PC Troubles - Watercooling?

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bla

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#311952 29-Feb-2024 14:38

Can you help me troubleshoot this?

My Windows PC has been running well for 2+ years, now it's suffering terrible slowdowns and occasionally turns itself off.

At first I suspected the H.2 nvme drive that Windows is installed on, so I ran checkdisk on it, it fixed a few things - didn't help. Reinstalled Windows - didn't help. Reseated the RAM - didn't help.

Then it finally dawned on me to check the temperatures inside the PC and look at that, the CPU is running at 95C and all the fans are pretty much on max, even under basically no load. Turns out that's pretty much the maximum the Ryzen 7 3700x can handle. So I cleaned the fans, looked at the water-cooling (I had to take it out to see its model - Corsair H80iv2), installed the Corsair software and it says the pump is running? So what's the problem? Can anything else have gone wrong?

I see the watercooler reports 65C when the CPU sits at 95C - should that be closer? How do I know if there's something wrong with the watercooler? Or do I need new thermal paste? (Looked pretty brittle when I took the water cooler off)

Anything else I could try? Thanks for your help!

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#3201617 29-Feb-2024 14:55

get something like CPUID HWMonitor and actually find out what the temps are and report back. Ive never liked motherboard software for this.

bla

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#3201618 29-Feb-2024 14:58

I was looking at Open Hardware Monitor, but it doesn't seem to see the watercooler.

Gurezaemon

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#3201619 29-Feb-2024 14:59

The brittle thermal paste is a red flag - if you've already taken the cooling block off and it was brittle, I would strongly recommend against putting it back on and running it without new paste, as the brittle stuff on there now will be near useless.

If the CPU is getting to 95° and you're getting random shutdowns, that's the first thing I would check.

What you're seeing is the watercooler working as it should - it seems to be having trouble getting heat from the CPU. Hence the suggestion to get the old thermal paste off and put a new layer on.

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bla

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#3201624 29-Feb-2024 15:14

Worth a shot! 🙂 I'll see if I have some thermal paste lying around somewhere...

ratsun81

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#3201632 29-Feb-2024 15:31

bla:

Worth a shot! 🙂 I'll see if I have some thermal paste lying around somewhere...

Your cpu is hitting thermal throttling temps, anything past 95 is bad. Its a bad idea to not put fresh thermal paste on when removing the pump block. It can be done but as you mentioned if its dry its done and must be replaced.

That little 120mm watercooler is also not coping too well especially with 65c watertemps! Perhaps it will be a bit better after new paste is applied.

I run custom watercooling and i never see water temps above 45c when working the system at max.

richms

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#3201657 29-Feb-2024 16:11

Is the radiator hot when its like this? 65 in the loop should make the metal of the radiator too hot to touch if it is working.

If it has an airlock in the pump or obstruction then there will be no flow (or minimal) and the radiator will be cool.

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bla

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#3201701 29-Feb-2024 17:23

One of the pipes is hot, one is cold, so something seems to working in there. Maybe it's really just the thermal paste that needs to be renewed? When I took of the watercooling block the old one was all brittle and dry.

This PC has always been crazy loud, maybe the water cooling has been undersized from the start? Or maybe the fans have just always been terrible. If new thermal paste doesn't fix it, I might look into getting a new cooling solution.

bla

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#3201703 29-Feb-2024 17:24

The radiator is cool to the touch, so it seems to be doing its job. All signs point towards the cooling not actually making it to the CPU, huh?

Jase2985

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#3201710 29-Feb-2024 17:46

richms:

Is the radiator hot when its like this? 65 in the loop should make the metal of the radiator too hot to touch if it is working.

If it has an airlock in the pump or obstruction then there will be no flow (or minimal) and the radiator will be cool.

could also damage some of the plastic components

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#3201717 29-Feb-2024 18:03

Because of the complexity, I can't help but think a good air-cooler would be a better option for you here.

Unless you are doing some extreme overclocking, water cooling is often less than a smart choice. Several points of failure (pump, piping, joints), and difficult to repair in a pinch, whereas an air cooler has no moving parts apart from a fan, and if that dies, most geeks will have a spare case fan they can cable-tie on until a new (correct) fan is obtained.

For normal users, and even some enthusiasts, modern, quality air coolers will save you all sorts of headaches and perform just as well. Modern ones are extremely quiet almost all of the time, especially if you tweak the fan curves in the BIOS. I've been using a Deepcool AK620 for a year now and rarely hear it at all. Budget options are the Snowman T4 cooler - I've used this in my kid's gaming PC and it is unbelievably good.

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ratsun81

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#3201737 29-Feb-2024 18:33

bla:

The radiator is cool to the touch, so it seems to be doing its job. All signs point towards the cooling not actually making it to the CPU, huh?

If its saying water temp is 65 and the rad is cool you either have an air lock/ air bubble trapped or the pump has stopped working but your first image suggested the pump is operating. If the water temp was actually 60 itd be stinking hot to the touch.

Its important to look at the install instructions and ensure cpu block to radiator orientation is correct.

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#3201760 29-Feb-2024 19:45

Gurezaemon:

Because of the complexity, I can't help but think a good air-cooler would be a better option for you here.

Unless you are doing some extreme overclocking, water cooling is often less than a smart choice.

I strongly agree with this, unless you really want to dive in and fully understand what's going on with the water cooling I'd suggest getting a decent budget air cooler. Something like a Peerless Assassin https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/shop/components/cooling/cpu-coolers/thermalright-peerless-assassin-120-cpu-air-cooler-black will handle an 3700x even when overclocked.

Honestly I don't understand why a 3700x was even watercooled to start with it's a 65W processor even the stock AMD cooler could have handled that. The cooler above will happily keep that well below 95C even when overclocked to 125W.

andrew75

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#3201761 29-Feb-2024 19:47

Noctua U12S Redux also very good, very easy to install and has pre-applied thermal paste. Keeps my 5800X3d cool silent at idle and very quiet under full load.

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/FANNOC4113/NOCTUA-NH-U12S-Redux-CPU-Cooler-1x-120mm-Fan-158mm

Jase2985

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#3201799 29-Feb-2024 21:12

eonsim:

I strongly agree with this, unless you really want to dive in and fully understand what's going on with the water cooling I'd suggest getting a decent budget air cooler. Something like a Peerless Assassin https://www.computerlounge.co.nz/shop/components/cooling/cpu-coolers/thermalright-peerless-assassin-120-cpu-air-cooler-black will handle an 3700x even when overclocked.

Great cooler and great price

bla

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#3201817 29-Feb-2024 22:02

Thank you very much for the input everyone!

I think I misunderstood earlier. Yes, the radiator not being hot is of course a bad sign, because that's where the heat is supposed to radiate out of if it was cooling effectively! 🤦‍♂️ And only the lower part of the tubing is hot. If it was pumping it through the system it should be hot all the way to the radiator, no? So yes, looks like the watercooling might be the problem after all.

I'm very open to going back to more traditional methods of CPU cooling. The initial idea behind getting a watercooler was that I naively thought it would be really really quiet. But then it arrived with 2 big damn fans in the package because the water cools the CPU, but how do we cool the water? What a scam... 😉 And those 2 fans were the loudest ones I've ever had in any PC. So lesson learnt.

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