Corsair Hydro Series H50 Cooling Club

[Chicken Patty]

This has got to be the most difficult, most fustrating, PITA thermal paste I have EVER had the displeasure of buying. I've been trying to apply this crap for the past HOUR, even going so far as to heating it up in a cup of hot water for 20 minutes, and I STILL can't get the crap to spread worth a damn.

I'm going to try the hot water trick one more time but I'm NEVER buying this crap again. On the way back home I'm going to get some MX-3 so I don't EVER have to deal with this again.

Yes yes yes, I hate it because of that, it's soooo un spreading

 

[blkhogan]

Its like spreading a wet piece of rice. Gota love it.

 

[Chicken Patty]

Its like spreading a wet piece of rice. Gota love it.

Yeah, it's really bad bro. I don't use it because I can't even get it to stick to the CPU

 

[pjladyfox]

MX-3 MUCH better...

Getting ready to install the motherboard and re-attach everything so here are some pics. I went ahead and used the "bb size dab and install heatsink" as you can see from the last picture using MX-3.

Right now the idle temps are still sitting at 38c with ambient temps sitting around 28c in the room. So I'm not sure what else to do at this point except to maybe clean that paste off and try the Cooler Master stuff. Thoughts?

Update (8:10pm PST): Okay, after watching this thing for a bit it's still not dropping below 38c which is exactly the temps I was getting before. I did some digging and it looks like this is a fairly normal temp for this CPU:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/276409-28-good-cooler-phenom

So at this point I think all of this, in retrospect, was a waste of time which is kind of frustrating but at least I did get a better mounting bracket installed than the cheap plastic one that came with the kit. Unless someone says this is still bad and I should sell it off and use a Zalman 9700NT instead I'm just going to keep things as they are. ^_^

Update (8:48pm PST): Actually, I should take some of that back since I DID learn that the easiest and most efficient way to apply thermal paste was using the "size of a BB and let heatsink spread" method was the better choice among all of them and gave the most consistent results. Anyway, I'm going to seal this thing up and enjoy my system for a change rather than fretting over temps at this point but I am going to ensure that any case I get in the future is going to have a CPU backplate hole which would have made things a lot easier to deal with.

 

[blkhogan]

Your good. I wouldnt worry to much about your temps, you have done all you can. One thing that I have learned about different types, some take time to "cure". You might notice your temps droping a hair after some run time.

 

[Kantastic]

Your good. I wouldnt worry to much about your temps, you have done all you can. One thing that I have learned about different types, some take time to "cure". You might notice your temps droping a hair after some run time.

MX-3 doesn't need to cure.

 

[blkhogan]

MX-3 doesn't need to cure.

did not know that. I havent actualy used MX-3.

 

[Chicken Patty]

Getting ready to install the motherboard and re-attach everything so here are some pics. I went ahead and used the "bb size dab and install heatsink" as you can see from the last picture using MX-3.

Right now the idle temps are still sitting at 38c with ambient temps sitting around 28c in the room. So I'm not sure what else to do at this point except to maybe clean that paste off and try the Cooler Master stuff. Thoughts?

Update (8:10pm PST): Okay, after watching this thing for a bit it's still not dropping below 38c which is exactly the temps I was getting before. I did some digging and it looks like this is a fairly normal temp for this CPU:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/276409-28-good-cooler-phenom

So at this point I think all of this, in retrospect, was a waste of time which is kind of frustrating but at least I did get a better mounting bracket installed than the cheap plastic one that came with the kit. Unless someone says this is still bad and I should sell it off and use a Zalman 9700NT instead I'm just going to keep things as they are. ^_^

Update (8:48pm PST): Actually, I should take some of that back since I DID learn that the easiest and most efficient way to apply thermal paste was using the "size of a BB and let heatsink spread" method was the better choice among all of them and gave the most consistent results. Anyway, I'm going to seal this thing up and enjoy my system for a change rather than fretting over temps at this point but I am going to ensure that any case I get in the future is going to have a CPU backplate hole which would have made things a lot easier to deal with.

hmm, how's the airflow in your case. My full load temps is two degrees higher than your idle. I'm on a tech station though. So that means that airflow is all the difference in the world.

