Corsair 900D WC Build Log

[Eugenius88]

Kind of lost. What you mean it's 84c? You do understand you have 4 fermi GPU's. One runs HOT but you have 4. lol That does seem high but not familiar with quad cards and what your delta should be. Are they OC'd? If they are just keep everything at stock till you get used to everything and what temps you should be getting.

Usually from a spill I'd wouldn't power on anything for at least 2 days and make sure its dry. You did fine since it was during your leak testing phase.

What is your CPU temp at idle and at max load (Prime95)?
Water temp on load and idle?
Top GPU?
Bottom GPU?
Ambient temp?
Water Temp?
Delta Temp?

I'm not entirely comfortable benchmarking it until my GPU dilemma gets sorted out.

Remember the first time I liquid cooled that single 590 way back in August and the temps sky rocketed? That's the situation I'm going through with the same card. At idle that sucker hits 40 degrees celcius while the other one hits 25.

This is the first card receiving water and it is it may be screwed on differently compared to the other. That's why I'm thinking I mounted this wrong.

Some of the screws, I believe, aren't tight tight, but then again the one that's overheating is using plastic washers that may or may not be preventing minor contact between the GPUs and the water block.

The one that is perfectly fine has the EVGA backplate on it. It has holes about 1-2mm deep that allow the screws to make more contact.

This leads me to a conclusion that the EVGA backplate allows the screws to tighten down the card to have perfect contact with the GPUs and the water block while the washers are leaving that little bit of room that are preventing optimal cooling.

I feel like buying a $10 backplate would have solved this dilemma and as I'd want to do that, I prefer not taking it out and causing major loss of water nor more time and effort into this build I already put into it.

The card is using stock backplate.

TL;DR: First GPU in loop is not properly mounted and removing the washers may help ensure contact.

To answer your other questions:










Also ambient is ~16 C, Delta with fans at quiet is ~9-13 depending on the part. With fan speed all the way, it can drop to almost 5-7.

EDIT: All is stock.
EDIT 2: Lol 5 seconds of Unigine Heaven and both GPUs hit 100 C. Yeah bye bye washers or hello EVGA backplate. Also for some reason it enables only 3 way sli and not 4 way?
Apparently where the DVI is plugged in matters on a single monitor. Sadly I have one but I want 3, but I can't buy anymore expensive items :'(
Crossing my fingers for Cyber Monday

 

[Eugenius88]

Oh my god, after an hour and I put on the screws without the washers the temps are only 2 C lower, what even? Should I tighten them again in the star pattern over the gpus to ensure it's tight tight. This just ruined my day...

 

[Eugenius88]

I swear, I'm getting to the point where I might have to remount the block, but even then if I do it and it's still not successful, I'll be a whole new level of pissed.

Question, could dust, the one you can't blow off but what to wipe it off, be the culprit of the overheating, I feel it's not likely, but could be something. If I try everything with the card installed and no success comes through, I'll take it off, buy an EVGA backplate, remount it, hope for the best and if no success comes through that, I'll buy a different card and hope for the best then or just disable the other 590 :/

 

[Eugenius88]

Ok, I even tightened them down all the way, temp difference is now 10 C between both cards on ONE gpu but it still skyrockets, aka either hardware issue or contact is still not there from GPUs and water block.

This leads me to mentioning that one gpu on the card is 10 C hotter than the other...

I swear if remounting this card won't work, I'll go nuts.

 

[Eugenius88]

Now the difference from the hot 590 is 8 between each GPU.
From the least hot GPU to the most hot GPU between both cards the difference is now 8-9 C.
It's gone down from 45 C down to 36 C overall. However I'll reseat the block on the weekend :/ so all problems are gone.

EDIT: It still skyrockets.

 

[Eugenius88]

All in all however, all I have to do, besides the 590 that is, is to make sure these LEDs I popped on my window stick to the Rotanium and not fall off, currently having 3 "air bubbles" I'll call it, where it makes a hill.

 

[JeremyCT]

Are you absolutely 100% certain that flow is going through the blocks and you got ALL the air out of the blocks? Tilted the case? Tapped the blocks?

It almost sounds like you have a massive air bubble in there.

 

[Eugenius88]

Are you absolutely 100% certain that flow is going through the blocks and you got ALL the air out of the blocks? Tilted the case? Tapped the blocks?

It almost sounds like you have a massive air bubble in there.

I never considered a massive bubble in the block to be a problem, considering this happened to me previously in a different loop with the same card but a different water block.

All I did was tilt the case 45 degrees each side a while back for about a minute(lol) when I first filled the loop, I'd suppose doing it again would be a good idea.

I suppose that just one block could be having air bubbles but it seems a bit farfetched since, it's the first block in the loop(GPU->GPU->CPU) and the 2nd GPU and CPU are getting ~mid 20s idle.

