Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Cooling Processors quietly

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Tue May 16, 2017 4:21 pm

quest_for_silence wrote:did you just remove the HDD cage or did you even mount a second front intake fan?
Just removed the cage. I don't expect this made a huge difference, but my reasoning is that there was no reason not to do it. At worst it will only marginally improve airflow and turbulence.

quest_for_silence wrote:About the thermal paste, which one did you use?
Arctic MX-4.
quest_for_silence wrote:And what about flipping the top fan from exhaust to intake?
I forgot about that actually. I just gave it a go with both front-top and rear-top intakes (with no upper exhaust in either case of course).

Having a rear-top intake reduced CPU temps by a few degrees initially, but GPU temps increased by the same amount. As GPU temps increased, the benefit to CPU temps disappeared as the CPU cooler became hit with the heat from below. This took about 10 minutes. When I shut it down the GPU was 70 degrees and the CPU was back where it had been with the top as an exhaust fan.

Having a rear-top intake essentially led to the same process over a longer period. It took about half an hour before I shut this one down at the same temps as above. In both cases temps were still increasing when I stopped it.

I believe that air from the GPU cooler is competing with the top intake to escape, and air that is escaping out the exhaust is being recirculated in the case of the rear intake. Increasing the rear exhaust may have resolved some of this, but then it would have been unacceptably loud.

Of course, this does demonstrate potential for further improvements from more intakes, so perhaps another front fan is worth trying. I'm out of headers so I would have to split it off the first one, but that's not a big deal. The question is if it would increase volume. Only one way to find out of course.

NeilBlanchard
Moderator
Posts: 7681
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Maynard, MA, Eaarth
Contact:

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed May 17, 2017 5:04 am

In my experience, when you take off the door and temps drop - you need to get the air flow to be "cleaner" i.e. less complex and less turbulent. A positive pressure case seems to have pockets of still air - which is not what you want.

Also, you need to work with the natural air flow - intakes on the bottom and front, and exhausts top and back. Air should flow straight as possible, with as little friction / obstruction as possible.

Can you see a change after the thermal paste reinstall?

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Wed May 17, 2017 5:46 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:Can you see a change after the thermal paste reinstall?
It's hard to say because I did a whole bunch of things in one go, but my instinct is that reapplying the thermal paste and doing a clean installation of the cooler led to the largest change. One thing I'm going to do is get my hands on a larger screwdriver so that I can tighten it further. That might give us more info. I bent the driver that came with it while working on a car, and I think I chucked it forgetting that it served a particular purpose. The one I'm using is much smaller, and therefore doesn't allow as much torque.

quest_for_silence
Posts: 5275
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by quest_for_silence » Wed May 17, 2017 10:11 pm

nintendoeats wrote:
quest_for_silence wrote:About the thermal paste, which one did you use?
Arctic MX-4.

That's rather good: you should be able to shave off a couple of degree with some (more expensive) higher performance paste (like the Prolimatech PK3 or the Thermalright Chill Factor III, IME), but the MX-4 is quite good.

nintendoeats wrote:
quest_for_silence wrote:And what about flipping the top fan from exhaust to intake?
I forgot about that actually. I just gave it a go with both front-top and rear-top intakes (with no upper exhaust in either case of course).

Maybe I didn't get you correctly (language barrier) but IME you can't run such a system without an active exhaust fan relatively close to the heat sources (such the rear one is).

OTOH two exhaust fans so closely placed may already hit diminshing returns: IME a gaming rig may benefit from a top panel intake more than a top panel exhaust, but I can't say "what if" in case of such a folding rig, so my gut needs to be checked/confirmed directly by you.

nintendoeats wrote:Of course, this does demonstrate potential for further improvements from more intakes, so perhaps another front fan is worth trying. I'm out of headers so I would have to split it off the first one, but that's not a big deal. The question is if it would increase volume. Only one way to find out of course.

The question I see is "what if" you close the front door.

