High idle temps with H50

M

morpheus9394

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 8, 2002
Messages
369
Hi All,
I have an i7 920 OC'ed to 4GHZ with a H50. The i7 was bought as part of a OC bundle from OCUK and has been rock solid.
Yesterday I was encored some movies, something that I do all the time, and the PC blue screened for the first time ever.
I put it down as a one off ever and tried again but this time the machine hung after 20mins.
That's when I checked my temps. Two of the cores are idling around 49-52c and the other two are around 44-47c.
As soon as I run Prime95 the temps jump up to 90c also instantly and two of the cores hit 99c within 5mins, before I stop the test.
Nothing has changed in my machine, airflow is very good.
I have the two standard corsair fans, one blowing air into the motherboard area and one blowing onto the hard drives.
I have three enermax flows at the top of the case set to exhaust.
I have another enermax high CFM fan set as an intake on the rad.
I am just worried that the H50 is failing somehow which explains why it is not cooling the CPU properly but I would appreciate any advice for you guys.
I was thinking of change the fan on the H50 to exhaust instead as my 5870 exhausts into the case and also I have 4 hard drives which may be adding heat to the case.
I am just concerned at the sudden increase in my temps as I have not change anything on the machine for 3months or so and it has always been very stable.
 
What were the idle temperatures before yesterday?
Did you check to make sure the fan on the H50 is working?
Have you moved the computer? Maybe the HS is loose.
 
The last time I checked my idle temps was during the winter and they were around 40c.
I am not too worried about idle temps but the load temps are crazy.
The H50 fan is working fine and I haven't moved the PC.
I am going to open up the PC tonight, remove the default thermal paste and apply so artic silver and check all the connections and see if that makes a difference.
 
Remove, clean , reseat the H50. The TIM that comes with it is arguably better than AS5. Sounds like it's not seated properly.
 
Are you just running 1 fan on this cooler? If so get two and run a push\pull setup.

(I've only read about the push\pull setup on these coolers if anyone has done it chime in and let us know what fans you've used.)

I plan to do the push\pull when i get mine installed.
 
Is there any way to confirm that the pump is actually working?
I do here a whooshing sound from the H50 when I turn on the PC and the hardware monitor is report 14,000rpm (roughly) from the fan so I assume that means everything is working correctly.
My second Enermax Magma fan has just been delivered so I when I get home from work and I will open up my machine and try to get this problem fixed once and for all.
 
hmm the wooosh for sure and the rpm readout would confirm the pump is working. I was going with pump failure too until you said that. I think the pump is ok.

Ambient temps will directly affect the cooling performance. It cant cool any lower than room temp. I am sure you already are aware of this but if it was in a cool place last winter and now its in a warm room the effect can be more dramatic than one realizes at first. But.... still it seems a big change....

All I can suggest is something in the mounting has gone or loosened and it looks like you are going to see about that with the paste change.
 
BillParrish said:
hmm the wooosh for sure and the rpm readout would confirm the pump is working. I was going with pump failure too until you said that. I think the pump is ok.

Ambient temps will directly affect the cooling performance. It cant cool any lower than room temp. I am sure you already are aware of this but if it was in a cool place last winter and now its in a warm room the effect can be more dramatic than one realizes at first. But.... still it seems a big change....

All I can suggest is something in the mounting has gone or loosened and it looks like you are going to see about that with the paste change.
Click to expand...

Thanks Bill. I got fan, extra screws and artic silver so tonight it H50 night :)
I don't mind the idle temps too much as I expect them to raise in the summer time but to get 95c and climbing on Prime95 and for the machine to crash during heavy encoding is not good, especially as it has been working great since I got it.
I am hoping a simple reseat will do the trick.
Thanks again for the advice.
 
I would drop the 4ghz to 3.5ghz and see how much the idle temp drops. I'm 90% sure that the h50 wont be able to cool a i7 @ 4ghz very well if at all and you could find out real quick if you just run intel burn test for 20min. Ive seen double radiators that can barely cool a i7 @ 4+ .
 
Right.....
Situation is still the same but I am comfortable with it, due to the fact that is ambient temp where my PC is very rather high as there is a mini heatwave in London at the moment and my house is very hot.
I reseated the H50, with fresh thermal paste, installed a second fan on the RAD in a push/pull config and my idle temps have dropped by about 5c.
I put the i7 back to its default speed and voltage and the prime95 temps settle around 65-70c which pretty good considering the idle was 42c.
Increased the OC to 3.6ghz at 1.275vcore and load temps increased to 80-85c.
Increasing the OC to 4ghz increased the idle to 51c with load at 95c but real temps stay very in the 50c range.
Played Dirt 2 and the temps stayed at 52c. Encoded at 1080p movie and temps didn't even move from 51c.
Encoding two movies from mkv to mp4 loads the CPUs to 85% and the temps are round 73-77c.
So I think overall the H50 is doing its job, I was just expecting to much from it, to super cool a very hot, OCed CPU during very load in the summer heat :)
OH YEAH - I have also disable HT which has not affected the performance of the PC but has reduced the temps by about 10c during load.
Thanks again for all your help and advise.
 
Just re-enabled HT and did some heavy duty encoding at temps were in the 73-80c range with 50% cpu usage across all 8 cores so I think I will leave HT on.
Idle was still at 50c. Looks like the extra fan on the RAD has helped.
 
Looks like your problem has been addressed.

For comparison, I have a Ci7 920 at 4.1 GHz with 1.45V VCore cooled by a Heatkiller 3.0 and a Swiftech MCP 655 and 120.3 Radiator

My idle is about 30-32C and under heavy load across 4 cores with HT I might hit 65C.
Standard gaming temps are mid 40sC
 
Sweet Mate! Glad the push \ pull fan setup worked. Could you by chance take a pic of the push pull RAD setup. I'm curious to see how much more room it takes up in the case as I am building a new PC with this Cooler.
 
magoo said:
Looks like your problem has been addressed.

For comparison, I have a Ci7 920 at 4.1 GHz with 1.45V VCore cooled by a Heatkiller 3.0 and a Swiftech MCP 655 and 120.3 Radiator

My idle is about 30-32C and under heavy load across 4 cores with HT I might hit 65C.
Standard gaming temps are mid 40sC
Click to expand...

Thanks. It just goes to show, as good as the H50, you can't beat a full blown water cooling system. But I am very happy with it because it is so simple to install and requires zero maintenance.
 
rcashier said:
Sweet Mate! Glad the push \ pull fan setup worked. Could you by chance take a pic of the push pull RAD setup. I'm curious to see how much more room it takes up in the case as I am building a new PC with this Cooler.
Click to expand...

Sure I will post some pictures tonight when I get home from work, though remember I am using a Corsair 800D case so I have heaps of room. Things might be a bit tighter in your case.
 
magoo said:
Have you tried a "push-pull" arrangement with the airflow directed OUT of the case, rather than into it?

I would think that if anything it would lead to cooler in-case temperatures. the airflow directed INTO the case is the one thing I don't like about the H50.
Click to expand...

I tried that but I found the temps increased by 10c. It must be due to the way the 800D case is designed.
 
morpheus9394 said:
I tried that but I found the temps increased by 10c. It must be due to the way the 800D case is designed.
Click to expand...

That's really odd.
I can't imagine how the direction of the airflow could make such a difference, unless for some reason the radiator is designed for unidirectional airflow?
 
I think it depends on the case design. Some people find have the fans as exhaust gives them lower temps, some get better temps with fans as intake and others there is not difference.
I have 3 fans at the top of my case which are set to exhaust so that works well for me.
Here are some pics (please excuse the dust)





 
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