unholy_walrus

I would advice against using just a single 140 rad. It won't be enough.

CM Silencio FP 120 pwms are cheap and ridiculously good for the price. Especially for heatsink/radiator use.

A stock cooler combined with shitty, dried up thermal compound is a combination that will get you high temperatures even with i5s. Add in poor airflow and your temps are in the 90s. I wouldn't like to see my CPU going over 80c in continuous use but really it shouldn't do any sort of damage so don't worry. Afaik the Freezer 240 is a fine CLC. It looks cheap as hell but performs very nicely. You should see a massive drop in temperatures when you switch from the stock cooler.

Well your water temp is what matters here. It'll tell us whether the problem is in your loop or the CPU contact (die to ihs or ihs to block). I mean I've seen a 6700k do this before before delidding.

CM Silencio fans are amazing for the price and very much underrated. They work in radiator/heatsink scenarios very well. Only thing that sucks about their 1400rpm pwm-variants is that their pwm control range isn't wide enough for my liking, but it won't bother most people. The 2400rpm ones are fantastic in every way. I have 1400rpm FP 120 pwms running on a 360 radiator and I have nothing bad to say about their performance-to-noise ratio.

What are your water and GPU temps like? I assume your chip isn't delidded?

Upgraded to non-ticking pwm fans all around. Silence, finally. Also removed the butt-ugly LED-solution and added a much better quality DIY RGB set. Wish I had a proper camera to do all this justice. edit: I just realised my pain medication also makes a cameo in this photo. Ignore the happy pills in the basket.

AIOs have shitty pumps. You'll get fed up with the noise eventually. EK Predator is the only exception I've seen (though I'd still only accept a D5 personally). Yet to see the new Swiftech stuff though. But having said that, Pascal cards really do need liquid cooling. It unlocks a whole new world for them. The difference in boost clock stability is something you would not even believe.

I'd try to find a used R9 290(x) with a waterblock or a 290 and a block separately. There should be people still selling those for cheap, both cards and blocks. The 6990 would be a miserable choice and you'd regret it. Also, here's some advice from someone who's been liquid cooling PCs since the early 2000s; don't sacrifice performance just because you want to have a water cooled system, especially at this kind of price point. I strongly advice you to get the best hardware you can afford right now (just make sure the GPU you buy has waterblocks available) and put them under water later when you can afford it. I cannot stress this enough. If you decide to make huge compromises because you've decided you want that loop now, you'll regret it later, a LOT. edit: I'd also like to say that $300 really isn't enough for a decent gpu+cpu loop IMO, even if you're buying used stuff. You really don't want to cheap out with this stuff.

Word of warning: every X61 I've owned (I had a few in the past) has had issues with pump noise.

A small case with bad airflow will effect your temps a bit but not by this much. If I were you I'd definitely get in contact with your retailer and Gigabyte both. Those temps aren't dangerous by any means but you're not getting what you paid for. Pascal boosts much more steadily when kept at low temps. IRC = internet relay chat. It's an old chat service. edit: Also, do what KE2012 just said. I don't think that's the case but you should make sure anyway.

Asked a friend @IRC who owns the card in question. His temps at stock settings were 52c or lower in a room with very high ambient temp.

That doesn't sound good at all. 68c is what I'd expect from the air cooled version 1080 Xtreme Gaming. If the radiator fan is getting even half decent airflow and isn't somehow sucking in like super super hot air, there's definitely something wrong. I'd contact the manufacturer or wherever you bought the card. Have you tried adjusting the fanspeed? 68c definitely isn't okay or good or acceptable in any way for a water cooled card, even if it has just a 120 rad.

That actually looks way better than what I thought.