That Corsair is just too restrictive (for such a CPU when overclocked), so IMO you do need two front intake fans if you want to have the chance to close that door in normal operation, whichever the noise penalty a second front intake fan (you think) may bring.

Another issue I see is that you should stop pushing the clock: the first rule of quiet computing is to reduce heat, so you need to lower the vcore at most. I can't help about your needs, but personally I'd stick to 4.2GHz at most.

Last but not least I still continue to not understand your current, specific fans pace (I mean, the spinning pace of all and each fan).

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Fri May 19, 2017 8:07 am

quest_for_silence wrote: That's rather good: you should be able to shave off a couple of degree with some (more expensive) higher performance paste (like the Prolimatech PK3 or the Thermalright Chill Factor III, IME), but the MX-4 is quite good.
Based on the comparisons I have seen, it seems like by far the best price/performance choice.

quest_for_silence wrote:Maybe I didn't get you correctly (language barrier) but IME you can't run such a system without an active exhaust fan relatively close to the heat sources (such the rear one is).

OTOH two exhaust fans so closely placed may already hit diminshing returns: IME a gaming rig may benefit from a top panel intake more than a top panel exhaust, but I can't say "what if" in case of such a folding rig, so my gut needs to be checked/confirmed directly by you.

To clarify, there was an exhaust fan in the back. I suppose another option would be mounting an intake on the top front and an exhaust on the top-back, but at that point would the fans not be recycling quite a bit of air? I just don't think there was enough exhaust in this arrangement for my case.



That Corsair is just too restrictive (for such a CPU when overclocked), so IMO you do need two front intake fans if you want to have the chance to close that door in normal operation, whichever the noise penalty a second front intake fan (you think) may bring.[/quote]
I have mounted a lower intake fan on the front. It hasn't increased volume noticeably, but has helped with temps a bit. Unfortunately they still rise substantially with the door closed (even though I have now entirely remove the plastic shroud on the front of the case).
quest_for_silence wrote:Another issue I see is that you should stop pushing the clock: the first rule of quiet computing is to reduce heat, so you need to lower the vcore at most. I can't help about your needs, but personally I'd stick to 4.2GHz at most.

I completely understand this point of view, but in my case I will be able to use any CPU performance I can get during renders (in which case the GPU will be turned off reducing case temps quite a bit), so I want to find the processor's limits.
quest_for_silence wrote:Last but not least I still continue to not understand your current, specific fans pace (I mean, the spinning pace of all and each fan).
I am now on SpeedFan and have defined curves which are usually based on the temps of the hottest CPU cores. They all run at ~650 RPM most of the time, which is pretty close to inaudible. The curves shoot up substantially when the cores go above 88 degrees. When the CPU winds down several of the fans turn off.

I have made a few more small tweaks and am now seeing generally sub-80 degrees on the hottest cores with an ambient temperature of 28 degrees @ 4.4 G. One of them is unusual, a Pure Wings 2 92mm exhaust fan placed just above the GPU. This seems to be effectively pulling GPU heat away from the CPU, and I've seen GPU temps drop very nicely. This could also play well with a top-intake.

Image

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Fri May 19, 2017 8:22 am

Since we're talking about TIM, have either of you ever experimented with the Coollaboratory products? They appear to be massively effective performers, and I'm wondering if they really as risky to install as some places are suggesting.

nagi
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:48 pm
Location: Outside the box

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nagi » Fri May 19, 2017 8:41 am

nintendoeats wrote:Since we're talking about TIM, have either of you ever experimented with the Coollaboratory products? They appear to be massively effective performers, and I'm wondering if they really as risky to install as some places are suggesting.
Well, it's very easy to just twitch the brush and let some of that electrically conductive material fly off to god knows where. Plus there is the problem of it eating aluminium.

