Time to replace my AIO liquid cooler?

So, I have a Corsair H100i that I've been using for almost four years now (come April IIRC).

Have a Core i7 4790K being cooled by it. At stock settings I was hitting 80-82°C (and maybe up to 85°C once or twice) with CPU voltage on auto hitting 1.22-1.24v under load and randomly hitting 1.28v (which seemed a little high to me).

Previous owner was cooling same CPU with an air cooler around 74-77°C with the CPU overclocked to 4.7GHz with 1.35v, and frankly I have no reason not to believe their reported temps and voltage.

After dropping the vCore down to 1.12v with stock settings I was around 64-66°C max. Then increased vCore to 1.15v (still below stock) and increased speeds to 4.4GHz for 4-cores (stock is 4.3GHz) and 4.5GHz for single/dual core operation (stock is 4.4GHz). In this configuration I maxed out at 71°C (while playing a game, running a virus scan, listening to music, and having an internet browser open in the background).

Thought I was limited by my cooler, so swapped it out for my Nepton 280L (an abomination of a cooler, I must say, really difficult to mount for multiple reasons). Results were... uninspiring to say the least. After the swap with the mild overclock and 1.15v I was hitting 85-86°C easily while gaming and using two Noctua NF-P14 fans in pull (which did better than the Corsair AF140's I tried initially, don't recommend them on a radiator (90°C easily)). The bearings in one of the stock Cooler Master fans is eating itself and unreasonably loud (and the fan seems to be out of balance), so that's why I didn't use them.

Seems like my H100i is hitting below its class when it comes to performance when an air cooler with the CPU at 1.35v and 4.7GHz can cool it better than I can do at stock with an AIO.

Don't know if I'm dealing with problems due to fluid loss (evaporation) or some biological growth of some sort, but something definitely doesn't seem right. In my mind this cooler should be performing better than it is.

Or am I off base here?

Being it is a closed loop all you can do is verify the pump is working or not
Possibly it is working in a limited capacity

Replace with you new favorite AIO or an air cooler you like
Mounting these coolers are paramount to reaching advertised performance levels be it air, AIO or custom

Do you know this person well that you got the CPU from ? 1.35 @ 70deg on air looks low to me . If you want to compare temps you could disable HT and I will try any OC/voltage you want .

Have you ran aida64 bench with CPU and GPU checked ?

Just for reference at 1.35v my CPUs temps are ~64-70 deg, but I have 5x120 custom water.

AIO's are like any other device, they have a half-life. Performance degradation is a sign that you need to replace, unless you want to guinea pig the unit and find out if there is a way to restore it to it's New operating condition. Finding parts would be a challenge, excepting maybe fluid.

||Console|| said:

Do you know this person well that you got the CPU from ? 1.35 @ 70deg on air looks low to me . If you want to compare temps you could disable HT and I will try any OC/voltage you want.

Have you ran aida64 bench with CPU and GPU checked?

Just for reference at 1.35v my CPUs temps are ~64-70 deg, but I have 5x120 custom water.

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About as well as one can know someone online you've never met I suppose, it was another member here.

I didn't say 70°C though, I said in the mid-70's.

I don't own a copy of AIDA 64. I ran Prime95, 3D Mark Firestrike, ran Intel XTU, played some games, ran an anti-virus scan while gaming, that's about it.

With HT off at 1.12v stock frequency I was hitting 58°C max under load, which is pretty much in line with what my 4690K did with the same cooler.

Those temperatures are higher than they should be at those frequencies and voltages. I would suggest moving up to a 3x120 radiator, whether AIO or custom. Looks like your case has room for three fans on top.

Well, plugging my fans into the motherboard rather than the pump's fan controller resulted in a rather large improvement in temperatures.

With the fans plugged into the motherboard they're around 1770-1800 RPM. Before, when plugged into the fan controller they'd max out around 1600-1650 RPM.

For some idiotic reason, Corsair Link maxes my Gentle Typhoon AP-15's out at 1650 RPM, even though they're rated for 1850 RPM and can hit 1800 RPM fairly easily. I think it's not putting out the full 12v of power to them. It wasn't always this way, it started doing that when I updated the Corsair Link software a while back.

With the fan controller I was at 70-75°C (depending upon ambient temperature), with the fans plugged directly into the motherboard the maximum I've hit so far has been 60°C. I wouldn't have thought that 150-200 RPM would make such a big difference in temperatures, but it apparently does. This is while still at the same 4.4GHz with 1.15v.

EDIT: this was a mistake, I tested with a different game (BF4) loading it when it only hit 60°C. After plugging the fans into the motherboard the CPU still hit 72-75°C in BF1 (and Prime95).

The Corsair Link software has had a history of being problematic. When I got an iteration of it that worked on my last rig I stopped updating it. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" definitely applied.

Alaric said:

The Corsair Link software has had a history of being problematic. When I got an iteration of it that worked on my last rig I stopped updating it. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" definitely applied.

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+1 on that !

Ive recently reverted back a version from the latest and about to go backwards again , as I had better fan response results (more accurate speed ramping) from an earlier version . Dont rember the actual version number that worked best for me , but it was within 3 or 4 updates back from the current 4.3.0.154 . Iam currently on version 4.2.425 , but going backwards even further as my fans just do not respond as fast to higher temps as they used to (even while using the same custom fan curve) .

Alaric said:

The Corsair Link software has had a history of being problematic.

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Says it all right here.

