After several years of hot summers and no air conditioning, I decided to try a liquid cooled system on my PC this year. So far, I have not been overly impressed. The reported CPU temperature (speedfan, Asus AI Suite, CPU Thermometer) averages about 15 degrees C over the ambient air temp. This is not much better than the Noctua air cooled system I was using.
With an ambient temperature of 18 degrees C, the idle CPU temp is about 32-35 degrees C (varies for the 4 cores). At 100% usage, the CPU temp rises to about 73 degrees C. My worry is that when the room temperature reaches 35 degrees C, the CPU will be running 80 degrees C at 100% usage. I don't plan on running it at this extreme for extended periods, I just thought water cooling would at least get the idle temps closer to ambient temps and keep the 100% usage temps a little lower. I used Arctic Silver Ceramique on this build as this was what the manufacturer of the CPU block recommended. I have used Arctic Silver 5 in the past. The current instruction say to lay a line of the thermal compound across the CPU. Would these temperatures indicate an incorrect application of the thermal compound? Any other suggestions or am I just expecting too much. Thanks for your insight. Jim Maki [email protected]