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Fri May 19, 2017 8:48 am

nagi wrote:
nintendoeats wrote:Since we're talking about TIM, have either of you ever experimented with the Coollaboratory products? They appear to be massively effective performers, and I'm wondering if they really as risky to install as some places are suggesting.
Well, it's very easy to just twitch the brush and let some of that electrically conductive material fly off to god knows where. Plus there is the problem of it eating aluminium.
I read the Aluminum thing and confirmed that the Scythe has a copper base. Have you done it? What kinds of results did you get?

I note that you also have an Accelero. May I ask how the 1080 likes it? What kinds of fan speeds and temps do you run at full tilt?

nagi
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:48 pm
Location: Outside the box

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nagi » Sat May 20, 2017 1:47 am

nintendoeats wrote:I read the Aluminum thing and confirmed that the Scythe has a copper base. Have you done it? What kinds of results did you get?

I note that you also have an Accelero. May I ask how the 1080 likes it? What kinds of fan speeds and temps do you run at full tilt?
I only used it on my delidded 4770k and 4790k, between the chips and the lids, not between the lids and the coolers. It helped a few degrees.

As for the Accelero, my 290x with the same was quite a bit more quiet. (both on OC.) I suspect I might have screwed up some part of the application process, or it's just that the smaller process node gpu of the 1080 is just too power-dense. But probably I'm at fault. I did put some extra heatsinks on the memory and VRM chips, and they might have interfered when I screwed the cooler on. One of these days I'm gonna redo it, although it is still OK in noise if you are going without OC and limiting it with vsync to 60fps.

As for noise: it is noticeable with my quite quiet setup at 1500rpm, and above 1600 it's annoying. I had no noise problem with Prey, but did so with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and a few other very gpu-intensive high-end games.

Furmark temps:
With OC, (+75%core, 120% power target, +90 core clock, +400 memory clock) ~1700 rpm will keep it at or under 71°C. Without, it's stabilizing at 1500-1600 and 69-70°C.

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Sat May 20, 2017 5:21 am

nagi wrote: Furmark temps:
With OC, (+75%core, 120% power target, +90 core clock, +400 memory clock) ~1700 rpm will keep it at or under 71°C. Without, it's stabilizing at 1500-1600 and 69-70°C.
That does sound a touch high in temps and fan speed, though of course Furmark is the great VRM killer to it isn't outside the realms of possibility. If you do a reinstall I would be very curious to hear if anything changes. Getting a 1080 is one of those completely unnecessary things I keep thinking about doing.

Thanks for the info.

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Mon May 22, 2017 3:44 pm

So, today's strange news. I had everything pretty close to where I wanted it in Speedfan on Friday, then we went away for the weekend. I came back to find my computer making a bizarre chirping noise. I used the "jam your finger in" test to make sure that it wasn't coming from any of the fans. It sounded like it was coming from the CPU area, but it's hard to tell in such a confined space. I eventually discovered that if I unplugged one of the fans plugged into a splitter the noise stopped immediately.

I made some of the fans run off Molex connectors, but even with one fan per header it still makes this noise in some configurations. I can't find any pattern to it. Very odd. I'm wondering if it's something to do with the PWM-> DC process, possibly somehow related to Speedfan.

nagi
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:48 pm
Location: Outside the box

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nagi » Tue May 23, 2017 8:35 am

nintendoeats wrote: If you do a reinstall I would be very curious to hear if anything changes.
Yeah, unfortunately that'll take some time, as I'll have to cut down a few heatsinks to size.
nintendoeats wrote:So, today's strange news. I had everything pretty close to where I wanted it in Speedfan on Friday, then we went away for the weekend. I came back to find my computer making a bizarre chirping noise. I used the "jam your finger in" test to make sure that it wasn't coming from any of the fans. It sounded like it was coming from the CPU area, but it's hard to tell in such a confined space. I eventually discovered that if I unplugged one of the fans plugged into a splitter the noise stopped immediately.

I made some of the fans run off Molex connectors, but even with one fan per header it still makes this noise in some configurations. I can't find any pattern to it. Very odd. I'm wondering if it's something to do with the PWM-> DC process, possibly somehow related to Speedfan.
In my experience PWM fans can produce what oyu describe - coil whine - when controlled through PWM signals. Even high-end Noctuas.

