Random Hardware topics

[Kaamos_Llama]

Repasting/Repadding my RTX 2060 - Part 1

So, Amazon just told me that my pads won't be here until March 6th or earlier due to a delivery issue. It may or may not be here today, but I had everything ready to go and all I had to do was wait for them to arrive, so I'm a little bummed. I decided to run some benchmarks instead.

Here, I'm running Furmark 2 back-to-back three times in a row. The first capture is after the second test, the second is capture is the third and final test. I did this knowing it's pushing the card to its absolute limits because I wanted to see how hot the card could really get. Not exactly a real-world test, but I want to recreate this test after I do the maintenance to see just how much it has improved.

Spoiler

Test 2/3

Test 3/3

The GPU Hotspot reached a maximum of 93C, recommended max is rated at 83C. Again, not an accurate representation of when I'm playing games, but I have seen it reach up to about 88C in the hotspot.

Once I'm able to actually work on my computer, clean everything up very nicely, I'll perform this same test.

Sticking my oar in here, hopefully youll forgive me, but I'm pretty sure that the core temp is the one you should be worried about. Hotspot under 100 is fine as long as its within 10 to 20 of the GPU core temp. 83C is what GPU temp should stay under, and it will throttle (lower voltage and or clock speed) to do so if needs be.

The GPU die has several sensors on it, and the GPU temp is the average of them all.

If thats not the case, Ive been cooking my GPUs for the last 5 years. Before that GPUs didnt have a hotspot reading at all.

 

[neogunhero]

Sticking my oar in here, hopefully youll forgive me, but I'm pretty sure that the core temp is the one you should be worried about. Hotspot under 100 is fine as long as its within 10 to 20 of the GPU core temp. 83C is what GPU temp should stay under, and it will throttle (lower voltage and or clock speed) to do so if needs be.

The GPU die has several sensors on it, and the GPU temp is the average of them all.

If thats not the case, Ive been cooking my GPUs for the last 5 years. Before that GPUs didnt have a hotspot reading at all.

You’re totally right, and the core temps are within good range. Core temp is what the main focus should be on, while hotspot is the hottest part of the whole board, wherever it may be in any one of the sensors. I still believe it can be better, and I’m also doing this as kind of preventative maintenance. Pads are still stock, so it wouldn’t hurt to change them. There are still instances where my gaming core temps reach the low 80s, so I think I’ve got room for improvement.

 

[ZedClampet]

You’re totally right, and the core temps are within good range. Core temp is what the main focus should be on, while hotspot is the hottest part of the whole board, wherever it may be in any one of the sensors. I still believe it can be better, and I’m also doing this as kind of preventative maintenance. Pads are still stock, so it wouldn’t hurt to change them. There are still instances where my gaming core temps reach the low 80s, so I think I’ve got room for improvement.

Just borrow a credit card from your wife and buy a new GPU. If she notices, just keep insisting that she agreed to it in exchange for "sexy times" and start taking your clothes off. Dancing while you do this is optional but recommended.

 

[Colif]

Sticking my oar in here, hopefully youll forgive me, but I'm pretty sure that the core temp is the one you should be worried about. Hotspot under 100 is fine as long as its within 10 to 20 of the GPU core temp. 83C is what GPU temp should stay under, and it will throttle (lower voltage and or clock speed) to do so if needs be.

which one?

I seem to have too much info

Guess I could use the Adrenailne overlay

hwinfo and adrenaline see my GPU using vastly different amounts of memory. HWINFO sees me using 16gb, Adrenaline... 2gb

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

You’re totally right, and the core temps are within good range. Core temp is what the main focus should be on, while hotspot is the hottest part of the whole board, wherever it may be in any one of the sensors. I still believe it can be better, and I’m also doing this as kind of preventative maintenance. Pads are still stock, so it wouldn’t hurt to change them. There are still instances where my gaming core temps reach the low 80s, so I think I’ve got room for improvement.

Fair enough, I usually repaste my cards when I get them because you can usually improve things. With the card I have now though it still never goes over 75 with the fans set to the standard profile so I didnt bother this time. The coolers are so over engineered these days because of all the 300W plus cards, I think it must have trickled down to lower TDPs.

At one point AMD/Nvidia would recognize Furmark as it ran and downclock to prevent it reaching full power limit, not sure if thats still the case. But it might be why you get higher temps while gaming. Looks like your hitting fuill tdp from your screenshot so not sure.

which one?

I seem to have too much info

Guess I could use the Adrenailne overlay

hwinfo and adrenaline see my GPU using vastly different amounts of memory. HWINFO sees me using 16gb, Adrenaline... 2gb

The overlay has all the relevant ones for someone who just wants to monitor the basics. HWINFO has so much info it takes a minute to parse whats actually important for CPU and GPU. Its nice to keep an overview of everything though.

