Having temp problems after installing liquid cooling

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Little99

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I just installed the Antec Khuler H20 650 liquid cooler into my system to help cool my AMD FX 8370 CPU.

I'm getting ridiculous temperatures (~80C) when playing games and watching streams when I used to only sit around 40-50C with the stock heatsink. How is this possible? I am thinking it might be the thermal paste but I'm not entirely sure. Is this liquid cooling kit infamous for being crappy? The weird thing about it though is it says it's 80 degrees Celsius but it's not too hot to touch. The CPU is warm but nowhere near that temperature. Could this just be my liquid cooler messing up the temperature reader? I don't know I'm all out of ideas at this point.

Also, if it helps the situation at all, the temperature isn't steady. If I go from having Chrome + A game up (80C) and turn them both off I will INSTANTLY go down to ~30C. There is no middle ground, and is rarely ever stagnant except idle which is about 30-40C.

Do you guys think I have faulty hardware? Should I just try using the heatsink again and return the 650?
 
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bgunner

bgunner

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AMD is notorious of having issues reading the correct temp with the FX and A series CPU's so lets not focus on temp but on the thermal margin before throttling. Throttling, as you may already know, is where the CPU lowers teh core speeds to lower the temp.

To tell what the thermal margin is download AMD Overdrive and look at the CPU status tab. you will see the thermal margin there. This tells you how many degrees you have to go before you throttle. The numbers should be blue, if they get down to 0 and turn red and start climbing you are having heat issues.


Start here before tearing apart the cooling system and possible causing an issue where there may not be one yet.

EDIT: Do not use AOD for overclocking as it will most likely cause crashing and/or show wrong voltages but it is very accurate on thermal margin.
 
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Little99

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Thanks for the reply bgunner.

I downloaded AMD Overdrive and while in a game of Counter-Strike the numbers are red and read -8.0 for all 8 cores, but when I'm not in game they are blue. So I'm going to assume it is indeed a heat problem?
 
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bgunner

bgunner

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yes you are having heat issues. Are you overclocked or running stock clocks?

If your running stock clocks then either the CPU block was not mounted properly, air bubbles in the paste, or the pump and fan are not spinning at full speed. It would be a good Idea to check the latter either way so you know it is circulating the coolant properly and the fan is blowing air through the radiator to cool the coolant. Be sure you have sufficient cool air intake flowing through the case.

If you are Overclocked, remove the OC and see if this helps the situation.

As a little FYI that cooler system uses the fan to power the pump/ pump to power the fan so if it is noisy it is doing its job. You may need to adjust the CPU fan so that it hits 100% duty cycle earlier also.
 
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Little99

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I am not running OC. I think the problem may reside in my CPU block mounting and/or the thermal paste. I guess I'll try reapplying my thermal paste and see if that helps. My fan is definitely being noisy right now so it's working for sure. I currently have 4 fans running in my PC so I don't think airflow should be an issue.
 
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bgunner

bgunner

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OK here is a tip that may help, When I installed a Corsair H100i cooler the tubes were a bit stiff and made it more difficult to install the CPU block. I actually had my son hold the radiator so that it was easy to mount the block. Trying to mount the block with the rad installed the block kept lifting on me and caused me to have to reapply thermal paste every time it did, costly mistake for sure. My point is do not let the block lift at all once you place it on the CPU or air bubbles will form. To help with this you to may want to have a hand holding the radiator/fan assembly to make it easier to mount.
 
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Little99

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I did have to remove the CPU block from the thermal paste once or twice during installation. Maybe that gave me some air bubbles I didn't notice and that's the problem. I'll reinstall the CPU block with brand new paste and see if it's any better.

So you think it's not the liquid cooling kit itself you think it's a human error problem right? I am quite astonished at how high my temperatures are and it makes me think that the actual kit isn't bad at all and that it was something I made a mistake with. I very rarely ever hear about water cooling being worse than air cooling.
 
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bgunner

bgunner

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If you removed the the block and did not clean the paste off and reapply then this is definitely your issue. Once you put the block on the CPU you can not lift it off without having to clean and reapply new thermal paste all over again. I'm really leaning towards a user mistake than faulty equipment.
 
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Little99

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Solved the problem.

I used the wrong screws to attach the heatsink to the actual CPU. Essentially, the heatsink was never connected and my CPU had 0 source of cooling. I used the right screws this time and now I'm getting flawless temperatures. Thanks a bunch bgunner for the help.
 
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bgunner

bgunner

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While I agree with everything you said I feel it is important to also point out that Air Coolers that perform like AIO Liquid coolers are heavy adding stress to the CPU and Socket. This issue becomes more pronounced when you have a motherboard that is not as stiff or a bit thinner than others. ( a while back one of the system builders here for Toms quarterly builds (Coincidence his name is Tom also) had this exact issue with a Noctua DH14 and went through 2 motherboards before figuring out that the cooler was damaging the board.

To combat the issue of loss of cooling on the VRM if issues arise a small fan can be mounted blowing across them. many times as long as your exhaust fan moves enough air it will help draw air across them. Another thing to consider is if it is a 120/140mm or a 240/280 or larger radiator on the system. The 120mm and 140mm radiators that get mounted on the exhaust port of the case actually move the rear fan closer to the VRM helping cool them where as the 240/280/360 radiators are usually mounted either on the top or front of the case keeping the fans away from the VRM heatsink.

If issues do arise they sell fans on a flex mount that usually mount to a screw and then you can position them were they are needed. I have found with a High air flow case this is not needed but if your case is not then this may be the alternative solution.
 
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