Looking For Help

[GMart84]

I have been custom water cooling for about a year now and am looking for someone in the Chicago area to help me Make what I have look better whether through hard line or different runs of soft tubing.  The system has grown over the par year as I strive for better temperatures.  Given that the cpu is idling at 33C I am assuming I am doing something wrong.  The system is set up as listed.

 

EK-DDC PWM Pump

EK PE 480

EK XE 360

EK PE 120

EK Supremacy CPU block (8086K dellidded 5.2GHz @ 1.42 Vcore)

EK FC GeForce GTX FE (1080Ti EVGA)

EK FC GeForce GTX FE (1080Ti EVGA)

EK XRES X3 250

EK XRES X3 250

 

Build is in a Thermaltake Tower 900.

 

I know have two reservoirs is useless I just wanted it to look even in the case, I really didn’t want to do dual loops but I guess I could if people believe that is the way to go.  Where should I be checking to see if I screwed something up to get these temps?

[LukeSavenije]

Maybe its your room temperature?

[Lurick]

You're never going to get room temps and past a certain point the added rad space has little to no impact. You're running a chip at 1.42V at 33C on idle, that's probably about the best you're gonna get.

[GMart84]

Room temp is 70.5F or 21.38C.

 

GPU1 is 24C and GPU2 is 28C

[Neo-revo]

26 minutes ago, Lurick said:

You're never going to get room temps and past a certain point the added rad space has little to no impact. You're running a chip at 1.42V at 33C on idle, that's probably about the best you're gonna get.

*in a closed loop

 

there are ways to get sub ambient without active cooling,

 

@OP temps you call out seem OK, but if you want it cooler and its used to be cooler, maybe the CPU block gunked up a bit?

[GMart84]

@Neo-revo You were right I dissembled the loop and cleaned out the block and it came down a couple degrees.  I also Went back to auto voltage, no idea why but now I get 5.2 @ 1.36 with a -1 AVX offset.

[Neo-revo]

20 hours ago, GMart84 said:

@Neo-revo You were right I dissembled the loop and cleaned out the block and it came down a couple degrees.  I also Went back to auto voltage, no idea why but now I get 5.2 @ 1.36 with a -1 AVX offset.

glad that i could help.

5.1 at 1.55  got to love my power hungry older hardware  

just like my 10-12-12-32 2400mhx at 1.65 ram.   future proofed to the point where i'd need OC ram again just to feel that it was an 'upgrade',  although the biggest diff is jsut overall TDP reduction for the newer smaller stuff.

new stuff has actually got slower IMO, faster iops and stuff, but they stopped going faster (since we hardly notice anyway, except the opposite direction)  and started amking stuff smaller/more eff 5-7 years ago, and  every 'new' one since then is just better implementation.   Like when you gt close to saturating the max speed of a connection they proabablly started making new ones years ago that are kinda in consumer products but expensive af, till every one addopts it as new, (VGA,DVI, HDMI,DP: think that sort of linear development)  sata,1,2,3....  

 

 

 

[GMart84]

@Neo-revo I would agree with you.  The system I am using now, was a replacement for an i7 2700K system that I had everything overclocked in it and was getting good frame rates with my two RX 580s.  I decided to upgrade when I wanted some extra cores for video conversion and in all honesty have not been 100% sold that it is much faster at everyday tasks versus the old system.  It is certainly about 25% faster at video conversion.

 

Now a question, I ordered an additional pump to move to two separate loops, for the GPUs and CPU my gut is telling me to put the XE 360 on the CPU even though that is overkill and use the PE 120 + PE 480 on the GPUs.  Do you think that is okay, or should I do something different?

 

As mentioned before, the CPU is 5.2 @ 1.36 vCore now and the GPUs are OC'd +100 on the Core and +500 on the memory, if that changes anything.

[Neo-revo]

i would do it that way, the triple is over kill for your CPU< but the single wont do, and the triple+120 on your gpu's  might not handle it well,

 

so  the 480+120 on the gpu's is what i would do with the hardware if thats what i had at my disposal as well.

[Neo-revo]

i run my pumps in series i could easily make it into 2 loops if i wanted though.

 

its a lot of extra fluid/tube to consider

[Neo-revo]

well, not that much fluid i guess, only one extra reservoir full.