 

[Colif]

That is just the short version of hwinfo
I took the long version out before as its a little silly

Spoiler

I expect the Nvidia cards are just as bad.

I don't use either screen, I don't monitor temps in games much and I have the GPU temp showing on my taskbar at all times anyway
Second Blue 40 = GPU

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Weirdly I just noticed that my HWInfo doesnt display any GPU info, its not even disabled under settings just not there.

Most of the time I only check temps when I get a new game, Ive been really surprised and happy how quiet and well the cooler on my latest card works.

 

[Colif]

I don't think I have ever heard the fans on my GPU. Even when I had an AIO. Its not overly loud and is drowned out by the other fans while playing games... no hope now I am on air cooling, its not exactly subtle when temps rise.

Deepcool Assassin 4 in Silent mode since its cooler outside now. So if I were to hear them at all it would be now.

I use MSI Afterburner to run the fans on it constantly as the extra air flow was useful to keep nvme cool. On my first AIO, the nvme used to hit 55c so extra cooling helped. I never changed it for the 2nd AIO either.
It might not be necessary now I swapped intake fans, turning the GPU fans off doesn't make any difference to noise level or the nvme's temps.. but gpu stops being only 40c. I can live with that.

I know gpu fans are spinning as last time I repositioned the GPU stand inside the PC it accidentally was placed in such a way its blade hit a fan blade and I felt the vibrations. I fixed that

red part = "blade"

Once summer ends I might disable the fan plan on MSI Afterburner. I don't think I will need it in the cooler months.

 

[Colif]

Its only the GPU part that worries him about future, everything else seems okay.
And only as he hitting on the 600watt PSU power curve thing Nvidia are going to have to deal with next gen.

If the 6090 needs over 600watts, I want a break out box with its own fire extinguisher attached. Need different cables as well. Maybe I power it by a mini nuclear reactor.

People might have to accept that features are the future... I will resist as long as I can by not chasing dragons and not caring about having best card. And mainly playing games that don't need any of the new features to work... not written to use UE5.

 

[neogunhero]

So I was able to clean my entire PC and reapply thermal paste and pads to my GPU and also repasted the CPU. I haven’t posted results because… uh…

I think I put too much thermal paste…

The temps didn’t go down very much. I know that paste and pads aren’t necessarily going to be the factor that drives down temps, but I also did some research and found out too much could have a negative effect due to being too much of a gap between the chip die and heat sink.

The Arctic MX-6 is THICK, extremely viscous. It doesn’t spread well at all when trying to spread manually. I put kind of a lot because I was afraid it may not spread out nicely once pressure from the GPU backplate/CPU cooler was applied. I more than likely over did it.

As for the thermal pads, that wasn’t as hard as I expected. I did have a slight issue with cutting them as it’s got the texture of chewed and dried gum, so some of the new pieces may be a bit larger than the original ones. However the thickness is the same and it covered all the same components so that’s good.

I also believe I have my fans incorrectly positioned. My top case fan directly above my CPU should be blowing air out, not in.

I need to redo this. A bit disappointed but I should have been smarter lol.

 

[neogunhero]

Gosh. How dumb of me. In addition to having too much thermal paste, I put the top case fan and CPU heatsink fan backwards. On my lunch break, I decided to check out my PC real quick. I'm going to be a bit busy tonight before we can play Split Fiction, so I want to get this done quickly so we can start gaming as soon as we're able to. For reference, last night on Pirate Yakuza my hotspot temp hit 93c, highest core temp hit about 78. Too hot for a not very demanding game IMO.

I pried apart the GPU and repasted it. Thermal pads looked good. Decided to clean off the components they touch with the cleaning wipe Arctic provided, just in case they had some dust interfering with the pads. I then repasted the CPU as well, which had a fairly uneven distribution of the paste. Of course it will shift around as I remove the heatsink, but it still looked like it could be better. Fairly thick coating of it too. Put a more moderate amount of paste of both the graphics card and processor.

When I originally did this Monday night, I had to remove the CPU heatsink fan and top case fan so I can remove and reinstall the heatsink. It's very tall and leaves almost no room from the top of it to the top of the case, maybe about an inch gap up there. Since I had to remove both fans from their mounts, I mistakenly put them in incorrect positions. The top fan was blowing onto the heatsink, and the heatsink fan was blowing away towards the front of the case. The heatsink fan needs to be pushing air through the heatsink fins, and the top case needs to be exhausting hot air out the top, so I installed them backwards.

I wasn't able to fully finish it all, but maybe 10-15 minutes after work and I will have it done. Hardest part is putting the heatsink fan back on, it's held by these two tiny little metal arms that clamp onto the fan and the heatsink. Kind of a pain to get on, I may need to remove the top fan again just to give myself enough clearance... just annoying lol. I hope after I get this all done that I can start to see some real difference. I was pretty upset when I first did all of this and noticed Furmark was actually running HOTTER. I knew something had to be up.