I have my pump on 5 though and I hear low speeds help getting the bubbles out? Also I've been running this system for almost 48 total hours, non continuous and the only bubbles I see are under the top of the reservoir. There's a black circle just before the ceiling of the res and there are a few big bubbles clinging onto it, if that's of any significance.

 

[JeremyCT]

Go back to basics. A bubble would explain it, and I'd rule it out. You need to shake/tap/vibrate the whole system somehow with the pump running to dislodge bubbles sometimes. I like to do it with just the pump running since hard drives and the like tend to be sensitive about being bumped that way. No guarantees, but it's worth a shot. Bubbles get stuck in weird places sometimes.

In my experience, high pump speeds help dislodge bubbles, but the water is moving so fast that the bubbles get broken into tiny bubbles and then get sucked back into the pump because everything is moving so fast. Your reservoir might not have that sort of phenomenon. I like high pump speeds to dislodge the bubbles while shaking the system around, then low pump speeds to help them settle out. Each loop is a little different, but it's not uncommon to have to shake and rattle things around a little bit to get all the air pockets dislodged.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

I noticed the fitting on the top GPU going to the CPU is being stressed. If you redo your loop I'd give it a tad more tube so its not stressed. That can eventually leak.

For the heat issues why don't you just switch one card off, pulling the power off of one and vise versa to see any temp changes. If the one GPU is still hot, as I've read you say it reaches 100c which it shouldn't under water and adequate heat surface, you might be lacking contact or there's a bubble in the way.

It can get frustrating but its part of water cooling. Do it right so it's done with and don't get too lazy to redo things for the better.

 

[JeremyCT]

Out of curiosity, what kind of TIM did you use? Also, I think you said these were used blocks, correct? Did you take the blocks apart and inspect/clean before putting this all together? Did you make sure you used the factory spec thickness for the memory pads?

 

[Eugenius88]

I switched off those old blocks, I got in two new XSPC blocks.

Arctic Silver 5, it's been used on the Raystorm and both 590s.

Also Jack, yeah, I reused the tubing from the EVGA Block. I understand it's a tad bit, but the o ring on that side barely peeks out. I'll make sure to do that IF I need to take out the card.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

I wouldn't feel comfortable personally leaving that much stress to the fitting on the GPU WB. Also new or used, I always open things up for cleaning because through the machining process they tend to leave some debris. Did you at least run water through those blocks like the "radiator dance"?

I have a feeling you rushed this project through and skimmed through the guides, if you did at all. This is why you ran into so many issues. I think you just wanted to get wet and be done with it as quick as possible. You should have thought about the WBs before on a blueprint before you went on a spending spree. I can't babysit people who rush through and get lazy. Always be cautions and remember this is liquids and electronics you're playing with here.

 

[Zoinks]

I have a feeling you rushed this project through and skimmed through the guides, if you did at all. This is why you ran into so many issues. I think you just wanted to get wet and be done with it as quick as possible. You should have thought about the WBs before on a blueprint before you went on a spending spree. I can't babysit people who rush through and get lazy. Always be cautions and remember this is liquids and electronics you're playing with here.

No one has asked you to babysit anyone as far as I can tell, and your comment isn't very constructive. While everything you say may well be true, it amounts to kicking someone while they are down. It would be more appropriate, and far more constructive, to discuss this as lessons learned after the issue at hand has been resolved.

 

[Zoinks]

Eugenius88, I haven't read through all of the posts so I might have missed something. I'll apologize in advance if I suggest something that has already been tried.

This will be a fair bit of work, but I would seriously consider a process of elimination. You have one card that runs hot and another in a serial loop that does not. Whatever the problem, it can't be something that would restrict flow since that would cause problems elsewhere. If your CPU temps are good under load then the issue is most likely to be the GPU block or the card itself.

I would consider swapping GPU blocks on your cards. If card 1 is running hot and you put that block on card 2 and it runs hot then the problem is with the block. I also think opening up the block on the card that is running hot is a good idea, but before I would do that I would probably switch blocks on the cards first to see if the overheating follows the block to the second card.

I also agree with Jack about the fitting. You should square that away before it causes you a major problem.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

No one has asked you to babysit anyone as far as I can tell, and your comment isn't very constructive. While everything you say may well be true, it amounts to kicking someone while they are down. It would be more appropriate, and far more constructive, to discuss this as lessons learned after the issue at hand has been resolved.

No one asked you for your opinion. I am not personally attacking him but possibly being a little rough on the fella so he can learn before anything devastating happens. Maybe you should read the whole thread before coming to assumptions based on my comments.

 

[Zoinks]

No one asked you for your opinion. I am not personally attacking him but possibly being a little rough on the fella so he can learn before anything devastating happens. Maybe you should read the whole thread before coming to assumptions based on my comments.

