Sargies Tower upgrade

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Originally Posted by Sarge104

Appreciate the info, the akasa looks like it is worth looking into for my 120mm slots. Probably have to wait after the holiday is over, the g/f seems intent to invite most the family over so need to stock up on the essentials...heheh.

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Kool. One reason I like the Akasa Viper series is that they can push a ton of air at decent sound levels. So if your MB has proper fan speed management, you can dial down the Viper's RPM to "average fan" levels, where it will generate less then "average fan" noise levels.

Side Note: I do not recommend using any high end fan on Corsair AIO coolers having integrated fan controllers. From personal experience, if the controller goes bad, it will take the fans with it. Lost 2 Viper 140s that way... :((

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

Side Note: I do not recommend using any high end fan on Corsair AIO coolers having integrated fan controllers. From personal experience, if the controller goes bad, it will take the fans with it. Lost 2 Viper 140s that way... :((

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The exhaust fans will be hooked up to the mother board, I've got an independent fan controller I can use in a pinch. Thanks for the warning about the fan controller though, I was intending to hook the 140s to my H100i....oops.

So I've been having errors recently with my Astroid WU's, doing a bit of investigating I found that my CPU power was too low and bumped it up a bit(1.5v which the computer has leeway to take down to 1.42v) to solve the issue. My digging also found that my North Bridge power is set very low (1.1v I believe, can't remember now), I bumped it to the yellow (1.3v) to help with communication between the chip and memory. My question is there anything North Bridge related I should look at to help improve stability.

Scored some 2k RPM fans for the case and am in the process of getting them situated for ideal air flow. Currently the H100I is at the top of the case with one of the fans blowing in from the top of the back panel. I was under the belief that this would set up a circulating motion where the second fan at the lower front of the case would provide enough force to get the air to flow around the TITAN where the third fan is blowing in from the side of the case to mix cold air with the air from up top. The fourth and final fan is on the rear exhausting any extra the TITAN does not pick up and keeping air flowing over the power supply.

Hopefully any who have managed to read through that have a clear idea of what is supposed to be going on. My problem is there seems to still be a dead spot of air that is causing the CPU temperature to climb. With my old fan set up I had one less and the only difference was I believe the top rear fan and the side fan where exhausting air, instead of both providing positive pressure. I can turn both around but I'm still not sure why I'm jumping almost 10-14C pumping cool air into the case?

I'm under the impression that with the only exhaust being in the lower back it is causing heat to feed back to the upper back fan. I've provided nearly 2 feet of clearance between the tower and the wall so the exhausted air should be shoved far enough away to prevent this. If anyone can offer some advice on a more effective set up I would appreciate it.

Future upgrades still involve two 140mm fans for the top to help the H100I do its job.

I may be wrong but it sounds like you have negative case pressure, somehow you have more air leaving the case then entering.

The way I maintain positive pressure:
A) All intake fans have higher CFM rating then exhaust fans, or total intake CFM is 15%~25% higher then total exhaust CFM.
B) When using fan speed controller, Like SpeedFan, intake fans are set to a higher idle and top speed then exhaust fans.
C) Minimize the number of exhaust fans and use ventilated expansion slot cover plates (Like These) to help maintain good air flow. These slot covers will promote airflow across any GPUs in the case.

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

I may be wrong but it sounds like you have negative case pressure, somehow you have more air leaving the case then entering.

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This is where I was confused as well. The H100I's two fans, and three of the other 120mm are all set to full bore blow into the case. Only one 120mm fan on the lower bottom is exhaust (Plus the TITAN, which is not in use ATM...Crime against humanity, I know, I know ;) ) . I figured with all those fans blowing cold air in it would be a snap to keep temperatures down. All of the Fans are PWM controlled, the H100I with its software and the 120mm's are BIOS controlled, so I could just down clock that exhaust fan and see what happens.

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Originally Posted by Sarge104

This is where I was confused as well. The H100I's two fans, and three of the other 120mm are all set to full bore blow into the case. Only one 120mm fan on the lower bottom is exhaust (Plus the TITAN, which is not in use ATM...Crime against humanity, I know, I know ;) ) . I figured with all those fans blowing cold air in it would be a snap to keep temperatures down. All of the Fans are PWM controlled, the H100I with its software and the 120mm's are BIOS controlled, so I could just down clock that exhaust fan and see what happens.

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I see. For all my water cooled boxes (custom or AIO) I always have the radiator fans exhausting air. I never use them for intake.

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

I see. For all my water cooled boxes (custom or AIO) I always have the radiator fans exhausting air. I never use them for intake.