So yeah, this build is ALL about having to make compromises. I'm chronically fucked when it comes to financial things thanks to some not-so-nice medical stuff. That means building a PC requires sacrifices and, yes, compromises. It's been a while since I've had a custom liquid cooled system for myself, last time was like in the Q6600 days. I just haven't had the money for it. Last year I built custom loops for several of my friends and that left me with some extra h2o gear. I put together a CPU loop using that leftover gear and I was supposed to put my R9 290 under water as well, but I ended up having to RMA it. Instead of a new card I chose to get my money back and decided to wait for the GTX 1070 to launch. It took some patience but I did exactly that and saved up some more money to buy one. I got my card a few weeks back, and a few days ago I got an EK 1080 block and backplate for a very reasonable price and went for it. It's nothing special but for me personally this is a big deal. This build shouldn't even exist with how tight money has been for the past year+. Shit like this makes me happy. Next up is removing those unsightly RGB LED strips and replacing them with better quality ones I have lying around. One thing I'd really love to do is sleeve the cables (the D5 cables at the very least) but that'll have to wait until I have a) the money and b) the motivation. I wanted to get rid of the horrible Founders Edition noise and hoped for steadier boost clocks and that's exactly what I got. Plus it's nice to look at and even my girlfriend said it looks "cool and pretty" which is a BIG deal (it means it can stay on the table - yay). Sorry for the wall of text but I really wanted to get it out there. This stuff actually has some meaning to me. It's a damn nice way to kill stress, pain and anxiety too. Only did a quick temp test in Witcher 3; maxed out at 40c GPU, 37c water and 55c CPU after 35 minutes in 32c ambient temp, Corsair ML120s running at 1100rpm. Still bleeding the airbubbles out. I knew I might be risking it with having only a 360x40 rad but I really could not afford buying more. Besides, I figured I should be okay considering the GTX 1070 isn't that difficult of a card to keep cool. All in all, the last time I was this happy with a personal build was when I was looking at my first loop with an Athlon XP 2400+ and a Radeon 9800 Pro in like 2004.

For now the 980ti hybrid may perform a little bit better when both cards are overclocked to the max, however I'd still go for the 1070. Give it some time and the 1070 will be doing better than the 980ti. Nvidia has a history of neglecting previous generation cards. Then in addition to that there's the fact that Pascal-cards will do better in upcoming DX12 titles, perhaps in Vulkan games as well. I had to make this exact same choice but in the end it was fairly easy. The 1070 is a much safer choice, IMO. When it comes to overclocking, you really can't say Pascal cards don't oc well. It's just that GPU boost 3 is so damn efficient that there's little left to do yourself. With some minor tweaking pretty much any 1070 should reach 2Ghz+ on air. Also, I wouldn't recommend hybrid cards like that anyway. If you want to put a card under water, do it right. Those AIO coolers are surprisingly loud and pump issues are very common.

Works for larger purchaces (Mindfactory always charges 20€ shipping per order, unless it's way large) but quite often shipping makes it almost as expensive as here. Sucks to be us, huh.

Finland. Tech prices here are beyond ridiculous. Looks like you can get ML120 Pros for 27€ right now, but the LED versions are 30€ each.

Non-pros as they were very affordable. I ended up paying about 14€/fan with the dual packs whereas ML120 Pro's would have been 30€ each. I really don't think the colour scheme and rubber corners justify that kind of added cost. I do use my own anti-vibration setups anyway though so I can't say if the non-pros suffer much from not having the rubber corners. These are definitely my new go-to fans. First time I've ever recommended a Corsair fan.

I don't know what you're smoking but 1) these are the best fans I've ever seen and 2) how the hell is this ripping off Noctua? Please explain that. I'm glad Corsair decided to work with Sunon on these fans, they have long had experience with maglev bearings. I replaced 3 Noctua NF-F12 IPPC PWM fans on my 360 rad with these and I couldn't be happier. I've never been satisfied with any fan, and I've been through every decent quality one. GTs, Venturis, FP120s, eLoops, Vardars, NF-F12s etc. I ended up with Noctua because they had the least amount of noise issues, good low-speed performance and a nice sound signature. And that warranty service. Too bad even the Noctuas had some ticking issues. Now that I have these ML120s, I'm not going back. These fans have ZERO bearing noise and no motor noise at low speeds. Performance wise they're as good as any fan I've ever had - just quieter. Plus, they have by far the best sound signature I've ever heard. Bitching about these fans being loud at 2k+ rpm is just special kind of stupid. Please do show me a fan that isn't loud at high speeds. I ended up setting the upper rpm limit at about 1300rpm, after that the noise of air ripping through a rad starts to get too much for me. If you want a fan that combines no bearing noise at all, no ticking, great rad/heatsink performance, incredible MTBF, 5 year warranty and probably the best noise-to-performance ratio available, these are your fans. Pro tip: get the dual pack and suddenly they're pretty cheap. I bought dual packs for 24€ each which IMO is dirt cheap for fans like these. Meanwhile, Noctua are sitting on their asses releasing nothing new. I'm glad SOMEONE came up with this. I'm Noctua fanboy but I'm done paying a premium for fans that are no longer that special. FYI; you MUST use pwm control with these fans. With voltage control the maglev bearing won't work properly which will cause noise issues