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Tue May 23, 2017 9:05 am

nagi wrote:In my experience PWM fans can produce what oyu describe - coil whine - when controlled through PWM signals. Even high-end Noctuas.
I suppose it is some form of coil whine, but it was very strange. It sounded almost exactly like a dial-up modem.

Abula
Posts: 3662
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:22 pm
Location: Guatemala

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by Abula » Tue May 23, 2017 4:39 pm

nintendoeats wrote:
nagi wrote:In my experience PWM fans can produce what oyu describe - coil whine - when controlled through PWM signals. Even high-end Noctuas.
I suppose it is some form of coil whine, but it was very strange. It sounded almost exactly like a dial-up modem.
I have experienced this sound or similar with Noctuas only when i placed them horizontal and facing down, just facing it up the noise disappears, and vertical the fans never exhibit in my limited personal testing and pc that i have built. That said, i did had a couple of noctuas that were not balanced well and got replacements from noctuas, so it might be also a defective fan??

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Tue May 23, 2017 6:03 pm

Abula wrote:
nintendoeats wrote:
nagi wrote:In my experience PWM fans can produce what oyu describe - coil whine - when controlled through PWM signals. Even high-end Noctuas.
I suppose it is some form of coil whine, but it was very strange. It sounded almost exactly like a dial-up modem.
I have experienced this sound or similar with Noctuas only when i placed them horizontal and facing down, just facing it up the noise disappears, and vertical the fans never exhibit in my limited personal testing and pc that i have built. That said, i did had a couple of noctuas that were not balanced well and got replacements from noctuas, so it might be also a defective fan??
I did consider this possibility. In this case all of the fans are known good and the sound is coming from the motherboard, not the motors. Where was the noise coming from in your case?

nagi
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:48 pm
Location: Outside the box

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nagi » Wed May 24, 2017 9:42 am

nintendoeats wrote:
nagi wrote: Furmark temps:
With OC, (+75%core, 120% power target, +90 core clock, +400 memory clock) ~1700 rpm will keep it at or under 71°C. Without, it's stabilizing at 1500-1600 and 69-70°C.
That does sound a touch high in temps and fan speed, though of course Furmark is the great VRM killer to it isn't outside the realms of possibility. If you do a reinstall I would be very curious to hear if anything changes. Getting a 1080 is one of those completely unnecessary things I keep thinking about doing.

Thanks for the info.
OK, just re-did the GPU and now it's ~67°C with ~1400-1500rpm stable under furmark, with OC.

IIRC I used the paste that was pre-applied to the cooler, maybe that was the problem, maybe something else. I also removed the extra heatsinks that might have collided with the cooler and thus borking the heatspreader position as I found some smaller ones. Also, this 67°C is in a room that is about 3 degrees hotter.

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Wed May 24, 2017 10:41 am

nagi wrote: OK, just re-did the GPU and now it's ~67°C with ~1400-1500rpm stable under furmark, with OC.

IIRC I used the paste that was pre-applied to the cooler, maybe that was the problem, maybe something else. I also removed the extra heatsinks that might have collided with the cooler and thus borking the heatspreader position as I found some smaller ones. Also, this 67°C is in a room that is about 3 degrees hotter.
Well that is a heck of a lot better. I tried reusing TIM once, it did not produce good results.

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Wed May 24, 2017 7:05 pm

I'm going away for a couple weeks starting tomorrow, so here is a quick rundown of where we are.

I haven't gotten a stable 4.4 GHz yet. Increasing vCore hasn't gotten me anywhere, though it will run for more than 24 hours before crashing. Right now I'm leaving it at 4.3 and will look at other settings when I return.

I started making more extensive case mods, including cutting out the entire plastic bezel on the front and removing the metal bars restricting the 92mm fan on the back. Fans are unchanged, though some of them are now run off 5 and 7 volt molex pins to eliminate the "modem" noise.

