Would you consider my CPU cooler to be defective?

[Tosa]

I've had trouble with my computer shutting down lately, seemlingly because of the CPU temperature. It usually happens when I put the CPU under a significant amount of load, such as video rendering or Folding@Home. Looking at the temperatures now, having two Firefox tabs open, Spotify and Discord for a few hours now, the temperature jump up and down a lot, but tends to stay between 55°C and 65°C. Before cleaning the dust filter on the intake today, it remained between 65°C and 75°C, on "idle" (web browsing, Discord and Spotify).

My CPU is a Ryzen 5 1600X, the cooler is a Corsair H60.

 

I'm not sure how well this cooler is supposed to perform. Surely, it can't be this bad? Is it defective? Should I RMA it?

[Majestic]

verify the pump is running by listening. If it's a very highpitch whine (high rpm), move the radiator a bit to see if there's any water left or if the pump is running dry.

 

H60 is very old at this point. Not a real shocker if the pump died or the water has permeated. 

[EPPHO]

32 minutes ago, Tosa said:

I've had trouble with my computer shutting down lately, seemlingly because of the CPU temperature. It usually happens when I put the CPU under a significant amount of load, such as video rendering or Folding@Home. Looking at the temperatures now, having two Firefox tabs open, Spotify and Discord for a few hours now, the temperature jump up and down a lot, but tends to stay between 55°C and 65°C. Before cleaning the dust filter on the intake today, it remained between 65°C and 75°C, on "idle" (web browsing, Discord and Spotify).

My CPU is a Ryzen 5 1600X, the cooler is a Corsair H60.

 

I'm not sure how well this cooler is supposed to perform. Surely, it can't be this bad? Is it defective? Should I RMA it?

Is it mounted as it should be?

[Tosa]

17 minutes ago, Majestic said:

verify the pump is running by listening. If it's a very highpitch whine (high rpm), move the radiator a bit to see if there's any water left or if the pump is running dry.

Hmm, not that easy, given how the computer is located. It's hanging underneath my desk, so it's not sitting on the ground, and it's a big hassle to remove it. Most of the cables are also zip tied in place. And I couldn't sleep tonight, so I'm super tired.

I did touch the tubes and radiator, though, while I was in the process of cleaning the dust filter earlier today, and they were warm to the touch. Not super hot, just comfortably warm. Also, just cleaning the dust filter dropped the CPU temperature by 10°C. I let it sit for a considerable amount of time both before and after cleaning the filter, so there's no doubt the temps dropped.

2 minutes ago, frozeNNN said:

Is it mounted as it should be?

I wasn't initially happy with the temps, so I re-applied the thermal paste with a generous amount instead if the little dot. It didn't help. Haven't touched it since. That was one year ago.

The radiator is mounted on the intake in a push configuraion.

[AngryBeaver]

9 minutes ago, Tosa said:

I wasn't initially happy with the temps, so I re-applied the thermal paste with a generous amount instead if the little dot. It didn't help. Haven't touched it since. That was one year ago.

The radiator is mounted on the intake in a push configuraion.

This actually does more harm than good. The more thermal paste you use the more of a barrier you create for the heat to transfer from one item to another. The reason we use TIM at all is because it transfers heat better than air. So we use it to fill any air pockets/bubbles between the chip and block.

 

The problem is that the best heat transfer is from metal to metal, so you want the least amount of TiM you can manage on your chip without allowing air pockets. Also you don't actually need to cover the entire top of the IHS... just the section that is directly over the DIE. Which is why the grain of rice/ dot method has for the most part been the best application method for so long.

[Tosa]

2 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

This actually does more harm than good. The more thermal paste you use the more of a barrier you create for the heat to transfer from one item to another. The reason we use TIM at all is because it transfers heat better than air. So we use it to fill any air pockets/bubbles between the chip and block.