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The TITAN runs very warm and I was concerned that the heat rising from that would compromise the top mounted radiator. With the FX-8350 running warm already I don't want to compound the problem when both are active..

Just to be clear on what temps I'm expecting from what is going on. On idle the 8350 is normally 15-20C even when overclocked. The chip is currently overclocked to 4.8ghz and I normally see temps within 45-50C(old fan set up). The temps currently are 55-58C. I've got the H100I software set to cut the power after 60C due to the fact I'm not too trusting of the sensors in the first place and want a safe shut down rather then a class charlie fire shut down.

I realize that with warmer temps I would see a rise but I've been keeping the house temp down to 62F as its been all winter and I have made sure to keep the sun-ward window shaded as well to keep that from being an issue.

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Originally Posted by Fire$torm

I see. For all my water cooled boxes (custom or AIO) I always have the radiator fans exhausting air. I never use them for intake.

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I've been contemplating repositioning my h100 radiator fans as pull rather than push. I don't have the room for push and pull though, do you or anyone else have personal experience with seeing better performance in the h100 series in pull than push?

Sarge I want to share my thoughts on how I cooled my latest build to see if it helps you. I'm using an h100 which is physically pretty much the same as your h100i. I only use two 120mm fans on the h100 radiator.

I don't like dust, it clogs things up and makes things run hotter and thus less efficient. My theory on dust is that if I have a positive pressure in the case dust is less inclined to reside in it. How do I get a positive pressure? Well I have all my fans blowing into the case with the exception of the h100, the gpu, and the power supply (pulls from bottom exhausts out back). The theory is that all the major heat producers have their own exhausts and if i can push more air into the case than the GPU and h100 exhaust out I'll have a positive pressure that will supply the GPU and CPU with near ambient room temp air.

Cable management can also play a big part in your air cooling. I'm glad I spent time thinking out my wiring so they are neatly tucked and tied...thank god for fully modular power supplies. Like I said i have all my case fans blowing in, so my components get cool air, not the hot exhaust of another component. And if I'm doing it right the extra pressure from all those fans (4x140mm, 1x120mm) will be forced out through the h100 radiator.

All that said, it's going to take A LOT more than what you got to be able to run your cpu at 100% under 60c (where you're throttling). I reserve a core or 2 for GPU apps (i.e. moowrapper requires a full core plus gpu) but i have my igpu hd4000 running 100% and with my h100 on medium setting i can do loads from 50-60 on an ivybridge 3570k but if I ran some 100% cpu stuff, primegrid avx it could be 75c...and thats fine for the cpu. If it's a heat thing 60c on your cpu is far less power than 60c on your gpu...
That titan is leaps and bounds beyond that ...kaveri

Modern CPUs self-throttle. No need to worry about damaging them due to heat.

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Originally Posted by MindCrime

I've been contemplating repositioning my h100 radiator fans as pull rather than push. I don't have the room for push and pull though, do you or anyone else have personal experience with seeing better performance in the h100 series in pull than push?

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For most rads, pull works just as will as push. The exception, rads with a high fin density.

When rad fans are used to exhaust case air, as long as you have positive case pressure, then a pull config will work without issue.

Thanks for the ideas guys, I'm really angry that I'm having so many issues right before the Pentathlon... but when else should I have issues right...lol. I've fiddled with the new fans I've installed but I've not had much luck, so tomorrow after work I'll try switching out the fans on the H100I to push instead and try that overclocked.

I will have to say my case is near silent when its not working which is kinda scary...lol. I don't expect it to be silent that much during the Pentathlon though...:D

+1 to F$. Rads should always exhaust, otherwise you pull hot air into the case which warms up everything else. Defeats the purpose. And like F$ said, it's better to have more air being pulled in your case than blowing out. Air under pressure inside the case cools more effectively than standard or negative air pressure. Positive air pressure also helps keep dust out of your system. Negative draws it in.

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Originally Posted by John P. Myers

+1 to F$. Rads should always exhaust, otherwise you pull hot air into the case which warms up everything else. Defeats the purpose. And like F$ said, it's better to have more air being pulled in your case than blowing out. Air under pressure inside the case cools more effectively than standard or negative air pressure. Positive air pressure also helps keep dust out of your system. Negative draws it in.

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Emphasis mine, Unfortunately the issue I will have when I turn the fans on the radiator to exhaust is just that, I will have three fans exhausting while only three fans are providing pressure. Either I have to place another hole in the plexiglass side and mount my other exhaust fan there blowing in or mount the radiator on the outside of the case. As it stands my only exhaust fan is placed on the outside of the case and is partially over the TITAN's exhaust, If I turn it around it would compromise the GPU cooling.

