Our system are almost identical except the fans: 8700K + 2080Ti (~350W combine load), both run S1 pump at max speed without heatsink. Even now after I swapped to a 9900K + 3090 for a full year, my S1 pump is still running fine.
Same case (Lian Li O11D), same pumps running max speed all the time without heatsink and no airflow over the pumps (no air access to the back), the only difference is that I run my fans at 2000rpm vs 1200rpm on my friend's built leading to much lower liquid temp on my case.
That does make it sound like fluid temperature is the main variable, yes. Still can't eliminate other factors with a sample size of one (everything from chance to QC to production variance to ambient temperatures), but at least it points towards higher fluid temperature affecting things. Any stronger statement than that requires a larger sample size.
Though you are just gonna disregard any evidence as anecdotal evidence aren't you?
What on earth makes you say that? Seriously, please stop taking this personally. This is just ridiculous.
Surely you are not running anything in your systems at temperature that you deem could cause potential failure? Like running your 6900XT at 180W undervolted instead of 300W+ that it could run without issue?
Please stop talking about things you clearly don't know anything about. Going off of assumptions like that just risk making you look dumb - like in this case.
To clarify: for now, I'm gaming on a 1440p60 monitor. That means the 6900XT is massively overpowered for the vast majority of games. I also have a small case and a small water loop. So, rather than push things unnecessarily (and, among other things, dump a lot of unnecessary heat into the room, which is uncomfortable) I have tuned things to a level where I have a minor (and unnoticeable in >99% of games at my resolution and refresh rate) loss of performance in exchange for a near halving of power draw. This saves me (a tiny amount) of money, makes for a more comfortable play experience due to less heat in the room, and gives me the satisfaction of knowing my PC is running extremely efficiently. If needed, I can absolutely run this at full power - I've stress tested the system in >30° ambient temperatures this summer at full power, and fluid temps never exceeded 45°C under full load, with the GPU drawing ~330W and the CPU 140W. So my setup is perfectly capable of handling the full power draw of all of its components - I just don't really need that, and have a better experience when tuning things down a bit.
I guess you don't know that plastic is not a thermal insulator, the pump IC temperature is not decoupled from the liquid temperature. The specs for DDC pump also have maximum
liquid temperature of 60C (I thought it was 50C earlier)
It isn't an insulator, but it is a rather terrible conductor of heat. Most plastics are in the .1-.3 W/mK range, with some glass fiber reinforced plastics hitting .4. Steel, which is a relatively poor conductor of heat for a metal, is around 50 - more than 100 times higher. I never said that DDC-style pumps aren't affected by fluid temperature at all, but the low thermal conductivity of plastics means that decoupled is an accurate term - they are separated by a barrier with sufficiently low conductivity for there to only be a minor impact. There's a reason why you find dozens of options for DDC heatsinks out there with far, far fewer for D5 pumps - the D5 pumps are designed to be cooled by the passing fluid, while the DDCs are not. Being decoupled doesn't mean that it isn't affected by liquid temperatures at all, but it does mean that there is far, far less impact from this on the pump overall.
So yeah, couple with the fact that higher water temp will lead to faster rate of water permeation, it's not unfounded that cooling 350W with a single 120mm AIO will lead to EARLY pump failure. Well the AIO might live long, if you live in Alaska that is.
Not sure how legit this is but it seems the general consensus for max water temp for AIO is also 60C
View attachment 226784
As a spec from an AIO maker, that would indicate that such conditions are covered under their warranty though. Given that Corsair has 5-year warranties for their AIOs, that does say something about this threshold - mainly that it doesn't equal imminent death for pumps in the loop. I'm obviously not saying you should expect your AIO to last 5 years running 24/7 at 60°, but if that temperature was cause for imminent concern they would lower the spec - just look at how this is practiced for PSU operating temperature ratings.
Both the 980ti and 1080ti were 250 watt cards under extreme loads and the others much less. Maybe instead of constantly clogging up this thread demanding proof, you provide some of your own because that's how High School Debates work.
Uh, I'm not making any new claims here. New claims require new evidence, as new claims aim to change the status quo. And the status quo is that 120mm AIOs have been used on 250W+ GPUs for more than half a decade without significant issue. Also, what kind of proof would it even be possible to produce to show that these AIOs are
not failing? A negative statement like that isn't provable without astronomical effort. Are you suggesting I survey everyone who purchased a card like this? The general tendency for people to talk about and focus on negative experiences means it's more likely to find evidence of failure than continued operation (and it's also more searchable thanks to easily identified terms such as "failure", "dead", etc.)
As for the wattage, 250W at stock for a highly OC'able GPU like the 980ti or 1080ti makes it pretty comparable to this overall, at least on paper.
Higher end 1080tis typically had ~330W power limits. I would definitely expect an AIO-cooled one to operate in that range.
Woot, seems like I should have pointed out from
the review
>60C water temp? I guess I should be asking for proofs that AIO can reliably work at this temperature instead of giving proofs
Wow, that's definitely higher than I would have expected. I completely agree that that is not an acceptable fluid temperature.
Though, looking at that screenshot, the fan is also running at 1300rpm? Either there is something
very wrong with the fan profile on the 6900XT LC, or they had some sort of bug going on there. I would expect this to come with a fan capable of running at at least 3000rpm and for the fan curve to go up to at least 2000 under normal operation.
For reference, the Fury X came with a high-speed Gentle Typhoon (a variant of the
4250rpm version, I think?), and while it never ran at anywhere near 100% speed, it could ramp up relatively high (>2000rpm) if needed.
So, while this does indeed point towards a sub-par cooling system, that (for now) seems to be down to far, far too low fan speeds rather than the overall dimensions of the cooler. I would be extremely interested to see them re-run these tests at a higher fan speed. Of course, if a condition of the statement "A 120mm AIO is insufficient to cool a 300+W GPU and will lead to early pump death" is that the fan won't ever run above 1300rpm, then, well, yes, I would agree with that statement. But I see no reason why that would be a condition, as there are after all plenty of fans capable of running far faster than that - quietly, even.
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