woodles »

Hi Both,

An update:

I cleaned all the dust and cat hairs out of all the fans, filters and heatsinks, replaced the thermal paste on the CPU cooler, swapped the GPUs over so the one nearest the CPU is the one that vents out of the back not into the case and added a second 120mm fan to the front of of the case sucking air in.

The cores are now about nine degrees cooler on average, the internal case temperature has dropped by 5 degrees and the GPUs by a couple of degrees each as well. I may even be able to run the CPU at it's rated speed now!

Thanks for the suggestions,

Mark
UBT - Timbo
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by UBT - Timbo »

HI Mark

Sounds good. Any lowering of temps is a good thing, so it looks like you're going in the right direction. !!

Don't forget to give this a go - it's a free download and it works with non-MSI GPU cards :-)

https://gaming.msi.com/features/afterburner

regards
Tim
nick
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Re: Cooling help required.

Post by nick »

nice work amazing what dust will do to thermals
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