 

The problem is that the best heat transfer is from metal to metal, so you want the least amount of TiM you can manage on your chip without allowing air pockets. Also you don't actually need to cover the entire top of the IHS... just the section that is directly over the DIE. Which is why the grain of rice/ dot method has for the most part been the best application method for so long.

Yeah, I know. But at the time, it was the only thing I could think of, and figured it was worth a shot. And when that didn't help, I didn't want to waste any more of my friend's thermal paste, so I just left it like that. I was never quite happy with the temps, but haven't had problems with shutdowns before recently - except in F@H. The GPU is far better in F@H anyway, so that didn't bother me a whole lot.

[AngryBeaver]

Well chances are you need to take your pc out from under your desk. Open it up, and blast it with compressed air. Your radiator could be clogged, your fans could be clogged, etc. Even with dust filters you would be amazed how much still finds its way in.

[Ace McPlane]

1 hour ago, Tosa said:

I've had trouble with my computer shutting down lately, seemlingly because of the CPU temperature. It usually happens when I put the CPU under a significant amount of load, such as video rendering or Folding@Home. Looking at the temperatures now, having two Firefox tabs open, Spotify and Discord for a few hours now, the temperature jump up and down a lot, but tends to stay between 55°C and 65°C. Before cleaning the dust filter on the intake today, it remained between 65°C and 75°C, on "idle" (web browsing, Discord and Spotify).

My CPU is a Ryzen 5 1600X, the cooler is a Corsair H60.

 

I'm not sure how well this cooler is supposed to perform. Surely, it can't be this bad? Is it defective? Should I RMA it?

I had the h60 in an old build. The evo 212 I had before it performed better.

It's not a very good cooler but those temps are way too high for just idling so yea, I'd say something is wrong.

At least it's not an expensive cooler or anything.

I'd do an upgrade if I were you or switch to a more reliable air cooler. 

Honestly, there's no point in 120mm liquid coolers. If you can't fit a 240mm AIO in there, just go with an air cooler.

[AskTJ]

I would take the cooler off and replace it with an air cooler. Safer and cooler temps.

[DocSwag]

Ryzen had that weird temperature offset thing. Amd for some reason made temps report 20C higher than they should. What programs are you using to check temperatures? I believe ryzen master is supposed to report the correct one.

[Tosa]

3 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Even with dust filters you would be amazed how much still finds its way in.

That's very true. Especially when there's a pet in the house.

1 minute ago, stateofpsychosis said:

Honestly, there's no point in 120mm coolers. If you can't fit a 240 AIO in there, just go with an air cooler.

There's two slots in the front, so I could fit a bigger radiator. I also have the top of the case I could use. But honestly, I've had enough of water cooling for a while and have ordered a Be Quiet! Pure Rock, but the store I ordered from doesn't have it in stock and won't have them before the 25th this month, so I'll have to wait a couple weeks before they can ship it.

I figure there's a whole lot less that can go wrong with a decent air cooler

7 minutes ago, stateofpsychosis said:

he evo 212 I had before it performed better.

Heh, before I got the Ryzen CPU, I had an i7 4790K with an Evo 212. Couldn't be bothered to get the free conversion kit, so I just grabbed some random water cooler without doing much research. Kinda regret that now. That i7 got lost in the mail along with motherboard and RAM, so I got a full refund, which is why I got a Ryzen now.

2 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

Ryzen had that weird temperature offset thing. Amd for some reason made temps report 20C higher than they should. What programs are you using to check temperatures? I believe ryzen master is supposed to report the correct one.

I'm using Ryzen Master.

[Ace McPlane]

28 minutes ago, Tosa said:

That's very true. Especially when there's a pet in the house.

There's two slots in the front, so I could fit a bigger radiator. I also have the top of the case I could use. But honestly, I've had enough of water cooling for a while and have ordered a Be Quiet! Pure Rock, but the store I ordered from doesn't have it in stock and won't have them before the 25th this month, so I'll have to wait a couple weeks before they can ship it.

