I'm a Watercooling Noob!

Thanks Nibs! I was using 50/50 antifreeze and water, and still am. The block had a mirror finish. I also cleaned the CPU's thermal dissipator, applying fresh heat paste. The paste I used was Koolance's "brand" that came with the block. Probably not as good as Arctic Silver, but I was out of that and I didn't want to go to Wilsonville and get more

I was also about to use just straight water, but I went with the antifreeze coolant mixture because I was worried about corrosion in the radiator, as it's intended use is not watercooling a PC. I am not even sure what it is made of, probably some aluminum alloy. I have also heard about some metals interacting with each other in water systems, causing faster corrosion or "thermal barrier crusts" on your waterblock.

Anyways I left the computer on last night, hoping to burn in the thermal paste. I am also using a different program for measuring temperatures, but there is a notable difference.


With a room temp of 22*C, idle temp is 25-27*C and load temp is 38*C. Not bad! I am now getting much better temps than I could have dreamed of on the old air cooler. The only fans I have running on the radiator are two 80mm case fans.

--TIP-- Don't use SpeedFan for monitoring temps. It is inaccurate in reading temps, at least it was for me. Instead I used CoreTemp, it seems to be much more accurate in reading temps. I judged accuracy by rebooting and looking at the BIOS's "PC Health Status" section. The radiator is also completely passive at the moment, all fans are stopped. SILENCE IS BEAUTIFUL.

Alright, sounds like ya got things well in hand. Just be careful to factor your room temp into your readings, it will significantly change them.

Antifreeze is generally not recommended or even used by watercoolers... as Nibiru said it's only purpose is for anti-corrosion and this isn't an issue unless you're mixing metals in your loop. But I tend to agree with you, the heater core is probably aluminum.. Most WC equipment use either copper or nickel plated blocks / rads for this reason. Aluminum and steel will both cause galvanic reactions pretty easily when mixed with these metals. There are some studies on XtremeSystems.org where any anti-freeze in a loop decreased performance... the benchmark standard is still distilled water and a few drops of algaecide to prevent growth.

Even if the paste needed to "cure", you wouldn't gain anything more than a 5c reduction in temps. Paste is still paste... the only thing I can suggest is made sure you use as little as possible, because paste is in of itself is still insulator... too much of it will drastically decrease the heat exchange process. I'm going to guess that it took awhile for that pump to work most of the air pockets & bubbles out of that radiator and that was behind the performance more than anything.

When ya look at the BIOS's temp readings, keep in mind the BIOS doesn't support all of the powersaving features for the CPU... the CPU should give you lower temps within Windows than in the BIOS. Not all BIOS's use the on-die temp sensors either, most default to the sensor underneath the socket. CoreTemp and RealTemp will only use the on-die sensors, while (for probably the majority of boards) SpeedFan will give both.

38C is a much better temp, sounds sweet. Hope ya enjoy your new setup!