3960x + H100 cooling

[steven6282]

Hello,
I'm posting to hopefully get suggestions on what I can do about my cooling solutions. I just built a new system with a 3960x on a Asus P9X79 Deluxe mobo. The motherboard has an auto tuning / overclocking option that I turned on and it on it's standard setting overclocks to 4.3 ghz. The temperature at this are ok... but they are pushing to hot for my tastes. And I'd like to overclock further but I don't think the cooling would stand up to further overclocking.

My temps at 4.3ghz are ~48c idle and ~75c full load. I'd much prefer the cpu to stay under 70c full load even though I think they are rated for up to around 80c these days.

The H100 just doesn't seem to be able to keep up with overclocking. I've got it installed in the front of my PC with the fans running at their maximum setting (which is very loud by the way). I don't really want to go to a full on non sealed water cooling solution if I can avoid it. I did that once before and having to add water to it occasionally got very tiresome.

So anyone have any other creative suggestions on a better way to cool this beast?

 

[Convicted1]

Automatic Tuning / Overclocking is notorious for using more voltage than is really needed.

I suggest trying to OC manually... I bet you'll see a considerable drop in the temps.

However... I don't know enough about the new 2011 stuff to help you in regards to what voltages are typical and such... So you'll either need to do some reading, or wait for some of the guys with more experience.

 

[EarthDog]

+1 to potential overvolting with auto overclocking. HOWEVER it has gotten better lately. I would try to overclock manually as well and see if you can lower the vocre a bit.

That said, the temperatures are fine as is. I understand you want them lower but those tempeartures are perfectly acceptable...

EDIT: Actually, is that stress testing temperatures? Like from Prime95 or is that just like gaming or so?

 

[steven6282]

+1 to potential overvolting with auto overclocking. HOWEVER it has gotten better lately. I would try to overclock manually as well and see if you can lower the vocre a bit.

That said, the temperatures are fine as is. I understand you want them lower but those tempeartures are perfectly acceptable...

EDIT: Actually, is that stress testing temperatures? Like from Prime95 or is that just like gaming or so?

That is Stress testing, Prime95 for at least 30 minutes they seem to top out around 75c, sometimes one may spike a few degrees higher.

But again, I know these temps are in the "ok" range, but I want to overclock more so was concerned more with what the temps are going to be when I start pushing it further.

I'll play around with some manual overclocking and see if I can get the volts down on it. Right now the volts are 1.312 with the auto tuning.

 

[EarthDog]

Thats great for stress testing then, considering only rendering or something will come close to those temps. With normal operation, including gaming, temps will be around 10C less.

The advice we share on that platform is to keep stress testing temps in mid 80's or less...so you have headroom already.

 

[steven6282]

Ok, I also made a stupid mistake and got the temps down another 10 degrees. My case is a Lian Li model, from about 5 years ago, it has a door on the front. It has vents in the sides of the door that I thought would be enough... but opening the door dropped the temps another 10 degrees on average lol.

One other question, what is the maximum recommend voltage on the core? I'm trying to push this chip over 5ghz, but I can get it to stabilize with less than 1.38, and with the built in vdroop that kicks it up to 1.41 sometimes (according to cpuz). I thought I remember reading somewhere that 1.4 was the recommended maximum.

 

[EarthDog]

1.4 to 1.45. THe lower the better.

 

[steven6282]

Alright, thanks for the help.

Right now it looks to be stable at 4.8ghz with a 1.37 vcore, idles temps ~38c prime95 for 15 minutes so far and it's up to 72c (dropping to varying from 69c to 72c) on the hottest core. I might just leave it there for 24 x 7 running. Would really like to get 5ghz just to get it... but I think I'd have to push the vcore up to over 1.4 (not counting the vdroop) to get it stable that high.

A ~45% overclock isn't to shabby for 24 x 7 running I suppose =P