Edit:Thinking on it the fans on the H100I are 2700RPM, so having them on exhaust would almost guarantee negative pressure since my three other fans are only pushing air at 2000RPM. Might have to do a bit of case modding to move that other exhaust fan.

Fan RPM and CFM are not direclty related. It's easy to find 2 fans running at the exact same RPM with vastly different airflows. Also fans meant for use on rads often have lower CFM because they're made for higher static pressure than regular case fans.

For example:
2000 RPM @ 69 CFM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103060
2000 RPM @ 110 CFM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835132025

If either fan were attached to a rad, even if they were meant for rads, the rated airflow is reduced significantly since any fan's airflow rating is tested in open air.

Thanks again for all the help you guys have been giving. I had a chance to break open the case during lunch and switched the fans on the H100I to push. I was under the impression with high static pressure that the fans had coupled with their high rpm that they would provide a negative pressure environment. I was under the belief that pulling cool air from outside the case would provide better cooling then using the air provided from the other fans inside.

The comments provided in this topic really helped in that regard, I only had a chance to monitor the case temps for a few mins before I left but they seemed to be staying steady at 46-47C. This is a great improvement of the near 60C temps I was seeing before with the H100I being set to pull air in.

I still need to spin up the TITAN and see what the temps are but I need to get my rule set up working on the firewall. Will do some testing tonight and see if any bleed-through compromises the H110I.

Edit: Just to be comparing apples to apples, this testing is with the fx8350 overclocked to 4.8 and running on all cores. Tonight I will take a core to run the gpu.

Took one core for the GPU over the night and temps on the H100I stayed at 50C with the TITAN fully engaged. The new fans are feeding the TITAN excellently, temps rarely went above 58C. So far very happy with the new fans.

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Originally Posted by Sarge104

Took one core for the GPU over the night and temps on the H100I stayed at 50C with the TITAN fully engaged. The new fans are feeding the TITAN excellently, temps rarely went above 58C. So far very happy with the new fans.

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What a relief! Go Sarge GO! :D

After a couple days of poking a prodding at the BIOS I finally got the tower back to 4.8 GHz stable. I've been having issues using the CPU Clock multiplier so I kept that at 20 while I increased the clock using the CPU/NB Freq. Surprisingly I've gotten higher clocks with a little less power being put to the chip(1.46V). Granted this was during a ten minute stress with Prime 95 using the base cpu torture and cpu/ram torture tests.

The bad news is I believe my 1000watt power supply is starting to show its age. I first noticed issues with my old over clock settings using the higher 1.5V and aggressive power management. It seems that even if I get the tower to post and start to run tests in windows I would have issues with stability throughout the entire process. I know it may be from having the power up a little high but I've not had as much issues as I've ran into recently. The power supply has served for over five years.

Results of tonights labors...

Started out with the "stable" overclock that I had obtained via CPU/NB:
4.8GHZ

Of course I'm not happy unless I get that "little bit more", or break things...
4.9GHz?

So my question is, during my testing I noticed the multiplier on the CPU-Z go to 7 and the Clock speed show around 1.7 GHz, is this a sign of instability or something else? Will update with a pic of what is going on in a few mins...

Quick test that reproduced the result, is this a result of instability or something else? During my testing temperatures stayed well within normal margins and the chip is allowed to pull up to 1.5v if needed. The times I've been testing and this happens the clock will bounce from 7-20.

Greetings Team,

Sorry for the communications blackout I've been under. Long story short bad things happened, I got over them, and I'm back and looking to assist once more. My current set up is a tower I built back in 2010 with a few upgrades over the years. I'm looking into building a new tower and finally getting the other mid and mini towers up and crunching. To that end I'm looking for advice on my build to see if there is anything I'm missing. Thank you in advance for your help.