 

[neogunhero]

Just a quick update, still needing to do more extensive tests, but after fixing the fans and the paste, things seem to be a lot better. Played Pirate Yakuza for 2 hours last night, prior to yesterday it was hitting almost 80c core temp. Last night, didn't go above 65. I ran my three back-to-back Furmark tests today at lunch and the hotspot temp just barely hit 83, core stayed around 70. The screenies I posted earlier in this thread saw the hotspot hitting 93C. Seems to be working a lot better, will do more testing and upload more photos this weekend.

 

[Colif]

Having the fans on the wrong way doesn't help.

Helps to know that air is blown away from the label side on fans... for 99% of fans anyway. Reverse blade fans ruin that rule.

Also helps to check

My top 2 fans on my PC were originally intakes that I thought were exhausts, and always assumed that they had been put in the right way.,.. until I replaced them with Noctuas and discovered truth. Now I don't have any exhausts apart from one on cooler.

My cooler has both types attached, front 140 blows air through fin stack and the rear reverse blade fan sucks it out and exhausts out rear.

never noticed the lights in the backplate before? rgb in case is green, wonder if it matches...

A top exhaust really wouldn't help my cooler as its designed to blow air out the back, its plastic shroud stops any air escaping out the top. I did have a rear exhaust but due to how close it was to cooler, I just took it out.

i was restricted to how fast rear could run before i ran into wind noises. Its not really needed with 3 x 140mm intake fans.

The only mistake I made with installing coolers is not removing the plastic cover on the base before installing it on CPU, but that was 23 years ago now and was quickly fixed. You only do that once.

Highest temps I see each day are about 80c when AV runs a scan. I know this cooler isn't as good at cooling as my AIO were and won't get the cooling I used to have, but its easy to replace fans if they die, compared to a pump. I have seen over 90c running Cinebench which is higher than water ever got. though not sure what fans I had installed then for intakes... maybe I try that again in a few months.

 

[Colif]

reasons why GPU are so hard to get now.

Everyone trying to get same people to make the chips

 

[neogunhero]

Still haven't done any testing for the purpose of recording down the info, just been having Afterburner and HWInfo open while gaming. After playing Split Fiction for 2 hours straight, max settings with FSR 3.1 set to Quality, my GPU hit a max core temp of 63c, hotspot hit 82c. Working really good! I'm considering getting a new fan or two. The one exhaust blowing out the very back of my case is some really cheap fan that I don't think works very well. IIRC, I bought it in a 3-pack for under $10 on Amazon 5-6 years ago. Since I only need one or two new fans, I'm considering matching my other two Noctua PF-12 Redux fans. They're some of the cheaper fans Noctua makes, but probably a whole lot better than the bargain bin fan I have. I also want to change the fan on the CPU cooler, but I'm unsure if they will mount the same as the one that came with the cooler.

 

[Colif]

I also want to change the fan on the CPU cooler, but I'm unsure if they will mount the same as the one that came with the cooler.

It sounds like you need to look at the cooler and see how they attach first. Then you could search the internet for a combo of the cooler and the Noctua fans, and see if anyone else has done it as well.

If I needed an exhaust fan I have a spare

NF-S12A PWM

The NF-S12A marks the third generation of Noctua’s signature S12 series quiet case fans, which have received more than 250 awards and recommendations from the international press. Featuring a further refined blade design with Anti-Stall Knobs that works in tandem with the new AAO (Advanced...

noctua.at

in a drawer here. I originally bought it to replace an exhaust fan in my last PC but never did.
I was tempted to swap it into my Deepcool but I just keep it as a spare. I have too many spare fans but I find anything I buy by accident one year, ends up being used the next.

 

[neogunhero]

It sounds like you need to look at the cooler and see how they attach first. Then you could search cooler and the Noctua fans and see if anyone else has done it as well.

Honestly I was just looking at CPU air coolers and they are very affordable for something better than what I have now. The issue is figuring out if it will fit or not. My cooler is already really huge, giving only an inch or so of clearance form the top, so I can’t get anything taller in that sense. I’m thinking a new cooler plus an extra fan to replace the rear exhaust and I will be good for a long time with cooling.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Honestly I was just looking at CPU air coolers and they are very affordable for something better than what I have now. The issue is figuring out if it will fit or not. My cooler is already really huge, giving only an inch or so of clearance form the top, so I can’t get anything taller in that sense. I’m thinking a new cooler plus an extra fan to replace the rear exhaust and I will be good for a long time with cooling.