 

[blkhogan]

Im pushing harder tonight. 3.9GHz. Still havent broke 40c. Note the voltage.... still got lots of room

 

[Chicken Patty]

Im pushing harder tonight. 3.9GHz. Still havent broke 40c. Note the voltage.... still got lots of room
http://img.techpowerup.org/100307/3.9.jpg

Apart from the fact that those CPU's run cool, you lapped it too right?

 

[blkhogan]

No lapping. I upgraded my H50 fan today. Found a Silverstone FM121 110cfm fan in my closet today, been looking for it for awhile. This sucker is a monster air mover. Sounds like a small leaf blower.

 

[Chicken Patty]

No lapping. I upgraded my H50 fan today. Found a Silverstone FM121 110cfm fan in my closet today, been looking for it for awhile. This sucker is a monster air mover. Sounds like a small leaf blower.

got you confused with somebody else then. Well for being in a Sauna, not bad. Trying to see how much I can bring down the voltage at stock speeds. This quad don't need an overclock, this thing is fast as hell with the help of the SSD

Full load is 1.328v down from 1.392v

 

[blkhogan]

got you confused with somebody else then. Well for being in a Sauna, not bad. Trying to see how much I can bring down the voltage at stock speeds. This quad don't need an overclock, this thing is fast as hell with the help of the SSD

Full load is 1.328v down from 1.392v

http://img.techpowerup.org/100307/Capture024.jpg

I thinking I need to finaly break down and get a SSD. I miss my X4 940. Had a blast overclocking and under volting it.

 

[Chicken Patty]

What I love about the way I set up the H50 on my tech station is that it's exhausting up, so the graphics card has all the heat up removed Look at it idle. A good 10ºc less.

 

[stevorob]

Awesome setup. If only I had the room...

So that's why your temps are so insanely low lol

 

[TheMailMan78]

hmm, how's the airflow in your case. My full load temps is two degrees higher than your idle. I'm on a tech station though. So that means that airflow is all the difference in the world.

http://img.techpowerup.org/100307/Capture023.jpg

Your temp is "OK" but mine is better!

 

[Chicken Patty]

Your temp is "OK" but mine is better!

http://img.techpowerup.org/100307/Untitled741.jpg

My ambients were and still are pretty high. Since it's cool outside we have the darn a/c off, and my room with both rigs crunching, one being a damn i7 is a freain' Sauna, it's hot as hell in here.

2nd of all, my max is 1ºc lower than yours

 

[pjladyfox]

You know, just on a whim before I closed everything up and started testing last night I swapped the MX-3 for the Cooler Master Thermal Fusion 400 Compound (RG-TF4-TGU1-GP). I then power things up and my jaw hits the floor:

Tool: Prime95
Duration: 9hours no errors

Ambient: 25c

Idle: 33c
Load: 48c

Before I was getting higher temps and an error on one core after about 2 hours. My average idle still seems to float between 36-38 when I have Firefox open with 58 tabs open so I think I've hit the happy spot. ^_^

After sleeping on things and thinking about it this really was not a waste of time and I learned, thru trial and error the hard way, how good thermal paste works and how to work with it. That alone was worth a lot of the frustration I felt last night since this was a pretty big gap in my knowledge.

Your good. I wouldn't worry to much about your temps, you have done all you can. One thing that I have learned about different types, some take time to "cure". You might notice your temps dropping a hair after some run time.

As someone mentioned already MX-3 really does not need to cure but I'm not sure if that's the case with the Cooler Master stuff I swapped in at the last moment. Still, I think at this point the improvement I'm seeing makes me happy and I can say this effort was worth it now.

hmm, how's the airflow in your case. My full load temps is two degrees higher than your idle. I'm on a tech station though. So that means that airflow is all the difference in the world.

What I love about the way I set up the H50 on my tech station is that it's exhausting up, so the graphics card has all the heat up removed Look at it idle. A good 10ºc less.

Look at my revised results and I think you will agree that things are better than I first thought that they were. Airflow in general is pretty good I think with the pair of 120mm's in front pulling stuff in but it's nothing like your setup that's for sure. Goddess, how I hope to have some day a hobby place where I can have a setup like yours.