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Case 1 x Thermaltake Overseer Full Tower Gaming Case-Black
LED Fan Lighting 1 x 3x [RGB] Azza Hurricane 120mm RGB LED Fan-
Internal Expansion 1 x [6-Port] NZXT Internal USB Hub + ASUS Bluetooth 4.0 USB Adapter-
Processor 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Processor (8x 3.6GHZ/16MB L3 Cache)-
Processor Cooling 1 x NZXT Kraken X42 140mm Liquid CPU Cooler-[ryzen]
Memory 1 x 32 GB [16 GB x2] DDR4-2400 Memory Module-Corsair or Major Brand
Video Card 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 - 8GB - EVGA Hybrid FTW (All-in-One Water Cool; VR Ready)-
Motherboard 1 x MSI X370 XPOWER Gaming Titanium -- Mystic Light RGB, 3x PCIe x16, 1x USB 3.1 Gen2, 4x USB 3.1 Gen1, 3x USB 2.0-
Power Supply 1 x 1200 Watt - Corsair AX1200i - 80 PLUS Platinum Full Modular-
M.2/PCI-E SSD Card 1 x 500GB Samsung 960 EVO M.2 PCIe NVME SSD -- Read: 3200MB/s; Write: 1900MB/s-
Primary Hard Drive 1 x 1 TB Hard Drive -- 32MB Cache, 7200RPM, 6.0Gb/s-includes [FREE] 240GB Kingston A400 SATA-3 SSD
Data Hard Drive 1 x 1 TB WD Blue Hard Drive -- 64MB Cache, 7200RPM, 6.0Gb/s-Single Drive
Optical Drive 1 x LG 14x Blu-ray Rewriter, DVD Rewriter Combo Drive-Black
2nd Optical Drive 1 x None-
Media Card Reader / Writer 1 x 12-In-1 Internal Media Card Reader/Writer-Black
Meter Display 1 x Thermaltake Commander F6 RGB LCD 6 Channel Fan Controller-
Sound Card 1 x Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Rx [PCIE] -- 7.1 Channels, 192kHz/24-bit, 106 dB SNR-
Network Card 1 x Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)-
USB Expansion Card 1 x None-
Operating System 1 x Windows 10 Pro-(64-bit)

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Welcome back!

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Originally Posted by Sarge104

Greetings Team,

Sorry for the communications blackout I've been under. Long story short bad things happened, I got over them, and I'm back and looking to assist once more. My current set up is a tower I built back in 2010 with a few upgrades over the years. I'm looking into building a new tower and finally getting the other mid and mini towers up and crunching. To that end I'm looking for advice on my build to see if there is anything I'm missing. Thank you in advance for your help.

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Looks like that MoBo supports up to 3200 speed DDR4. Any reason you went slower? And it's Dual Channel with 4 slots. Populating all 4 slots not an option?

For the drives, it does support RAID, so, as long as you're getting that free 240 GB SSD, use that for the primary drive and match that 1TB to do a RAID1 config, right?

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Originally Posted by John P. Myers

Welcome back!

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Originally Posted by Mumps

Looks like that MoBo supports up to 3200 speed DDR4. Any reason you went slower? And it's Dual Channel with 4 slots. Populating all 4 slots not an option?

For the drives, it does support RAID, so, as long as you're getting that free 240 GB SSD, use that for the primary drive and match that 1TB to do a RAID1 config, right?

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John, thanks. Mumps, the 3.2k memory was not an option and continues not to be. I can call and see if I the build center can do it before I place the order though. As for the Raid set up I have to admit I do not have much experience at all with Raid configurations but it's pretty cheap to do the raid 1 or 0 config. ATT 57 bucks. I must have passed the point of the rebate, no more free SSD, I have a 500GB SSD with the build though.

Order has been placed, should have the tower within a week depending on how fast they build it.


Case 1 x Thermaltake Overseer Full Tower Gaming Case - Black
LED Fan Lighting 1 x 3x [RGB] Azza Hurricane 120mm RGB LED Fan
1 x [6-Port] NZXT Internal USB Hub + ASUS Bluetooth 4.0 USB Adapter
Processor 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Processor (8x 3.6GHZ/16MB L3 Cache)
Processor Cooling 1 x NZXT Kraken X62 280mm Liquid CPU Cooler - [Ryzen]
Memory 1 x 32 GB [16 GB x2] DDR4-2400 Memory Module - Corsair or Major Brand
Video Card 1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 - 8GB - EVGA Hybrid FTW (All-in-One Water Cool; VR Ready)
SLI Bridge 1 x NVIDIA SLI Bridge High Bandwidth for GTX 10 Series (2-Way SLI)
Motherboard 1 x MSI X370 XPOWER Gaming Titanium -- Mystic Light RGB, 3x PCIe x16, 1x USB 3.1 Gen2, 4x USB 3.1 Gen1, 3x USB 2.0
Power Supply 1 x 1200 Watt - Corsair AX1200i - 80 PLUS Platinum Full Modular
M.2/PCI-E SSD Card 1 x 500GB Samsung 960 EVO M.2 PCIe NVME SSD -- Read: 3200MB/s; Write: 1900MB/s
Primary Hard Drive 1 x 1 TB Hard Drive -- 32MB Cache, 7200RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive
Data Hard Drive 1 x 1 TB WD Blue Hard Drive -- 64MB Cache, 7200RPM, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive
Optical Drive 1 x LG 16x Blu-ray Rewriter, DVD Rewriter Combo Drive - Black
Media Card Reader / Writer 1 x 12-In-1 Internal Media Card Reader/Writer - Black
Sound Card 1 x Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Rx [PCIE] -- 7.1 Channels, 192kHz/24-bit, 106 dB SNR
Network Card 1 x Onboard LAN Network (Gb or 10/100)
Operating System 1 x Windows 10 Pro - (64-bit)
Keyboard 1 x Tt eSPORTS Commander Gaming Mouse & Keyboard Combo - Tactile Plunger Switches; Adjustable blue backlighting

