More powerful fan on an H7?

[aisle9]

1 minute ago, stconquest said:

That won't work with me.  =D

I still run my i5 3570K at stock because I have yet to find a need for speed.  I am ready to OC, just don't need to.  3.3GHz + boost baby!

Honestly, once I know what speed I'm stable at, there's a pretty good chance that I just go straight back to stock and save the OC profile in BIOS. With the type of work I do, there are times where every last MHz you can squeak out of a computer counts, but for typical stuff like gaming, YouTube and Photoshop, stock is plenty. I'll save the overclocking for those times that I really need it and run stock when I'd rather keep the CPU's life a happy, peaceful one.

[aisle9]

So I did make my way to Fry's and pick up the Corsair SP120 performance edition 2-pack. I also made a few other changes to my overall layout to try and give myself a more positive airflow. Here's what I came up with:

 

 

Starting from the top left, the red exhaust fan is an Aerocool DS 120mm, 81 CFM. The fan above it is a Cryorig QF120, up to 47 CFM, PWM. The heatsink has, of course, the two Corsair SP120 performance editions on it, 63 CFM each, PWM, but now it kind of sounds like there's a swarm of angry bees in my CPU.  Not unbearably loud by any means, though. The two fans in front are 140mm bGears b-blasters, 81 CFM each. The lower fan turns off until 60C to avoid sucking in all kinds of dust off the carpet. After doing the math on it, the airflow is ever so slightly negative at lower temperatures when the lower intake fan is turned off, but goes positive quickly when things go under load.

 

Any changes you'd make to that setup? I had another 120mm 41 CFM generic Thermaltake case fan up top as an exhaust that turned off below 60C, but, um, my computer refused to POST with it there. Oops.

 

*Edit: temps at 4.6GHz, 1.245v came down to a single peak of 82C during 30 minutes of OCCT, usually between 72-75C. I'm ok with that, considering that I'll probably get another couple of degrees out of the AS5 as it burns in, but I've stepped down to 1.242v anyway to see what happens.

[aisle9]

Crap, these new fans are more trouble than they're worth. I'm having all kinds of power issues. Even at stock voltage, the CPU won't POST unless two fans are disconnected. It just powers on for a second, then powers right back off without POSTing. A couple of times, it made it past the POST and into the OS before freezing.

 

My 750W power supply (overkill, I know, but it was on sale) hasn't had a single issue before these fans were installed. I know I'm not the first person to run two SP120 performance editions on a heatsink. Does it seem like something's very wrong, or does it seem like I'm just asking too much of the board? It support six fan headers, and I have six on there. I had six on there before, but two of them were stock case fans. I'm disconnecting one of the 140 intake fans and the top PWM exhaust for the time being.

[stconquest]

There is no way your system is pushing even 500W at load, not with that Maxwell GPU.  Check your cable runs.  It should not be a PSU issue unless the unit is faulty.

 

Side note:  I had slightly negative pressure at idle loads with my fans for a while.  I rearranged my fans a bit and wow, a lot of the dust stays out.  Just make sure your front fans are filtered.

[aisle9]

1 hour ago, stconquest said:

There is no way your system is pushing even 500W at load, not with that Maxwell GPU.  Check your cable runs.  It should not be a PSU issue unless the unit is faulty.

 

Side note:  I had slightly negative pressure at idle loads with my fans for a while.  I rearranged my fans a bit and wow, a lot of the dust stays out.  Just make sure your front fans are filtered.

I'm chalking it up to faulty fans. I put the original fans back in in a different layout, and it seems to be working just fine. I'll just order a spare QF120 from Cryorig, I suppose, since those are the fans designed for this cooler.

 

Trust me, I checked the fan cables over and over. Nothing wrong.

[Guest]

hmm so weird some of these issues you're having. 

 

I have noticed that the top exhaust has more or less the same effect as having an intake there alternatively. You might even shave a couple of degrees by switching the directions (may be more of a moot point with push/pull config. as I did this with just a single fan on the H7. 

[agentagent47]

water cooling time for you bro. what case btw ? there are many variable that matter about your cpu temp. cases,case fans, gpu SLI/crossfire,amd GPU tend to get hot and thus create a hot ambient temp inside the case and without a good case fans flow the air is stuck inside the case,etc

[aisle9]

7 hours ago, Alexokan said:

I have noticed that the top exhaust has more or less the same effect as having an intake there alternatively. You might even shave a couple of degrees by switching the directions (may be more of a moot point with push/pull config. as I did this with just a single fan on the H7. 

I'm no longer push/pull. Removing the Corsair fans solved the problem, even though the rest of the config stayed basically the same as above, with the Cryorig fan moved back onto the H7 and the original two 120mm case fans put up top as exhausts to get myself back up to six fans for troubleshooting purposes.

 

I'm contemplating putting the Corsairs back in and running the heatsink as DC to see if that makes any difference, but running those two fans at a constant 60% would make that PC sound like a straight up jet engine. I'm more likely to just order another Cryorig QF120, as I know that fan won't cause problems and can be moved around the case if the CPU just doesn't like having it there.

 

What do you mean by switching directions? Using the rear of the case as intake and the front as exhaust?