If you look up your case specs it should list CPU cooler clearance somewhere, it doesnt affect performance if its even a mm off the door I can tell you from experience

 

[Colif]

You need to know the case dimensions to work out how tall the cooler can be.
knowing the ram clearance height also helps, as though many coolers let you raise the front fan, it won't help if it doesn't fir inside case when raised.

if your ram isn't really tall and covered in RGB like mine, your choices are wider. I mainly chose my brick as it mounts in such a way the ram sticks don't get in its way at all - it sits behind them

But there are way cheaper options such as

https://thermalright.com/product/peerless-assassin-120-black-v3/

and some single fan noctua coolers can also do same thing.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Ive had like 5 sets of RAM in the last 10 years and every one the front fan had to rest a little bit up because of the heatspreaders, and thats with me trying to get sensible stuff that doesnt have to much ornamentation

I think a lot of the bigger coolers are offset backwards and away from the PCI-E socket as well now in some way to account for it?

 

[Colif]

My cooler more is expensive than cheaper options until you take into account I would need new ram with the other coolers, to fit in my case, so their price is increased by cost of ram and it ended up being cheaper to pay more for my cooler.

I think a lot of the bigger ones are offset backwards and away from the PCI-E socket as well now in some way to account for it?

not that i noticed. Most of them just let you raise front fan.
The only offset I am aware of is how they are mounted on the CPU, as AMD ones have a different offset mount since their hot spot is different to Intels. Noctua coolers have different brackets to account for that.

My cooler could have a front fan. It comes with a bracket to mount a front fan but testing shows it doesn't help that much and just brings ram height into play.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Your case has 185mm of clearance, yowch thats more than my last few cases have had by about 15mm. Think thats quite a lot for a mid tower.

The Cryorig R1 Ultimate I had before this Noctua was 171 mm tall, my old case said in specs it had 170mm clearance. Not having a tempered glass side panel gives a little wiggle room

CRYORIG R1 Universal Review

CRYORIG and their R1 Universal have redefined what makes a high-end air cooler. Packing some serious features and never before seen memory clearance on a cooler of this size, it not only performs like a champ, it could make the competition appear obsolete in comparison.

www.techpowerup.com

I remember them releasing this version of my cooler, it had a half size from fan for RAM compatibility, and I know Ive seen others that are offset away from PCI-E like my NHD15 I think. CryoRig actually used to do a thing where you could download a kind of origami plan of the cooler to test if it fits. Shame they went out of business (I think) they made some pretty sweet stuff.

Anyway yes for sure need to check it will fit the case before buying anything.

 

[Colif]

i have about 21mm between side glass and cooler. That isn't enough to let me mount the front fan as my silly ram is 55mm tall and I don't have that much difference. Its what stopped me looking at some coolers as their cost + new ram was too high,

I did think about a different ram/cooler combo in next PC but right now I probably just get a white version of my cooler.
If they made this in white I would be tempted

ASSASSIN IV VC VISION - DeepCool

DeepCool's flagship air cooler series gets a drastic addition in the form of the ASSASSIN IV VC VISION. The cooling capacity gets a nice bump with the inclusion of a vapor chamber at the base that pushes the TDP to 300W! The upgrades don't stop there, as a high-end quad-segmented digital display...

www.deepcool.com

What case does Neo have?

 

[neogunhero]

I have a Rosewill Challenger S Mid Tower ATX case. Pretty old, cheap, and basic. For some reason I’ve always used Rosewill cases for my last three builds, I think they're just really cheap to get.

The dimensions according to Newegg are 16.06"H x 7.28"W x 17.52"D. I think this is for the entire case not just inside. However the width should be good enough for a larger cooler. My current cooler does the job just fine, haven't seen my CPU hit 70c, always in the 60s when it's being used intensely, but I would just like to get a newer one since mine is quite old, and there has been tons of improvements in air coolers just in the past few years. Under $40 for a very well-made CPU air cooler seems like a bargain to me.

As for exhaust fan, again mine is a bargain bin UpHere branded cooler that came in a 3 pack for $9. Surely a Noctua fan would perform better. According to a lot of different sources, the Noctua NF-S12A would be ideal as a rear exhaust fan as it's great at pushing air. I think I will get one of those and a Peerless Assassin SE V2 for the CPU cooler.

None of this is necessary, after I repasted everything and fixed the fans, my PC has been running cool just fine. I guess I'm just bored, don't wanna shell out a ton of money on some actual hardware upgrades, and just want to push the cooling down as much as I can. Plus the rear exhaust fan and CPU cooler are both cheap and old and wouldn't hurt to do some upgrades on those.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I'd probably try and measure inside it if I were you for a better idea of how much room you have, if you cant find it anywhere. I couldnt find the specs listed for your case unfortunately

You should also check your RAM size and the cooler clearance over that like Colif said. I have pretty sensibly sized RAM and its like 43 mm tall, meaning my front fan is almost 1cm higher than the tower and pretty close to the door. If you know the part code for your RAM kit you should be able to find that fairly easily.

Now you got me thinking I could get a new CPU cooler. The newer dual towers are looking really nice.