Very sweet setup, Sarge, congrats on the new rig! :cool:

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Originally Posted by DrPop

Very sweet setup, Sarge, congrats on the new rig! :cool:

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Thanks DrPop! I had to call them right after I ordered of course, made the change to single hard drive to two in a Raid 0 capacity. Asked the build center if they had access to 3.2k memory but they didn't have any yet. Build should be done in five days and I'll receive it shortly after.

If you want any protection, you better ask for RAID 1. RAID 0 just combines multiple drive capacities to effectively give you a larger drive. But if you lose one drive, you lose everything on both drives... RAID 1 requires matching drives and they both end up with copies of the content, so if one dies, the other still has all your stuff.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/RAID_0_vs_RAID_1

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RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a single logical unit so it behaves as one drive when connected to any other hardware. RAID 1 offers redundancy through mirroring, i.e., data is written identically to two drives. RAID 0 offers no redundancy and instead uses striping, i.e., data is split across all the drives. This means RAID 0 offers no fault tolerance; if any of the constituent drives fails, the RAID unit fails.

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If you want any protection, you better ask for RAID 1. RAID 0 just combines multiple drive capacities to effectively give you a larger drive. But if you lose one drive, you lose everything on both drives... RAID 1 requires matching drives and they both end up with copies of the content, so if one dies, the other still has all your stuff.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/RAID_0_vs_RAID_1

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RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is a storage technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a single logical unit so it behaves as one drive when connected to any other hardware. RAID 1 offers redundancy through mirroring, i.e., data is written identically to two drives. RAID 0 offers no redundancy and instead uses striping, i.e., data is split across all the drives. This means RAID 0 offers no fault tolerance; if any of the constituent drives fails, the RAID unit fails.

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Tower arrived today! Made a terrible unboxing video...lol. Will have to wait till next week to do my first boot up due to having to be out of town for my birthday this weekend. Should have both the video and some testing done next week though and will post info then.

New tower is up and running after doing some updates. I do not have everything installed just yet but put it to work on NFS for the time being so I can run some WU's through it and see what I need to tweek. Will be leaving today and will be back on Tuesday to celebrate my birthday...:D

Did some burn in last week to make sure everything was alright with the coolers. GPU is running like a champ but my cpu cooler is causing me concern. Ran at 50%(evidently AMD hyper-threading is considered extra cores) last week on POGS and temps held at 153F/67C. Currently running at 25% with asteroids and my temps are still at 172F/78C. House temp has been consistent at 72F. The only change I can think of is I went in and hand tightened the cooler screws...Even switching out some of the LED fans with my old cooler master fans has not had any effect.

I will finish my current batch of WU's and do a tear-down to see if maybe the grease between the cooler and CPU flashed off or slide down...Ah, the joys of a new build. When i received the computer I noticed they put the fans on top of my CPU cooler. I had good luck with the fans under the cooler on my H100I so I may switch that during the tear down.

Attachment 2756
Current temps

CPU temp seems a bit high. Is the kraken mounted right or is the ryzen overvolted or something?

Ah nvm. I see it intentionally overreports temps by 20C to trick the cooling fans into ramping up sooner. You're fine :)

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Originally Posted by John P. Myers

Ah nvm. I see it intentionally overreports temps by 20C to trick the cooling fans into ramping up sooner. You're fine :)

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I already looked into the over reporting, my concern is the temps where 20F lower last week then this week. I doubt Astroids would cause more heat then POG's or am I mistaken? I intend to do a teardown tommorrow since it started going up in temp with only 4 cores enabled tonight. Will update with any findings...

Currently uploading my unboxing of the new rig, will post a link when its ready to view!

If you are running Asteroids AVX WU (most likely) then YES, there will be more heat! My Intel Xeon machines downclock 15% when running AVX to limit the heat buildup.

EDIT: you will see the same thing on PG and SRbase since they issue AVX 2.0 WU to the newer CPUs.

It overreports by 20C, meaning 36F. And as Bryan said, Asteroids does run warmer than POGS. Seems like everything is ok