 

7 hours ago, agentagent47 said:

water cooling time for you bro. what case btw ? there are many variable that matter about your cpu temp. cases,case fans, gpu SLI/crossfire,amd GPU tend to get hot and thus create a hot ambient temp inside the case and without a good case fans flow the air is stuck inside the case,etc

My 960 peaks at 75C in FurMark extreme burn-in testing, so while it is hot, it's not an extreme heat source in there. With a more aggressive fan curve, I could get it to max out around 65-70C, but then it would sound like a 747.

 

The whole point of getting the H7 was to avoid water cooling. For one, it's more expensive. Two, it's louder. Three, it's got multiple failure points (pump, fans, hoses) whereas a tower has one--the fan(s). And, at some level, I'm just not comfortable with cycling liquid through the inside of my PC.

 

Also, if I bought an AIO now after begging her so hard for an H7, my wife would murder me.

 

*Edit: The Aerocool DS 120mm has pressure listed at 2.29mm H2O. As someone who has no real clue what static pressure is required for a radiator fan, and given that the DS is damn near silent, is that a viable option to place on the heatsink instead of a PWM fan, as I know that those DS fans work and work well?

 

*Edit 2: The Cryorig QF120 has its static pressure listed at 1.65mm H2O. Bigger is better on static pressure, right? If so, back to Fry's...

 

*Edit 3: Thermaltake Core V31 case

[aisle9]

So here's my final test bed setup:

 

 

I moved the DS 120mm to the back of the heatsink and the QF120 to the front. I would have done it the other way around, but the back of the DS 120mm is a little dusty from its previous life as an intake fan, and I'd rather not create a new problem to solve an old one. I also reinstalled both OEM case fans, one as the main exhaust, one on top, purely in the interest of ruling out the final variable--placement of the fans in a push/pull config on the radiator. Apologies for the atrocious cable management and odd decisions on fan placement. I'm not trying to win any awards at this point, just figure out what the hell is going on. There's a bit of a grinding noise when the PC first powers up, but I think I've traced that to the balls-old optical drive that I only put in there to install Windows anyway.

 

It's on a stock OCCT run right now with the fans set to 100% at all times. If that works, I'll go up to 4.5GHz at an overpowered 1.24v and let it go for an hour to see if that kills it. If the PC survives both torture tests, I have no reason to conclude that anything other than defective fans caused this latest round of problems.

 

Thanks to you guys for all your help thus far (and to those who responded to my "uh oh" help thread last night). Hopefully this solves it, and I come back from Fry's with three new Aerocool fans and two fewer Corsairs. Once I get the new fans in there, I'll move one of the existing 140mm fans up top and right in front of the RAM as an added intake for high temp situations. The other 140mm will probably be decommissioned for now.

[aisle9]

So here's what I ended up with (and yes, I am looking for awards for my cable management now  ):

 

 

And it instantly froze. It booted up successfully after that, and I'm running just fine now at stock. If it continues giving me trouble, the only conceivable variable left is PWM. Do ASUS motherboards have issues with PWM?

[aisle9]

I'm more or less stable at 4.5GHz with 1.2v. I'm still having issues with OCCT, but that's a topic for another thread. Peak temps during AIDA64 testing were 74C, but they stayed closer to 65 as a general rule, with 70+ only happening on a handful of occasions over an eight-hour test.

 

My biggest leftover question, aside from whether the CPU will even boot at 4.6GHz with 1.2v running through it, is about that Cryorig fan up top. I'm not sure if having a 49 CFM fan there is helping anything, or if it's just pushing airflow from the bottom two intakes down and choking off the heatsink fans a bit. I'm considering either moving it back as an intake directly above the heatsink or leaving it in place as an exhaust running at 35-40% max--just enough to pull some air up from the bottom intakes, but not enough to yank it all out of the case and away from the heatsink fans. The CPU is not against a wall right now, so I'm not worried about hot exhaust air being pulled right back into the case if it's directly above the heatsink as an intake, but that may eventually change and necessitate some rethinking of the placement or orientation of the fans.

 

What would your suggestions be?

[aisle9]

So, long story short:

 

The Corsair fans royally fragged everything by shorting, overloading, wtfever who knows, but at the end of the day the motherboard, power supply and processor were all screwed. There was probably something wrong with the PSU anyway, honestly, and plugging all those fans in just exposed it, but damn. Second Antec HCG750 power supply, second failure, first time losing half a computer to it.

 

The final tally was a new motherboard (MSI Z97S Krait edition--I'm not made of money at this point lol), new PSU (Corsair RM650--not screwing around with mid-tier anymore) and a new i7-4790K after my old one started running dangerously hot shortly following the fan snafu. Fortunately, I was within the return/exchange window, or I'd have been putting the G3258 back in here.

 

I also figured out why the spread on the thermal paste was so messed up: the heat spreader is ever so slightly warped. You can't see it or feel it when you clean the spreader, but if you run your finger ever so slowly across the surface, you can tell that it's just a teeny tiny bit sloped from about the center out. That would coincide perfectly with the weird spread patterns that happened with MX-4, AS5 and Cryorig's own CP7. My new 4790K is on the stock cooler until I either get the H7 exchanged or Fry's has a 212 EVO in stock.

 

So, yeah, moral of the story: always plug more fans in, because you never know if you might expose a weakness in your PSU that fries your mobo and CPU, and if you're lucky, you'll be in the return window for your CPU. Thanks to all you guys for the help.