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Kohta

Kohta

Member
​
Joined
Jan 24, 2011
Location
Zebulon, North Carolina
When i first bought my signature rig i bought it with a Noctua NH-D14 and considered it as good as it gets for the price. After months and months of tinkering i have come to the conclusion that i have hit the heat wall. I have reseated many times in the past and the Noctua just doesn't seem to be ideal for me anymore.

The max i can overclock is 4.5ghz 1.36v because after prime95 runs for 10 or 15 minutes it closes in on 82-83c which is pretty much my end of where i feel safe for temps, i would run 1.4 or 1.45v all day as long as it stayed around 80c under that kind of load but once this chip hits 87 at 1.4v it isn't afraid to BSOD. MY ambient is roughly 26-27c (75-77F) at any time. Nothing in my singiture has changed but i am looking at buying a GTX Titan and i wanted to get my cpu up atleast to 4.8 or 5.0ghz, i know it can do it, i have benched at 1.48v(1.5v LLC7) but it makes massive jumps from 50c to 68 to 80 in a very short amount of time and benching is about all i can get through before it hangs.

So i was prospecting the Corsair H100i because i really don't want to put much more than a couple hundred bucks in some kind of water cooling attempt but i find mixed reviews on that unit, the reason i set my sights on it is because i know the radiator will fit in that rear of the Antec 1200 V3, i was considering buying 4 Corsair SP120's for a push-pull dual configuration, the other thing that i liked about it was the 1/2 inch tubing.

So what are your thoughts? The main reason i am even looking at better cooling is because i personally don't feel like 4.5ghz is going to do the Titan any justice (CPU bottle-necking)

These are my idle temps, as good as it has ever been to be honest.
lytTcxb.jpg.png
 
Corsair H100i is good, but there're other option too
Thermaltake water 3.0 extreme and Swiftech H220 AIO cooler also consider to be some of the best AIO cooler in the market too.
The down side to AIO cooler is that the pump is unreliable it can die any time, the $30 pump that sell at the hardware store probably more reliable that the pump on the AIO cooler
 
ASUS ROG said:
Corsair H100i is good, but there're other option too
Thermaltake water 3.0 extreme and Swiftech H220 AIO cooler also consider to be some of the best AIO cooler in the market too.
The down side to AIO cooler is that the pump is unreliable it can die any time, the $30 pump that sell at the hardware store probably more reliable that the pump on the AIO cooler
Click to expand...

That is what has me the most worried, a failing pump, i put a H60 on my wifes 955 a long time ago and after about a year her cpu was overheating, and it wasn't like it quit all at once, it was just not moving th ewater like it use to and she was see'ing 50c idle. It got me worried and that's why i went with air to begin with, but this Noctua is arguably the best air cooler, it just isn't moving the heat away as quickly as i need it too.

This is after only one 4k pass in ITB, around the 3rd or 4th it will hit the neighborhood of 83, it pretty much stays at that point, while it seems about right for an aircooled 1.36v it also sucks because when i bought the Noctua a year ago i expected better results as far as heat dissipation.

97loXka.jpg.png
 
SOME AIO's have a reputation for bad pumps. The Swiftech unit is not one of them. The Corsair's, yes.
 
Kohta said:
When i first bought my signature rig i bought it with a Noctua NH-D14 and considered it as good as it gets for the price. After months and months of tinkering i have come to the conclusion that i have hit the heat wall. I have reseated many times in the past and the Noctua just doesn't seem to be ideal for me anymore.

The max i can overclock is 4.5ghz 1.36v because after prime95 runs for 10 or 15 minutes it closes in on 82-83c which is pretty much my end of where i feel safe for temps, i would run 1.4 or 1.45v all day as long as it stayed around 80c under that kind of load but once this chip hits 87 at 1.4v it isn't afraid to BSOD. MY ambient is roughly 26-27c (75-77F) at any time. Nothing in my singiture has changed but i am looking at buying a GTX Titan and i wanted to get my cpu up atleast to 4.8 or 5.0ghz, i know it can do it, i have benched at 1.48v(1.5v LLC7) but it makes massive jumps from 50c to 68 to 80 in a very short amount of time and benching is about all i can get through before it hangs.

