How should I set my AIO pump curves?

SamSterling · December 2, 2020

Hey everyone! I have an AIO cooler (Cooler Master MasterLiquid M120L) in my system (Ryzen 5 3400G, MSI B450 Gaming Plus (not the mATX model, but the ATX model), 32GB 2666MHz memory, Gigabyte RX 570 8GB graphics card, Viper 512GB SSD, 600W PSU, Deepcool Matrexx 50, and an entire audio production setup).

What would be the most efficient way to set up the pump for the cooler? Would it be more efficient to have it set lower so the liquid spends more time in the rad to cool before it's back over the CPU? Would it be better to set up a curve to make it go faster over a higher load? Should I make it a constant 100%? How should I set it up?

This was my first PC build and I set everything up kinda recently, but now my CPU temps are higher than one of my friends' when we're essentially doing the same CPU intensive audio production workloads, even though we have the same CPU. That might just be the different silicon talking, but I feel like it might be more than that. I keep my pump speed set to a constant 75% because I figured that would be the most efficient, but now that this has happened, I realize that that might not be the best case.

Letgomyleghoe · December 2, 2020

i would set pump just full bore, then fans go from like 25% at 30c all the way up to 100% at 70c, just straight line or settle curve.

Bombastinator · December 2, 2020

There are other things besides silicon binning, like thermal conductivity of the heat sink/ihs for example. As long as the numbers are in the safe zone there’s not much to actually worry about.