I wasn't aware that someone had to ask for my opinion before I could express one. The OP needs technical help, not personal criticism. He said this in his very first post...

After a good ~2 months of research on what to get for my watercooling loop and how each part works, I finally ordered in my parts.

It seems to me that two months of research should be sufficient to the task. Reading all of the sticky threads over and over again is no guarantee that one will not run into a problem or two. Were that the case then there would be no need for people to come to this forum and ask for help. Calling the OP lazy and suggesting he didn't do enough homework isn't going to help him though his problem, nor will getting into a pissing contest with me.

I have been following this thread on an off and my heart goes out to Eugenius88. When I did my first WC build my motherboard turned up dead after I moved it to my new case and installed my WC system. So I had to tear everything down. I ended up buying a new motherboard and processor (long story). I thought I did everything right and was very careful, but still had problems that ended up costing me a lot of money. But after running a WC system for a couple of years I am committed to it, and all of my future system builds will be water cooled. This also means that I have to accept that my systems will cost more and also that I may run into problems getting up and running. It's the nature of the beast.

 

[JeremyCT]

If your CPU temps are good under load then the issue is most likely to be the GPU block or the card itself.

Good point.

but before I would do that I would probably switch blocks on the cards first to see if the overheating follows the block to the second card.

He has to drain and disassemble the loop to swap the blocks, there's no reason I can think of why you wouldn't want to open up the blocks to check for some kind of glaring fault before reassembling the loop and restarting the bleed/leak test process. Just take the extra step while it's all torn down.

 

[Eugenius88]

Didn't expect these many responses lol.

To answer questions, some with backstories, in paragraph long responses...

The card that is having high temps is the infamous card of 2 years who overheated like a mofo turning down that wished 607 mhz clock speed sometimes downward to the 400s for the sake of temperature control. I want to rule out that the card itself is the issue however I can't be too sure about since this same issue happened with an Alphacool block. I like the ideas surrounding that it COULD be a bubble, but that sounds like it would be rare, considering this system has been running ~60 hours non continuous, however I rocked it back and forth <10 times about to a 45 degree angle.

Also Jack, is that in the stickies anywhere? "Rad dancing" a water block? I probably crossed about it but it's probably in there as "cleaning" your block.

Jack has the right to be mad at newbies imo. Seasoned veterans can get annoyed at anything a newbie does wrong, hey, they pay attention and know their stuff, I can't argue. I admit I am lazy and I did want to finish, I mean I haven't touched an MMORPG in almost 4 months now, withdrawal is starting to kick in. The lazy part kicks in where I underestimated this science and had an Alphacool water block thinking it'd cool itself(Lol!) but that was 4 months ago, if I planned and wasn't lazy, things would be a lot better, but I didn't know this was a subject to be taken seriously(considering all the things to be bought, considered(scientifically), etc.) until again, 4 months ago.

Moving on back to water cooling...
What I think(it may be wrong) is that something is preventing solid contact between the block and the card itself. In my eyes, a flow issue is unlikely, but could be a factor, that would be my last resort of where to think.
Hey! I could be wrong for all I know, I just want to get through all the simple things before deconstructing my loop because that is time consuming and time, at this moment is not an abundance. I have my driving test tomorrow and final black belt testing on Friday and Saturday, so AT THIS TIME, I am focusing on the little things before deconstructing the loop altogether. I have a feeling it will be happening to troubleshoot the error but NOW is not the time.

Pitch troubleshooting ideas, but please, don't expect me to do them immediately and then move on to something else. That's what I'm seeing, multiple methods of troubleshooting then response after response, you guys seem to rule them out and move on to complex methods when I haven't done simple ones yet. I may have misunderstood what you guys are trying to do, but hey, I'm voicing what I think.

I'll reiterate what is going on with the whole loop, once more.

Sorry I use the term GPU, as the core itself within the card and as the actual graphics card, I'll try to be more clear this time.

Cool card(Top 590) is getting regular dual GPU idle temps at 24-28, each GPU, on the card, varying through ambient temps. Flow doesn't seem like an issue considering deltas and fan speed, which is running in a quiet state, about 30-50%.

Hot card(Bottom 590) is getting temps that are weird. One GPU on the card is usually 8-10 degrees hotter than the other. Ex. GPU 1 on the card, 44 C, GPU 2 on the card, 36 C.

And at idle that is fairly common, hitting max clock speeds, not at full load, they EXPONENTIALLY rise in temps, but in the same range of 8-10 degrees. HOWEVER, under GPU benchmarks, these suckers almost hit 100 C in sync after 5 seconds of Heaven(Unigine that is lol). I'm just rambling on about what has happened in my experince with these and it's probably not helping anything and just is extraneous words for you guys to read.

Moving on...