So i was prospecting the Corsair H100i because i really don't want to put much more than a couple hundred bucks in some kind of water cooling attempt but i find mixed reviews on that unit, the reason i set my sights on it is because i know the radiator will fit in that rear of the Antec 1200 V3, i was considering buying 4 Corsair SP120's for a push-pull dual configuration, the other thing that i liked about it was the 1/2 inch tubing.

So what are your thoughts? The main reason i am even looking at better cooling is because i personally don't feel like 4.5ghz is going to do the Titan any justice (CPU bottle-necking)

These are my idle temps, as good as it has ever been to be honest.
Click to expand...

I would just go with the H100/H100i since the Swfitech H220 have been pulled out of the US markets. You might have to mod to hold the unit in the Antec 1200 since its going to be a very tight fit. I've seen a couple do it but didn't have all the screws screwed in cause not all the holes would match but was good enough to hold it up. Temp wise I don't know if it will improve that much but will by a bit imo. If you're going past 4.4 I've heard it's a whole different ballgame and you're better off going full custom because of the needed voltage and heat produced.

Your air cooler is great but its just that the chip is way extending what the air cooler can do.

Also, you're going to be just fine with that CPU and a Titan. Titan is a beast that CPU will handle it. I am sure my 950 would too but would be pushing it. If this is for benches or games nonetheless you can't push that GPU so much since its on air. Even if it was on water your CPU @ 4.0-4.4 would still be enough for a nicely OC'd Titan. Not running LN2 record shattering Titan scores?....you're fine.
 
Last edited:
GTXJackBauer said:
I would just go with the H100/H100i since the Swfitech H220 have been pulled out of the US markets. You might have to mod to hold the unit in the Antec 1200 since its going to be a very tight fit. I've seen a couple do it but didn't have all the screws screwed in cause not all the holes would match but was good enough to hold it up. Temp wise I don't know if it will improve that much but will by a bit imo. If you're going past 4.4 I've heard it's a whole different ballgame and you're better off going full custom because of the needed voltage and heat produced.

Your air cooler is great but its just that the chip is way extending what the air cooler can do.

Also, you're going to be just fine with that CPU and a Titan. Titan is a beast that CPU will handle it. I am sure my 950 would too but would be pushing it. If this is for benches or games nonetheless you can't push that GPU so much since its on air. Even if it was on water your CPU @ 4.0-4.4 would still be enough for a nicely OC'd Titan. Not running LN2 record shattering Titan scores?....you're fine.
Click to expand...

Nah, not trying to make any records, however I played the FFXIV beta last month and with everything turned up I ran out of memory, on my 560ti I hit 1.2gb before loading in, I had to turn shadow quality down to 600x800 which looked jagged, and AA down to 2x, became the difference between 2 and 4x was about 200mb, after I got it to 800mb I got 45-50fps. Long story short I borrowed my friends Titan for a couple hours, because she is in the beta too and it takes 2800mb of vram with 8xmsaa and ultra settings on 1920x1080 about 100 people on screen, which is going to be often likely scenario, when she turned occular occlusion on it jumped to 3200mb. So 99% of the reason I'm even looking at the titan is because it has 6gb of ram and I plan to play this for 7+ years like I did with FFXI.