I figure there's a whole lot less that can go wrong with a decent air cooler

Heh, before I got the Ryzen CPU, I had an i7 4790K with an Evo 212. Couldn't be bothered to get the free conversion kit, so I just grabbed some random water cooler without doing much research. Kinda regret that now. That i7 got lost in the mail along with motherboard and RAM, so I got a full refund, which is why I got a Ryzen now.

I'm using Ryzen Master.

Well, don't be afraid of AIOs just because of one dead one. I have the Fractal Design S36 now and it's great, but yea air coolers are way, way more reliable so if you just want to set it and forget it, that's definitely the best route.

 

Oh, and don't buy any AIOs without first checking compatibility with pcpartpicker. Even though it looks like a 240mm radiator fits the corsair 200r for example, there's not enough clearance to get one in there with pretty much any motherboard. Cases can be tricky like that.

[Tosa]

25 minutes ago, stateofpsychosis said:

Well, don't be afraid of AIOs just because of one dead one. I have the Fractal Design S36 now and it's great, but yea air coolers are way, way more reliable so if you just want to set it and forget it, that's definitely the best route.

Well, a friend of mine's had a lot of trouble with his AIO, first with the pump not working with his particular power supply. It worked when plugging it into my PC, but not his. His pump also died at a later point. So that's my experience with AIOs. Maybe I'll give it another chance at some point. I did look at other AIOs before picking the air cooler though.

Also, I've had my fair share of hardware problems, with RAM slots suddenly dying, replacing the motherboard several times. The last time I RMAed a motherboard, they no longer had CPUs to test with and asked if I could send mine along with the motherboard (hence how the CPU got lost in the mail as well).

So, reducing the number of potention hardware problems is very tempting. Especially considering I recently got a Vive, and this is the only computer I have that's powerful enough to run things smootly in the Vive.

[Ace McPlane]

14 minutes ago, Tosa said:

Well, a friend of mine's had a lot of trouble with his AIO, first with the pump not working with his particular power supply. It worked when plugging it into my PC, but not his. His pump also died at a later point. So that's my experience with AIOs. Maybe I'll give it another chance at some point. I did look at other AIOs before picking the air cooler though.

Also, I've had my fair share of hardware problems, with RAM slots suddenly dying, replacing the motherboard several times. The last time I RMAed a motherboard, they no longer had CPUs to test with and asked if I could send mine along with the motherboard (hence how the CPU got lost in the mail as well).

So, reducing the number of potention hardware problems is very tempting. Especially considering I recently got a Vive, and this is the only computer I have that's powerful enough to run things smootly in the Vive.

I hear ya

I have an Oculus Rift and we already have enough problems in VR with Nvidia driver updates breaking things constantly 

 

Yea, it's one less point of failure so it sounds like you'd be happier on air.

[DocSwag]

12 hours ago, Tosa said:

That's very true. Especially when there's a pet in the house.

There's two slots in the front, so I could fit a bigger radiator. I also have the top of the case I could use. But honestly, I've had enough of water cooling for a while and have ordered a Be Quiet! Pure Rock, but the store I ordered from doesn't have it in stock and won't have them before the 25th this month, so I'll have to wait a couple weeks before they can ship it.

I figure there's a whole lot less that can go wrong with a decent air cooler

Heh, before I got the Ryzen CPU, I had an i7 4790K with an Evo 212. Couldn't be bothered to get the free conversion kit, so I just grabbed some random water cooler without doing much research. Kinda regret that now. That i7 got lost in the mail along with motherboard and RAM, so I got a full refund, which is why I got a Ryzen now.

I'm using Ryzen Master.

Just gotta make sure, is the pump plugged in?

[Tosa]

On 7/13/2018 at 3:49 AM, DocSwag said:

Just gotta make sure, is the pump plugged in?

Given the fact that the temps dropped significantly by just cleaning out some dust, I'm pretty confident it is. I can also read the pump RPM in Asus AI suite.

[Tam3n]

It would be interesting to see how the temps look without the dust filter.