3-pin Cable for CPU Water Cooler touches Heat Sink -- Problem?

[kovexpulthul]

Hi all,

Until my Y cable arrives and gives me more options on where to plug things in, I'm limited to running a 3-pin cable from my water cooler (corsair h110) on top of a heat sink in my z97x-ud5h motherboard. It's not a tight like a vice, but there is definitely more contact than not. Also, the bottom of my GPU sits right on top of a portion of the wire (making some contact) and the heat sink, keeping it down in place.

Is this contact a problem? Should I not run my system/stress it/etc until the Y-splitter cable arrives and gives me new options?

Thanks a ton.

 

[clutchc]

I can't envision any problem from that, no. The heat sink should not get hot enough to melt the cable's insulation unless you have a bad problem with CPU temp. But that would be a far worse situation than melting insulation.

As to the cable running (under?) the gfx card, I do that quite often if there is no other way to route the cable. But perhaps you could post a pic in case I'm not seeing it correctly in my mind.

 

[kovexpulthul]

I can't envision any problem from that, no. The heat sink should not get hot enough to melt the cable's insulation unless you have a bad problem with CPU temp. But that would be a far worse situation than melting insulation.

As to the cable running (under?) the gfx card, I do that quite often if there is no other way to route the cable. But perhaps you could post a pic in case I'm not seeing it correctly in my mind.

Here's an amazing artwork of my setup if it'll help you visualize it.

My temps are 25-30 C idle for CPU. It maxes out around 50 C when running Arma 3 and no more than 40-45 in any other game.
GPU maxes out around 70 C in Arma 3 as well.

Are these temps cause for concern given the setup? (or in general?)

 

[clutchc]

Oh. You're talking about the south bridge chip set. For some reason I was envisioning the CPU heat sink (which I should have realized disn't exist since you have a water cooler... duh.) Yeah, that baby can get hot enough to melt insulation depending on its efficiency and size. Until you get the new cable, I would lay something non-thermally conductive between cable and heat sink. Is there no other header you can use?

 

[kovexpulthul]

Unfortunately, no. Nothing is in range really. What would you recommend for a non-thermal conductor?

 

[1LiquidPC]

I would actually not worry about it. Modern day PCH (southbridge), at least on Intel boards don't very hot. For instance my Rampage IV Extreme has a small fan on the PCH which you can disable completely unless your doing some heavy OC'ing and increasing the voltage. Most of the heavy transferring of data is going directly through to the CPU these days. Only USB, SATA, and on-boards audio data for the most part is going through the PCH. I would think the temp wouldn't be close at all to melting the cable.

 

[kovexpulthul]

Here are some images, though they might be of poor quality. I'm assuming it's going to depend on temperature at this point, but here's a look inside my case:
Pic of wire going from water cooler down toward the problem area:

Pic of the other side:

 

[1LiquidPC]

I still think you'll be just fine. I see your running a GTX 980 They're not exactly warm running cards to begin with.

 

[kovexpulthul]

Yeah.. I'm really more scared of it touching that heat sink (Even though it's just a tiny bit and not wrapped around it tightly)...

 

[clutchc]

Yeah.. I'm really more scared of it touching that heat sink (Even though it's just a tiny bit and not wrapped around it tightly)...

If you can touch the heat sink w/o burning your finger, it is fine.

 

[kovexpulthul]

thanks everyone. If nothing else, the cable arrives this week!