[GMart84]

@Neo-revo Thank you very much for your help.  You have been extremely helpful with this.  This is all about the look in the tower not cooling ability.  Basically I have just about 1100 watts of cooling and am splitting it up with about 700 going to the GPUs and 400 to the CPU.

 

i am going to go with blue and black coolant to match my PSU cables.

 

hopefully will finish it up this weekend and be able to post a picture.

[Neo-revo]

thats the best time/part

 

 

*i derped and didnt use a UV fluid so i had to add UV dye,

just waiting on more UV lights to make it pop even more,

i got a bunch of 40mm fans to make an L to put over my VRM's  (no air flow with WC/mad voltages=hot af) so i can get rid of the giant 140mm eyesore..

just havent decided if i should repaint them in the same white/black  since it looks good aside from being there like that.

[GMart84]

2 hours ago, Neo-revo said:

thats the best time/part

 

 

*i derped and didnt use a UV fluid so i had to add UV dye,

just waiting on more UV lights to make it pop even more,

i got a bunch of 40mm fans to make an L to put over my VRM's  (no air flow with WC/mad voltages=hot af) so i can get rid of the giant 140mm eyesore..

just havent decided if i should repaint them in the same white/black  since it looks good aside from being there like that.

THAT LOOKS AWESOME!

 

This is what I have right now and will be modified with the added pump and Coolant Dyes.  I actually found a black one that is black in normal light and goes clear in UV light!

[Neo-revo]

 thats an interesting case design, (im stuck in the dark ages, i like my rectangle shape and 5.25 bays LOL)

 

I/O up to seems handy

 

uv fluid sounds interesting too

[GMart84]

So I finished up this weekend.

 

The system is set up as such:

 

CPU Cooling

EK X3 150 Reservoir (I was wrong in my original post, I thought I had 250's)

P.LOTOR 12V PWM Pump (.6 A)

EK XE360 Radiator

EK Supremacy EVO RGB CPU Block

All EK Fittings/Passthroughs

PrimoChill Soft Tubing

EK CryoFuel Clear with XSPC Navy Blue Dye

 

Testing

To see if this affected the overall performance of the system I did some CPU Stress Testing and watched temperatures.  My chip is not a great overclocker to be honest, but I figured I would try anyway.  I could get it 100% stable at 5.3 GHz only with 1.48 vCore and the idle was 30C and the Load with 55C.  Given that the processor has its own 360 mm radiator this is kind of what i expected.

 

GPU Cooling

EK X3 150 Reservoir

P.LOTOR 12V PWM Pump

EK PE480 Radiator

EK PE120 Radiator

EK Geforce GTX FE

EK Geforce GTX FE

All EK Fittings/Passthroughs

PrimoChill Soft Tubing

EK CryoFuel Clear with XSPC Black Dye

 

Testing

Again wanted to make sure I wasn't maxing out the system by taking away the head room of the cooling capability in the extra radiator, so I maxed out the cards with a +100 on the core and a +500 on the memory and GPU1 idle of 22° C and GPU2 idle of 25° C with load temps being 32° C and 36° C respectively.  Not bad during multiple runs of 3D Mark Tim Spy.

 

I finally broke 18K with an overall system score of 18002 and 18003.  I am thrilled with it but have lowered voltages back down to keep temps more inline.  Through my testing I have noticed that the Cache multiplier has a huge effect on the benchmark score.  I was more than surprised to see a massive jump up almost 600 points when I set the Cache Multiplier to the same level of the CPU.  My ram seems to max out at 3600 Mhz with looser timings and honestly I am wary of anything more than the 1.37v I am feeding the memory, when I try more the LEDs on the top seem to act on their own without any input from the system.  It is a Ghost in the Machine.  Anyway, thank you  @Neo-revo for all your help and I am hoping to get a better processor next time around.

[Neo-revo]

nice! like the new look,

just put in the 'pillar' UV light into my res. it works, but kinda of low cast like @W-L mentioned to me,  not entirely surprised either, 

 

the 'Dimmable' LED strips i got seem to have a fash up point around 8.9-9.1V  so kinda like not really a feature to promote unless some one want lots of low light...

