Cheap DIY Air Cooler Destroys Cooler Master 240mm AIO water cooler!!

[EJZ100]

Hi there,

 

Long time watcher, first time poster,

 

So yesterday i found myself in dire need of a better cooling solution for my girlfriend's PC after seeing her CPU constantly hitting 60°C-75°C while gaming with a loud noise from the dinky Deep Cool CPU cooler(generic $15 air cooler) to accompany it.

 

I was checking through my spare parts for a better 50mm fan when I noticed i still had my old Cooler Master V8 GT air cooler.

 

Short story of the V8 GT cooler: Bought it back in 2014 for next to nothing because owner was getting a smaller case and I used it in my main PC up to June 2018 when the fans started getting noisy and beyond the point of logical repair,

it was promptly replaced with a Cooler Master Masterliquid Lite 240 Dual Radiator AIO Cpu Cooler.

 

I removed the old noisy fans, and replaced them with 2 generic $2, 120mm case fans using only cable ties to tighten the fans and cooler (as recommended by Linus in the GPU fan replacement video) fitted it easily onto my girlfriend's motherboard and the results were beyond astounding, IT DESTROYED THE AIO WATER COOLER IN MY PC WHEN I TESTED IT! 

 

The idle temperature dropped from about 50°C to around 27°C and under stress test it went down from max 82°C to no more than max 53°C whereas the Cooler Master Masterliquid Lite 240 was hitting upwards of 80°C while under stress test.

 

The PC Specs are as follow:

 

My PC: While gaming I get about 48°C-55°C

CPU: Intel i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Masterliquid Lite 240

Motherboard: J&W Z77A ProX

Ram: 16GB @ 1600Mhz (2X 4GB Corsair Vengeance RAM + 2X 4GB Hynix RAM)

GPU: Gigabyte 1070 G1 8 GB

PSU: Corsair VS750

Storage: 1X Intel 120GB SSD + 1X Samsung Evo 850 500GB + 1X WD Blue 1TB HDD

Case: Cooler Master Cosmos S Full Tower

Case Cooling: 1 X Deepcool 120mm intake fan at bottom front panel + 1 X Cooler master Sickleflow 120mm intake fan bottom of case + 1 X Deepcool 120mm exhaust fan at rear of case + 3 X Raidmax NV-A120R3 RGB exhaust fans at top of case.

 

Girlfriend's PC: When gaming she gets about 37°C-41°C

CPU: Intel i7-4790 @ 3.6GHz 

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master V8 GT Heatsink + Mounting + 2 X 120mm generic case fans (VERY GENERIC - COST $2 each.)

Motherboard: MSI H81m-P33 ATX

Ram: 1 X Kingston 8GB RAM @ 1600 MHz

GPU: Zotac GTX 1060 AMP! Edition 6 GB

PSU: Bitfenix 850W

Storage: 1 X Crucial 540 GB SSD + 1 X Toshiba 1GB HDD

Case: Cooler Master Cosmos S Full Tower

Case Cooling: 1 X Cooler master Sickleflow 120mm intake fan at bottom front panel + 3 X Deepcool 120mm exhaust fans at top of case.

 

I took some screenshots for reference between my system and my girlfriend's, and although I would like to swap out both CPUs and test them with both the AIO cooler and the home made cooler, but would like some advice on any variable to eliminate besides just swapping out the 2 coolers to see which is the better performer?

[WoodenMarker]

50c idle and 82c at load for the 4790 isn't much better than the stock cooler and indicates that the AIO wasn't properly mounted or working properly in the first place. 

You can see relative performance here: 

There are plenty of benchmarks online but a fair comparison could be to run the pump and cpu / case fans at 100% rpm and keep track of and normalize for ambient temps. Also, use a fresh Windows installation or make sure no programs are in the background when measuring for idle and make sure to run stress tests for at least 20min before recording temps. 

[LogicalDrm]

I'm bit confused about which CPU you are comparing with AIO vs V8. V8 is far from best coolers, and CM AIO isn't top of the class either. But still AIO should be better. Redo your testing to verify results.