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EKWB 360 Predator

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I've just ran a couple of test this afternoon.
My original cooler was the 360 Predator and then i tried a 4+ year old Thermalright Macho.
It was quite hot here in Cape Town today,felt like it was hitting high 20's,maybe touching 30 degrees.

With the Predator i reached 73 degrees after running AIDA64 for about 7 minutes.
I did run with the fan profile on normal in the bios and the pump on pwm.

Then afterwards i installed the Macho and it peaked at 74 after 14 minutes of running.(I had to go out quickly)

When i pulled the EKWB block off the cpu,the paste was evenly spread.

What i would like to know is,Is this normal?
The EKWB cost me R3500 earlier in the year and a cooler that cost me about R500 was only 1 degree warmer.
The CPU is a 7700k at 4,6ghz and 1,168v.
 

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I think - after having used some highend air and water cooling - that up to medium overclocks there is no performance difference. It is only if you reach ultra high temps... then watercooling has more room.
The old "noise" argument is totally untrue: a pump plus radiator fans make just as much if not more noise that one or two lets say noctua fans.

So if you want maximum fun for your money...
 

sneekypeet

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I would assume the loop should do better, but it is possible that the pump speed will have an impact as well as running the fans "normal" rather than PWM controlled like the air cooler would be. For all we know, the room swung 5 degrees in ambient temperature, humidity increased or decreased, and the air cooler fan may be running balls out, while the radiator fans were stuck at 7V.

More testing with tighter restrictions on the equipment and environment are needed in my opinion.
 
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Thanx for the response.

The pump and fans were on PWM.
The fans minimum speed was about 1000rpm and peaked at 1650rpm.
The pumps minimum speed was 1700rpm and settled at around 2500rpm.

The fan on the Macho was maxed,I think,not sure on max rpm,it did peak at 949rpm and was completely silent.
I think the temp in my room was about the same,if you look at my hdd's and a couple other temps that wouldn't
be affected from the fan on the Macho,they are all about 1 degree apart.
 

sneekypeet

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Audio Device(s) Realtek on board > Sony Receiver > Cerwin Vegas
Power Supply be quiet DARK POWER PRO 12 1500W
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Fans on the loop max out at 2200 RPM, fan on the Macho maxes at 1300 (revision A and B are the same)
You simply cannot guess at what is going on, you need to take the time to find out the full potential of each and then come to a conclusion ;)
 
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I used to have a Predator 240, both on i7 4770 and i7 6700K and in both cases, cooling GTX 980Ti in the same loop. i7 4770 was cooler OK-ish at 60C max, i7 6700K was hopeless with peak over 80C. At the same time, in the same loop, 980Ti (under fullcover block and at power consumption matching the 250W TDP) was kept under 50C, closer to 40C. When running fans and pump at full blast, GTX 980Ti was kept <40C, CPU temps came down maybe 2C if that.

Now I have the same Supremacy MX block salvaged from Predator in a custom loop with D5 pump and 480 radiator. Fan speed does not seem to matter for CPU temperatures, radiator is able to dissipate heat from CPU easily. Pump speed on the other hand does matter and very noticeably. In idle my pump is running at 1400-1500rpm (very silent) which will not cool CPU properly at full CPU load, it still peaks at 80C if not more. Once my load curve is enabled, it will increase speed to 3000rpm (noise is noticeable) and will keep CPU at 72C. Both at CPU-only load using Prime95 28.7 (so worst case scenario, AVX/AVX2 and all).

Looking at tests around the internet EKWB Supremacy MX in Predators should not be too bad a waterblock. Sounds like combination of Intel's problem with TIM between IHS and die on one hand and small contact area for the CPU block on the other hand.

At stock, with mild or medium OC watercooling really is not worth it. Noise-wise, AIOs in general really are not worth it, in my opinion. That is for CPU-only cooling. Having GPU in the same loop makes watercooling much better :)
 
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Thanx for the responses.

What I'm going to do this weekend is re-test with pwm off for the fans and pump,which i would never do all the time because I sit about 1 metre from my PC
and I don't use headphones.

I did run Intel burn test for a few minutes last night on the Macho,it was a bit cooler in my room then but it still only peaked at 69.

I bought the predator after owning Corsairs h100(which i found to be really crap),the Coolermaster Nepton 280(which was okay)
but even the 280 was slightly warmer than the Macho.
I bought the EKWB because i thought i could run it in a sort of balanced mode and it would be 5 or so degrees cooler than the Macho.
The EKWB is a quality AIO,but i think i expected a bit more from it.

I was thinking of adding a Strix 1080 block but I would need to import it from EKWB and Asus said my warranty would be voided.
I do have a good fan profile and i was able to fine tune the Curve that it only peaked at 52 degrees in GTA5 yesterday while it was 30 degrees outside and
most likely that inside my room,no air con.
 