 

Probally work a lot better on 'normal' LED's not UV's

 

i've decided i dont like the Strip like that, and will build a reflector/put it some where else.

 

But you can see the thing in the thing, Looks  like a street light on a foggy/misty evening

 

[GMart84]

@Neo-revo I do in fact like the lamp in the mist look.  You did a good job on your hard line tubing, do you have any tips.

 

using a reflector would lessen the effect of those LEDs which would be good.

[Neo-revo]

angle guide kit with mandrel and good spatial placement helped.  i adjusted the length after fitting one nicely/bending, and then when it aimed the right way at the end, to the right spot, i rough estimated cut on the long side then sanded, with paper on a block till it was flat/just the right length,

also did the regular hardline stuff  like camphor the ends after

 

want to know the crazy thing, Thats my first hardline set.

 and this i adjusted light placement for now.  will need that reflector idea if i can fins a better spot

[GMart84]

@Neo-revo That looks significantly better without the crazy LED in sight.  I am in awe of your skills with the hard line tubing.  I am sure that it would make my build look even better but I have tried a few times to do it and only end up screwing it up.  Oh well the soft line I have right now is not bad and I would likely keep it soft in the back anyway.  I am thinking I should add a 3D printed cover to the SLI bridge, any thoughts on a logo?

 

 

[For Science!]

8 minutes ago, GMart84 said:

-

 

I remember reading this curious post, where a guy heat gunned soft tubing and it looks like something inbetween hard and soft tubing. I would imagine it might make the surface a bit ugly, but perhaps worth a try?

 

 

[GMart84]

@For Science! Thank you for that link.  It is certainly something I am open to try.  I tried to make the runs in my build as small as possible and maybe what I do is print another filler like the Hard Drive area, and the pumps push through for one of the pass through areas and then put in two pass-through adapters to get the lines to the Rad Area.  I am thinking I need another 2-45° fitting as well.

[For Science!]

18 minutes ago, GMart84 said:

@For Science! Thank you for that link.  It is certai

Yes, I think there are often two ways of going about the tube routing: clean and minimal or more flamboyant. With soft tubing you are often forced into taking the clean and minimal route since any excess will just flop around making the whole system look like a bunch of intenstines. With hard tubing you can afford to have more "excess" tubing that shows off the the fact that you are watercooling. This is why I am intrigued by this option to heat the soft  tubing to introduce some bends.

 

The TT Tower is a case that really needs to be filled in my opinion and so would urge you to either try the heating or have another serious stab at hardline tubing. I have gone through 3 iterations of custom loop in my Define/Meshify C build and each time I have introduced more bends and gotten rid of fittings since I prefer to show off the coolant instead of having loads of fittings, but thats my personal opinion.

 

PS. I don't use any bending kits, just free hand, ocassionally using the corner of the table as a 90 degree guide

 

Iteration 1 (First attempt at watercooling and hardline in general)

 

Iteration 2 (Removal of bulky flow meter and fittings at the bottom)

 

Iteration 3 (New routing more tubes, pseudo-parallel design, LED fans)

[Neo-revo]

6 hours ago, GMart84 said:

That looks significantly better without the crazy LED in sight.  I am in awe of your skills with the hard line tubing.

took some shiny 1" wide polished sheet steel from a scrap pile today,   will work great for my 'idea for a reflector'

 

nice first goes at them @For Science! did you use a mandrel or straight crazyness?

 

i got one of the sickest deals i could say i've gotten ever, 

15 primochill HL compressions, 8X90's, 2x 45's, SLI connectors, andgle guide kit, the long tube res in my build, a 4 channel ram kit,  a few extenders. and other various fitting and  10 pieces of the nessicary tube for that size,

 

all for the whoppping  price of

Spoiler

100 usd

 

[For Science!]

2 minutes ago, Neo-revo said:

took some shiny 1" wide polished sheet steel from a scrap pile

No mandrels, just eyeballing. You can see that my bottom run even after many attempts is still not quite level, this is due to the complicated plumbing down below the PSU shroud and it never comes out just right (honestly, even a mandrel can't help me out here anyway). The run coming from the reservoir to the pump is my number 1 annoyance since it isn't quite straight either, this is just because I ran out of tubing last moment.

 

All these runs will try to be fixed when I next drain my loop ;).