my experience with the h80i, and a small mod.

[tobben]

i just did a cleanup and took appart my system, been having some problems with the aio cooler and i figured why not post it here, this is the reason i never reccomend getting an aio cooler, unless you are going to be traveling alot, use the pc as a lan pc or something similar, a traditional air cooler means less noise, less wires and cluttering, less points of failure, that block of aluminium is unlikely to disapoint you.

 

 

 

i brought with me the trusted tools any techie needs and prepared for battle.

 

 

my first cooler got rma'ed due to the horrifying grinding noise, sounded like the pump was trying to eat itself, with the second cooler i would get nearly 40*c - 45*c in idle and 75*c ish under load with stock voltage, with maybe around 20 *c ambient temperature, why you ask? well you see corsair hasn't done an overly fantastic job with the mounting tools they provide, i will show you why my temperatures were so high in the pictures below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

as you can see the cooler has barely made any contact on the cpu at all, maybe dangling on the edge of 1/3rd of the cpu, this picture aactually does it more justice than reality, in actuality the smudge of thermal paste is see through and has barely settled on the cpu.

 

 

 

the waterblock even further proves my point, as you can see the thermal paste is largely in tact the way it was applied when it was at corsairs factory, except for the part that i touched with my thumb .

 

 

 

 

what i did was to take 4 rubber o-rings and place 1 on each screw hole beetwen the mounting bracket and the motherboard.

 

 

 

 

 

like this, previously the backplate was completely loose and wobbling around, this made it make slightly better contact so that i could actually tighten the thumb screws and have the waterblock/mounting rack sit snug as it is supposed to do, be careful with tightening the water block if you were to replicate this though.

 

 

 

 

 

this made my temps go from 40+ idle and 75 ish load to sub 29*c idle and this in load, roughly a 15*c difference as it's abit cold inside right now, from what i hear this is a pretty common issue with corsair's aio coolers, depending on the thickness of the motherboard etc.

[ShadowCaptain]

the moral of the story is, simple aio coolers are more or less a gimmick

I fail to see how they are a gimmick if you get sub 29 degrees now it fits properly

 

badly built/implemented yes, but its hardly a gimmick, its a cooler? it is cooling

[tobben]

I fail to see how they are a gimmick if you get sub 29 degrees now it fits properly

 

badly built/implemented yes, but its hardly a gimmick, its a cooler? it is cooling

well yes that much is true, but you could see roughly the same results if not better with a decent air cooler, as i have said before aio coolers do have their place, but in most cases they don't really provide a worthwhile benefit, then again everyone is different, some people simply prefer them because of the looks, which i disagree on but that's fine

 

i decided to edit out the last part before you finished your comment because i decided i didn't want to start any trouble with bold statements.

[Rorgash]

well yes that much is true, but you could see roughly the same results if not better with a decent air cooler, as i have said before aio coolers do have their place, but in most cases they don't really provide a worthwhile benefit, then again everyone is different, some people simply prefer them because of the looks, which i disagree on but that's fine

 

i decided to edit out the last part before you finished your comment because i decided i didn't want to start any trouble with bold statements.

 

they have a very small form factor can can be mounted to send the hot air DIRECTLY out of the case instead of into it making for very good cooling in a tiny case, also the performance is very good for the size compared to a massive air cooler

 

also if you OC you will see bigger differences as the heat goes up the aio will displace the heat better

[Ssoele]

Isn't there some rubber you're suppose to put between your motherboard and backplate?

[tobben]

Isn't there some rubber you're suppose to put between your motherboard and backplate?

it has some rings that come pre assembled on it that you can see in the picture, aside from that there is only a small plastic sheet supposed to go beetwen the mobo and the backplate to prevent shorting out the mothboard, aside from that, no not really, you might have picked up some talk about this beforehand as it's a fairly common issue.

[tobben]

they have a very small form factor can can be mounted to send the hot air DIRECTLY out of the case instead of into it making for very good cooling in a tiny case, also the performance is very good for the size compared to a massive air cooler

 

also if you OC you will see bigger differences as the heat goes up the aio will displace the heat better

it is easier to differenciate coolers from eachother if you put them on a nasty cpu and ramp up the voltage yes, a powerfull cooler will only flex it's muscles once you throw enough heat at it, but that doesn't necessarily mean you will see a big difference from air to aio by doing so, that is dependant on the cooler ofcourse, and while water has bigger heat capacity that doesn't necessarily mean it dissipates faster, in fact the main benefit with liquid cooling is that you have the option of throwing more surface area at the issue to dissipate the heat.

 

almost the only case where i would reccomend an aio is if you are going to move the pc around alot, going with an aio cooler will significantly reduce the strain on the motherboard and risk of breaking anything, or as you said they might be practical in certain small form factor builds where the aio might be easier to fit than a equivalent air cooler, and sometimes small form factor/traveling/lan builds goes hand in hand.

[tobben]

I fail to see how they are a gimmick if you get sub 29 degrees now it fits properly

 

badly built/implemented yes, but its hardly a gimmick, its a cooler? it is cooling

and just to add, with 1,215 volt 4,5 Ghz overclock i hit 73*c load and 40 idle which again, not very impressive.. i suspect the mounting might still be alittle bit iffy, what i should have done at the time of fixing it was attaching it one time, taking it off again to see how well the thermal past had spread, but didn't bother at the time, really should have.