Edit: also she has a 3990k or something like that in the lower 4.0ghz range, ffxiv all only uses 4 cores, however it does use hyperthreading I examined my 2600k consistently using 30-40% across the all 8
 
Here is what lead me to the conclusion that 4.5ghz wasn't enough.
*Notice the memory usage in the left corner*
In this image, the AA is turned down to 2x and shadow quality is turned down to "512p". I used a Non-environment (no grass/buildings/other things because an environment actually consumes over 800 MB and i just wanted to show how much memory it takes in this low demanding scene just to put better shadows, ocular occlusion and AA on one character, groups in this game are going to be as small as 6 and as large as 64 in late game, so i am going to need some serious VRAM.
4PPIhGY.jpg

Now this is with AAx8 (FXAA included), ocular occlusion and shadows at 2048p oh and i forgot Depth of field is on in this one.
PtjJQ2d.jpg

So because the videocard was dropping from 99% to 85% and back and forth and everything in between, i assumed it was memory dumping (Framerates were in the low 20's) and that the CPU wasn't keeping up, i was under the impression once VRAM runs out it goes to the main RAM and relies on the CPU (am i wrong?)
 
No, it has to wait for the Vram to load another frame etc since it can't hold the full frame etc, stuff like that. It still uses only the GPU Vram and GPU chip.

If it needs more Vram than you have, it will slow you down.
 
If it went to the rig's ram you'd be running 1, 5 or maybe even 10 fps. Its ubber slow. Giving this example as I been told by others in other games when they run out of Vram in general. Game also crashes as its happen to me.

Really surprised it took that much Vram but I am not familiar with this game as I think it came out not too long ago and it could be mods that eat up the Vram. Even with a GTX 780 it would run fine and possibly faster than a Titan.

I wouldn't spend 1k+ for this game but grab a 780 or 2 770 4 GB cards in SLI if FPS might be an issue for you. I don't mind if my FPS is around 40 but others might feel different.

Have you seen some benchmarks for this game at those settings and res to save you the trouble and money spent. Titan is nice but pretty pricey. 780 would be well worth it or 2 770 4 GB.
 
GTXJackBauer said:
If it went to the rig's ram you'd be running 1, 5 or maybe even 10 fps. Its ubber slow. Giving this example as I been told by others in other games when they run out of Vram in general. Game also crashes as its happen to me.

Really surprised it took that much Vram but I am not familiar with this game as I think it came out not too long ago and it could be mods that eat up the Vram. Even with a GTX 780 it would run fine and possibly faster than a Titan.

I wouldn't spend 1k+ for this game but grab a 780 or 2 770 4 GB cards in SLI if FPS might be an issue for you. I don't mind if my FPS is around 40 but others might feel different.

Have you seen some benchmarks for this game at those settings and res to save you the trouble and money spent. Titan is nice but pretty pricey. 780 would be well worth it or 2 770 4 GB.
Click to expand...

Yes and no, about the only thing I compared were benchmark scores, at maximum I run a score or around 8200, the 780 is scoring upper 9800 and the Titan is in the 12,000s there are 3 or 4 parts of the benchmark that dip to 20fps on maximum, but playing the actual game was a different story with 10x as many people concentrated and at worries me is an alliance is 64 people, I will do some research on the 780, sorry this has turned into a GPU thread but I wasn't sure, I thought the 560 ti was something special, it surely got outdated fast...
 
On a related note, let's say I did get the H100i with the 1/2 in pipes, if I bought 4 of the Corsair SP120s for a p/p would it make any real difference over the stock ones or would it be limited to the per minute cycle of water?
 
You'd get a small improvement with the new fans, probably a bigger noise improvement than cooling performance improvement. They're really expensive fans though, there are better performing fans that are cheaper, such as the Scythe GentleTyphoons.

Another +1 to the 780 over the Titan.
 
I saw you mentioned you're worried about failing pumps, have you considered top end air at all?

The NH-D14 and PH-TC14PE are within ~2C of the H100i, they don't have pumps to fail, and they're quieter.
 
If it would only be 1-2c I will stay with what I got, but if its maybe 7 or 8 with typhoons or similar high end fans I'd conser it worth it' I have no audible requirments I sleep with a box fan on all the time, the noise actually helps me sleep, now if its like a hair dryer that's different
 
If you really want a good gain, just build your own CPU loop. It'll be better than any AIO.
 
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