 

[Chicken Patty]

You know, just on a whim before I closed everything up and started testing last night I swapped the MX-3 for the Cooler Master Thermal Fusion 400 Compound (RG-TF4-TGU1-GP). I then power things up and my jaw hits the floor:

Tool: Prime95
Duration: 9hours no errors

Ambient: 25c

Idle: 33c
Load: 48c

Before I was getting higher temps and an error on one core after about 2 hours. My average idle still seems to float between 36-38 when I have Firefox open with 58 tabs open so I think I've hit the happy spot. ^_^

After sleeping on things and thinking about it this really was not a waste of time and I learned, thru trial and error the hard way, how good thermal paste works and how to work with it. That alone was worth a lot of the frustration I felt last night since this was a pretty big gap in my knowledge.



As someone mentioned already MX-3 really does not need to cure but I'm not sure if that's the case with the Cooler Master stuff I swapped in at the last moment. Still, I think at this point the improvement I'm seeing makes me happy and I can say this effort was worth it now.





Look at my revised results and I think you will agree that things are better than I first thought that they were. Airflow in general is pretty good I think with the pair of 120mm's in front pulling stuff in but it's nothing like your setup that's for sure. Goddess, how I hope to have some day a hobby place where I can have a setup like yours.

Very good, so different TIM made the difference for you heh? So now your temps are much better and you are happy. As far as my setup, it's completely in the open so although my ambients don't help a lot, it's still getting more air than it needs . As far as a hobby place, that's just my bedroom. I wish I had a hobby place, I'd have it filled with PC's

 

[Gryfalcon]

New Build with H50

New to these forums just decided to build a new computer and have decided to get the Corsair h50 as my cooler. Going to put it in a Antec 900 two case with a Corsair HX750 power supply a Gigabyte 790FXTA-UD5 motherboard. Dual Western Digital Black 1TB SATA 3 compliant hard drives a Radeon 5770 vid card and 6 GB of corsair XMS memory running at 7-7-8-16 I think are the rec timing. For my processor i decided to put in a AMD Phenom II x4 965 which runs at 3.4GHZ. Also putting in windows 7 ultimate. One question I have is I can get artic silver 5 thermal past easily. But is there better thermal paste out there then that and what is it and where can I buy it? Tell me what you guys think

 

[blkhogan]

AS5 is good stuff, I would grab that if its easy to get. I heard good things about MX3 also, Ive never used it personaly. I like to use Zalman STG1 and AS CMQ-22G. Really anyone of the quality ones on the market will bo a good job. Its more of a personal choice over anything else. Some do show better cooling over others though.

 

[stevorob]

AS5 is good, it seems to be the industry standard, but there is way better paste out there just as easily available as AS5. AS5 is a 5-6 year old tech, requires cure time, and is electrically conductive so you have to be careful not get any on a MB trace or something like that.

MX-2 and MX-3 both are great pastes. I also hear that the Noctua and the OCZ Freeze do a very good job as well.

 

[(FIH) The Don]

how long screws should i get (in MM!!!) if i wanna do PP on a H50 in a 800D? need 4 screws

it will all be inside the case and will be screwed in place from the outside

i'm thinking some M4 thats about 33-34mm long?

its a build i do for a friend. will post pics when its done

 

[stevorob]

The thread is 6/32. The length depends on what you need.

Corsair's screw length is 1 1/4", and that's enough to mount the stock 120x25mm fan that it comes with. If you get a larger fan, say a 120x38mm, you'll obviously need longer screws.

Edit: 1 1/4 inches = 31.75 millimeters

6 - 32 - 1 1/4 inches

 

[pjladyfox]

AS5 is good, it seems to be the industry standard, but there is way better paste out there just as easily available as AS5. AS5 is a 5-6 year old tech, requires cure time, and is electrically conductive so you have to be careful not get any on a MB trace or something like that.

MX-2 and MX-3 both are great pastes. I also hear that the Noctua and the OCZ Freeze do a very good job as well.

I second the MX-3 and surprisingly the Thermal Fusion 400 Compound (RG-TF4-TGU1-GP) both which I found were easy to apply and did very well. A friend of mine uses the Noctua stuff and he's been pretty happy with it as well.

Myself, I just got finished running a LinX test for an hour and here is what I came up with using the Thermal Fusion 400 Compound (RG-TF4-TGU1-GP):

Ambient: 26c

Idle: 34c
Load: 50c

Not bad and I'm pretty happy with it so now I can start enjoying my new toy rather than worrying about it.