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1. AIDA 64 will present a load profile that your PC will never see again, it's value for stability testing is therefore questionable at best. It's kinda like testing a Florida soccer mom's van by testing it by testing off road in snow, mud or hill climbing. If you choose to limit ya OC because of a temperature ceiling of say 75C under AIDA, I'd guess that it will never see 65C doing anything you actually use ya PC for. So limiting your OC to any specific multiplier, unnecessary curtails your OC because it will never see that load / temps again. While still well more than ya need, RoG Real Bench I find to be a more useful stress test as a) it presents a less intensive load than the synthetic programs, b) it's still way more load than your PC will ever say and c) it's multitasking nature exposes stability issues that synthetics do not uncover. I have has 24 hour stable P95 OCs fail in 45 minutes under RB.

2. A decent air cooler is expected to do as well as a 2 x 120mm water cooler.... any CLC type cooler can not compete with the better air coolers at comparable noise levels. And by better, I'm not just talking about the $90 offerings from Noctua and Cryroig. The $45 Scythe Fuma and $37 Scythe Mugen Max will equal or outperform both the Noctua and Cryorig offerings.

3. At 1.168 volts, you shouldn't be in need of much cooling. Here's the Kaby Lake results from overclock.net's KL Overclocking thread:

Average OC 5.03 / Average Vcore 1.36
Median OC 5.00/ Median Vcore 1.36

So what you have done basically is test a 500 pound hoist and a 750 pound hoist by lifting 375 pounds ... you will need to apply a bigger load to separate the two.

4. You should do various tests with the pump at various fixed speeds. You will find that you will see significant increase up to a point and then increased pump speed / coolant flow has less and less effect. Set up ya pump speed curve accordingly.

5. We use 1200-1250 rpm fans and I find they are inaudible at speeds up to 850 rpm. So I aim for enough radiator that I will never hear them under normal usage. Usually this means that I'm setting the fan curve to 850 rpm @ 75C with a steep curve up to 100% at 80C.

6. With regard to your plans for including the GFX card in the loop, if you consider selling the Strix, I'd suggest two option if available in your neck of the woods.s:

a) Asus Poseidon ... OK it's not as good as a real full cover water block, but it's nice compromise allowing you run on either air or water cooling.

b) MSI Seahawk EK X gives you a full cover water block (covering GPU and VRAM / memory) and quality AIB GFX card and a quality EK water block for far less than you could buy them individually. Ofcourse pricing in your area may be vastly different

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127952

7. We use a spreadsheet tool based upon radiator performance data performed by MartinsLiquidLab . Using fan speeds and tested radiator performance you can reasonably calculate coolant temps. It's been accurate to within 5% so far. It is based upon a target "Delta T" (between ambient air and coolant temp) of 10C. so if air is 25C, you can expect coolant temps of 35C. I would not expect you to maintain that delta T. But doing a rough calculation

OC CPU @ 1.35 volts ~ 130 watts
OC'd MSI 1080 ~ 255 watts
Pump ~ 5 watts

Total = 390 watts

You then need to estimate the amount of heat that is handled by the radiators, versus the amount that is radiated inside the case by rad shrouds component surfaces, tubing, etc This works out to be about 60% on SLI systems where the large surface area of the water blocks handling a significant portion of the total load (with two GFX cards, they produce 80% of the load ... 65% on single systems). So 75% is a more appropriate number for single card systems

75% of 390 ~ 293 watts

The EK XT360 line isn't what you are uysing but it's the closest we have in the test results and it has the following characteristics:

1000 rpm = 145 watts
1250 rpm = 178 watts
1400 rpm = 197 watts
1800 rpm = 246 watts
2200 rpm = 291 watts

So I would expect that your "Delta T" at 1800 rpm would be very close to 10C at 2200 rpm. However, that's a design goal not a strict mandate. At 1250 rpm, you are looking at about 16.3 delta T and that's a lot better than what you'd see with a CLC and aluminum radiator at 2700 rpm.
 
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Processor 5800x3D
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I decided to re do the test tonight.

With the CPU at 5,0ghz and 1,35v but peaks at 1,376v the Macho would start to throttle,not by too much,after a couple minutes the lowest core speed was 4,8 on 1 core.
Reached 100 degrees with the fan spinning at max speed of 1000rpm,fan control was disabled.

With the EKWB it peaked at 97 degrees,with a lot more noise but a lot quieter than my old Nepton 280 at full speed.
Tested using IBT in the very high setting.

I would never keep this cpu at 5,0 ghz though,at 4,8 i can run with a voltage of 1,2,a few months back i tried to see if 5,0 ghz was possible with a voltage of 1,3 and it couldn't do it.
The extra 200mhz isn't worth the extra 0,15v needed.
 
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