How hot does the air inside your case get?

295X2 throttles all the time. I'd only buy a dual-GPU card if I was going to custom watercool it.

So I've run into an interesting issue. It seems that the pwm controller of my current Z97-AR is making most pwm fans produce a pretty horrible ticking. It got so bad on my Venturi HP-12s that I ended up just going back to industrial NF-F12s as they are the only pwm fans alongside CM FP120s that I've never heard tick at all. EK Vardars had this issue as well, though I would've gotten rid of them anyway because of bearing issues and overall bad noise/performance ratio on low rpm. I've yet to try pwm NB-eLoops because of issues I had with them pwm versions much earlier and I'm not sure if NB fixed them. Has anyone else experienced an issue like this? This is the first time I've had trouble with a pwm fan controller and I've been doing this for a LONG time. I'm tempted to order the Darkside pwm GTs to try them out but it'll be a fantastic waste of money if they'll end up ticking as well. (No, it's not the normal and acceptable pwm ticking that most fans produce, it's the kind of noise that punches through your eardrums even at a distance of several meters.)

I'm glad it works for you, though at that price bracket I'd still choose air any day. But really no, those fans really don't rival Noctua in any way.

So I'm a bit confused. I'm running a 4770k 4.4GHz at 1.320v using adaptive voltage (1.270v and +0.050v offset) on an Asus Z97-AR board. I'm well aware of the issue of AVX instructions making the voltage jump by 0.1v, but this is different. I'm using HWinfo64 and CPU-Z for monitoring in windows (W7) and the Vcore and VID readings I'm getting are confusing the F out of me. During normal desktop use I some times notice the core VID readings in HWinfo jump up to 1.4-1.42v. The Vcore0-3 readings in HWinfo can spike up to 1.352v, however this doesn't concern me much as it isn't THAT high of a voltage plus I've heard from other users that the readings are often off by about 0.03v. The VID readings are a different story. CPU-Z just seems to show the same max voltage that I've set up in the BIOS; 1.32v. I've never seen it show anything above it. I really don't like seeing 1.4v and over, but what bugs me even more is why is it happening during normal desktop use? What makes it even more odd is a test I just recently did. I ran BF4 for about an hour to test other things, and during this time the VID readings for all cores stayed at 1.32v while Vcore readings were 1.32-1.35v - aka perfectly normal. But then afterwards during basic internet surfing the VID reading on two cores spiked to 1.42v. Like I really don't get what's going on. If I'm not mistaken, the core VID reading is something like the voltage that the CPU is asking, not the actual core voltage? If this is correct, how bad is it that it keeps spiking that high every now and then? If it's bad, does anyone have any idea what the hell is going on? I haven't done any stress testing using adaptive voltage. I've tried using both negative and positive offsets, no change. Thermals aren't a problem, but I'm planning on running this CPU and board for a while and seeing voltages of over 1.4v really make me uneasy. I did ask Asus support for input on the matter, but they absolutely refused to help me in any way or answer any questions because I'm not running everything at stock settings. Yes, their support actually said that. Even when I told them I'd run my system stock to get answers from them, they refused to answer any questions at all. And yes, this chip is a worthless overclocker. 4.4 is the absolute maximum I can get out of it. Couldn't boot to windows 4.5 even at 1.4v+ no matter what I tweaked when I was testing it, and eventually just settled with 4.4. I guess I almost should've stayed with my old 3570k which was a pretty golden chip. Oh well, a friend of mine has a 4770k that needs 1.3v+ for 4.1, that's the worst one I've ever seen.