Hi James, On Saturday 09 July 2011 18:41:22 James Maki wrote: > 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.
Where you are making the temperature measurements is important ! You can produce wildly fluctuating readings just by placing the probe in a different place. The on CPU sensor will throttle back the processor if it gets too hot. The software metering should only be used as a guide. > 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. Assuming that the real temperature is 73C, I would expect the heat exchanger to be within a few degrees of that and the water temperature to be similar. > 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. In the absence of any air gap between the CPU surface and heatsink you would expect the heatsink temperature to be within one or two degrees of the actual CPU temperature. The cooling water temperature will be a little less. > Thanks for your insight. > > Jim Maki > [email protected] I have a calibrated food probe with a flat tipped probe end, that I use to check component temperatures. A cheap but worthwhile investment ! -- Best Regards: Derrick. Running Open SuSE 11.1 KDE 3.5.10 Desktop. Pontefract Linux Users Group. plug @ play-net.co.uk