While running folding on both the CPU (4.3 GHz) and GPU (2.1GHz) I see sub-75 degrees on the hottest CPU cores and sub-60 degrees on the GPU at an ambient of 26 degrees. This is with the door closed, temps are at best a couple degrees lower with it open. The system isn't QUITE silent unfortunately, even at idle. The biggest offender is the CPU fans, which cannot be brought below 650 RPM on this motherboard. When I return I am going to wire the "always on" bottom intake fan into the CPU fan header on the mobo so that I can bring the more audible CPU fans down a bit.

nagi
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:48 pm
Location: Outside the box

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nagi » Thu May 25, 2017 8:56 am

nintendoeats wrote:
nagi wrote: OK, just re-did the GPU and now it's ~67°C with ~1400-1500rpm stable under furmark, with OC.

IIRC I used the paste that was pre-applied to the cooler, maybe that was the problem, maybe something else. I also removed the extra heatsinks that might have collided with the cooler and thus borking the heatspreader position as I found some smaller ones. Also, this 67°C is in a room that is about 3 degrees hotter.
Well that is a heck of a lot better. I tried reusing TIM once, it did not produce good results.
Oh, I did not re-use the TIM, it was what the factory applied to the brand new 3rd party heatsink. Of course I know the problems that arise with reusing it.

re: 650 min RPM: have you tried combining PWM and undervolting the fan as well? Maybe that'll help, although I don't know, I usually try to stay clear of PWM.

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Thu May 25, 2017 9:24 am

nagi wrote:re: 650 min RPM: have you tried combining PWM and undervolting the fan as well? Maybe that'll help, although I don't know, I usually try to stay clear of PWM.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but currently on the CPU I have a pair of 3-pin fans with a resistor on each to keep it down. I don't think that there is anything else I can do as long as they are run off the CPU headers on the board.

nagi
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:48 pm
Location: Outside the box

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nagi » Thu May 25, 2017 11:19 am

nintendoeats wrote:
nagi wrote:re: 650 min RPM: have you tried combining PWM and undervolting the fan as well? Maybe that'll help, although I don't know, I usually try to stay clear of PWM.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but currently on the CPU I have a pair of 3-pin fans with a resistor on each to keep it down. I don't think that there is anything else I can do as long as they are run off the CPU headers on the board.
Ah, my mistake, I thought ou were using 4-pin PWM fans.

NeilBlanchard
Moderator
Posts: 7681
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2002 7:11 pm
Location: Maynard, MA, Eaarth
Contact:

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by NeilBlanchard » Fri May 26, 2017 4:39 am

Boy, the Air 540 is BIG!

nintendoeats
Posts: 59
Joined: Sun Feb 22, 2015 11:57 am

Re: Silencing and Overclocking a 5930k

Post by nintendoeats » Fri Jun 16, 2017 5:11 pm

I am getting near the point where I am ready to put together a build guide, but I thought I should update this thread with my last results. When I returned home after two weeks I found that my temps had dropped below 70 on all cores at an ambient of 24 (The A/C was fixed while I was away, hurrah!). However, some Coolaboratory Ultra had arrived and I swapped that out with the MX-4 as an experiment.

Because the 5930k is huge, and most of the liquid winds up on the brush, I had to use the entire tube. I think the scuffing helps to keep the paste on the CPU, and had I realized that before I applied it I would have done more scuffing.

I was not initially impressed, but now that it has been on for a week I am seeing a few degrees lower. Nothing huge, but enough to make the difference between on and off at 26 degrees using my fan curve.

I still have not been able to get a stable 4.4Ghz OC, even after adding a full 0.1v on top of the confirmed stable 4.3 Ghz one. I think I am going to have to give up that dream unless I can decipher some of the other settings.

The only things I still want to do are quiet down the CPU fans (Silent Wings 3s) somehow and investigate some rough noises when the top fan runs at its lowest speed. After that I will be ready to call this silent and will begin assembling a guide.

Post Reply