If you're indeed thinking about a new aio check out the expandable from Alphacool. It's called the Eisbaer.

Evga is coming out with expandable ones too. Should be released around march.

I'm currently on 4.3.0.154, before that I was on 4.2.4.25. Both of them have this issue where both the balanced and performance fan settings max out at 1650 RPM regardless of the temps being experienced.

I've also ran 4.2.3.41, 4.2.2.27, and 4.2.1.42. The fan profiles worked properly on at least one of them, but I can't recall which one as it's been a while since I upgraded the software. And the upgrade process was a real pain, had to uninstall the software (which didn't work properly) and then run a sweeper program to get rid of any program entries that were left behind in the registry or elsewhere before I could upgrade to a newer version because it couldn't find some specific file that was needed for the uninstall process.

And it's developed a new issue where the Green LED seems to be going out. If I have the green slider maxed out it flickers constantly if it's on green only, if I back it down to 215/255 it's okay usually but still occasionally flickers. If I combine it with the other colors of red or blue or both to get yellow, turquoise or white I get a constant flickering until the green LED ultimately turns off completely and I'm left with red, or blue, or purple. Seems as though it can output green on it's own, but isn't powerful enough to be used in conjunction with another color, and is overpowered by whatever the other color is.

Looking at the following so far, for possible replacements:

Corsair H100i GTX
Corsair H100i V2
Corsair H110i GT
Corsair H110i

They all seem to perform pretty similarly, and go back and forth depending upon what review I look at. And I gather that the H100i V2 is just a rebranding of the H100i GTX with a few minor tweaks, and the H110i is a rebrand of the H110i GT with some minor tweaks.

I prefer the CoolIt based units for functionality of software and longevity (I've heard that the Asetek based units don't last as long due to weaker pump designs). Though they're annoyingly scarce these days, only the H80i/H80i V2, H100i, and H110i/H110i GT use their design as far as I'm aware. I'm only really familiar with Corsair's units, though some other brands may have some units manufactured by CoolIt. Edit: and Asetek are a bunch of Patent Trolls apparently.

The only 360mm unit I'm aware of that's near my price range is that Thermaltake Ultimate 3.0 360mm (or something like that), but I've never had much trust in their products ever since that terrible lineup of power supplies (TR2 I think it was), plus some other sub-standard products I've had that were made (or branded) by them.

I run an H80i v2 to cool my 5820 K. This thick 120 mm unit provides lower CPU temps for my Overclocked CPU better than the thin 280 mm unit (H110 something).

Both units had push/pull fan setup.

I am happy I switched, and very happy with the performance.

Tech Tweaker said:

Looking at the following so far, for possible replacements:

Corsair H100i GTX
Corsair H100i V2
Corsair H110i GT
Corsair H110i

They all seem to perform pretty similarly, and go back and forth depending upon what review I look at. And I gather that the H100i V2 is just a rebranding of the H100i GTX with a few minor tweaks, and the H110i is a rebrand of the H110i GT with some minor tweaks.

I prefer the CoolIt based units for functionality of software and longevity (I've heard that the Asetek based units don't last as long due to weaker pump designs). Though they're annoyingly scarce these days, only the H80i/H80i V2, H100i, and H110i/H110i GT use their design as far as I'm aware. I'm only really familiar with Corsair's units, though some other brands may have some units manufactured by CoolIt.

The only 360mm unit I'm aware of that's near my price range is that Thermaltake Ultimate 3.0 360mm (or something like that), but I've never had much trust in their products ever since that terrible lineup of power supplies (TR2 I think it was), plus some other sub-standard products I've had that were made (or branded) by them.

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Corsair units by Coolit :

http://www.coolitsystems.com/index.php/desktop/desktop-2.html

H60/H80i/H100i/H100iGT



And I too Iam looking to replace my Corsair AIO ( H100i GTX/Asetek) as its just not cutting it even with added Corsair ML fans . ML fans work nice though , just not so happy with the GTX cooler with my cpu running at [email protected] or 4.5@ 1.3/0/2v mostly just when the cpu is at high(er) cpu usage .

Well, testing with an H105 showed some improvement (hottest core 68°C maximum so far in Prime95 and Battlefield 1) with the same Gentle Typhoon AP-15 fans. 66-68-67-63

Much better than the 75°C max I was seeing before with my H100i using the same fans.

good to hear! Just for what its worth, the Thermaltake 3.0 cooler is quite good! Its quiet, and it cools up there with the best of them (in AIO territory) I run a swiftech 320X2 currently, but will be replacing it with a custom loop here in the coming month or so.

Well I sent my H100iGTX in for rma as the temps kept creeping up weekly , up to 54c on the "water" alone just playing co-op FarCry 4 and I could no longer even run a cpu stability test without major/danger high temps ; seems my unit probably had a blockage and even the rad was not getting warm like it should if at all . Was thinking of the H105 but ordered a H110i to try the Coolit pump .

May install it today , but having seconds thoughts again that I should have gone AlphaCool AIO or wait till EK comes out with thier new AIO (second quarter 2017) . If the H110i is not to my liking its going back to Amazon and I'll do the later of what I mentioned and go AlphaCool or EK .

I'll update later on the H110i ... for now my backup 212 Evo is in and its doing really well and MUCH better than expected !

Oh it's 100% them Pumps they had all kinda Problems, I was just Lucky and got a pretty good one that lasted forever years, but upsizing to the 240mm rad on it slowly killed it wore it out I think haha