One thing I know for sure is once I first started this loop up, on of the GPUs hit 45 C at an all time LOW. Second/third time I booted up, that same GPU dropped 5 C. After I removed the washers from the backplate and tightened the screws to the point of still keeping that card in tact(not physically bending/damaging), it dropped, you guessed it, another 5 C. Since then, nothing has really happened. Ok, reevaluating myself now, it COULD be bubbles, for the first time, I could've moved bubbles the second time when I was tightening screws. WHO KNOWS? It could be contact with the block and the card, WHO REALLY KNOWS? All in all, without proper sentence structure/organization(hello, laziness strikes again Jack)...

TL;DR:
Bubbles can be an issue, I'm not the best at priming my system.
I don't have time for all this deconstruction for my loop, AT THIS TIME.
Let's rule out the simple things, ONCE I DO THEM FIRST.
I'll fix that goddamn fitting if I have to rebuild the loop, I don't want it to be a priority.
CONTACT CAN ALWAYS BE A POSSIBILITY. When the Alphacool was taken off, there was little TIM contact, only a few spots scattered across.

Misc things:
HI ZOINKS, love your build log, happy to see some support over here for this clumsy(water cooling specific) white child.

I was about to go to sleep, instead I got to write for 40 minutes, lovely.

Moral of the story:
NOBODY IS PERFECT! It's not possible to be perfect, everyone has their flaws, especially me.

Finally:
Sorry for the long rant, vent, whatever you'd call it.

 

[GTXJackBauer]

The card that is having high temps is the infamous card of 2 years who overheated like a mofo turning down that wished 607 mhz clock speed sometimes downward to the 400s for the sake of temperature control. I want to rule out that the card itself is the issue however I can't be too sure about since this same issue happened with an Alphacool block.

So you're saying the same GPU that had heat issues before in your first old loop is the same card that is overheating with the new WB on it?

I like the ideas surrounding that it COULD be a bubble, but that sounds like it would be rare, considering this system has been running ~60 hours non continuous, however I rocked it back and forth <10 times about to a 45 degree angle.

Some bubbles can take days, weeks and months to remove.

Also Jack, is that in the stickies anywhere? "Rad dancing" a water block? I probably crossed about it but it's probably in there as "cleaning" your block.

No. Figure of speech but I figured you'd understand by shaking your waterblock around like a radiator to possibly loosen anything up in there. Better off taking it apart.

Jack has the right to be mad at newbies imo. Seasoned veterans can get annoyed at anything a newbie does wrong, hey, they pay attention and know their stuff, I can't argue. I admit I am lazy and I did want to finish, I mean I haven't touched an MMORPG in almost 4 months now, withdrawal is starting to kick in. The lazy part kicks in where I underestimated this science and had an Alphacool water block thinking it'd cool itself(Lol!) but that was 4 months ago, if I planned and wasn't lazy, things would be a lot better, but I didn't know this was a subject to be taken seriously(considering all the things to be bought, considered(scientifically), etc.) until again, 4 months ago.

Thanks for understanding and being honest. I've been assisting you and following your thread since the beginning to help you get through this. I noticed alot of laziness so I felt my time was being wasted. That's why I said what I said. Thanks for not taking it personal as it wasn't intended.

Cool card(Top 590) is getting regular dual GPU idle temps at 24-28, each GPU, on the card, varying through ambient temps. Flow doesn't seem like an issue considering deltas and fan speed, which is running in a quiet state, about 30-50%.

Hot card(Bottom 590) is getting temps that are weird. One GPU on the card is usually 8-10 degrees hotter than the other. Ex. GPU 1 on the card, 44 C, GPU 2 on the card, 36 C.

One thing I know for sure is once I first started this loop up, on of the GPUs hit 45 C at an all time LOW. Second/third time I booted up, that same GPU dropped 5 C. After I removed the washers from the backplate and tightened the screws to the point of still keeping that card in tact(not physically bending/damaging), it dropped, you guessed it, another 5 C.

I'll fix that goddamn fitting if I have to rebuild the loop, I don't want it to be a priority.
CONTACT CAN ALWAYS BE A POSSIBILITY. When the Alphacool was taken off, there was little TIM contact, only a few spots scattered across.

This explains alot. 3 things are possible. Most obvious is contact. Your temps changed when you tightened your backplate as that connects and tightens the waterblock in front of the GPU. Make sure the screws are tight enough where you stop once they don't need to be more tightened.

You also said some of the TIM didn't spread. Is this on the GPU? This is bad contact than. You have contact issues. Make sure your cooling pads are in the right places as well.

The block can also have debris in it and bubbles can also be the culprit. It can be all those 3 combined. If you're scared to take the waterblock apart and clean it than you should get someone else to do it for you and make sure the washers line up when putting it back together. Test it for leaks before powering everything on again.

I think you figured out how problematic watercooling can be. Well you're almost at the finishline. You've learned alot. Finish up when you have time for it but do it right and don't miss any steps.