Gammaax GT vs Msi Froze L vs Deepcool Maelstrom 120t AIO

[ghemanth]

which is the best of 3...right now im using Deepcool 120t AIO

i have seen the review of msi froze L which has very good temps that is 1c greater to H80i which is very impressive. so is it better than my AIO?

upgrading to any of these two will be a good idea?

 

[Darkbreeze]

There is no point in upgrading from one 120mm cooler to another one. There will not be a significant thermal difference. 1°C difference is irrelevant in the scheme of things. Unless you can get an 8-10°C difference in temps, and even then, only if you are currently not able to keep your CPU temps within the thermal specifications, changing coolers is probably a waste of time and money.

Unless your case supports a 240 or 280mm cooler I would not bother unless there is an actual PROBLEM with your current cooler. You'd probably be better off upgrading your case fans than your cooler, or depending on where your cooler is mounted, moving it to a different location if it's currently not cooling as well as it should be. Your Deepcool 120 is ok, but it doesn't even cool as good as a decent 140mm air cooler, and neither do ANY single fan 120mm water coolers.

If you want to upgrade your cooling I'd focus on a very good air cooler or a larger water cooler.

What makes you think you even NEED a better cooler? What are your system specs? Are you overclocking? What is your case model and how many fans are installed. What is the orientation, intake or exhaust, of each installed fan? These are the things that matter, not which model of cooler you are using.

 

[ghemanth]

There is no point in upgrading from one 120mm cooler to another one. There will not be a significant thermal difference. 1°C difference is irrelevant in the scheme of things. Unless you can get an 8-10°C difference in temps, and even then, only if you are currently not able to keep your CPU temps within the thermal specifications, changing coolers is probably a waste of time and money.

Unless your case supports a 240 or 280mm cooler I would not bother unless there is an actual PROBLEM with your current cooler. You'd probably be better off upgrading your case fans than your cooler, or depending on where your cooler is mounted, moving it to a different location if it's currently not cooling as well as it should be. Your Deepcool 120 is ok, but it doesn't even cool as good as a decent 140mm air cooler, and neither do ANY single fan 120mm water coolers.

If you want to upgrade your cooling I'd focus on a very good air cooler or a larger water cooler.

What makes you think you even NEED a better cooler? What are your system specs? Are you overclocking? What is your case model and how many fans are installed. What is the orientation, intake or exhaust, of each installed fan? These are the things that matter, not which model of cooler you are using.

circle cc830 cabinet
6700k
asus maximus viii ranger mobo
24gb ram
i overclock for intel graphics (AI Suite increases TPU at 28%)

2 front fans mounted (Intake), 2 at rear (exhaust), 2 top mounted fans (intake), 1 extra custom placed fan towards hdd area

Temperatures:
I always believe that aisuite temps are absolutely rubbish with -10c & +10c fake temps comparing with other apps like hwmonitor, asus intel extreme tuning utility

idle - browsing chrome with usually 5 to 7 tabs opened
Ai Suite (POWER SAVING) :19-22c
Ai Suite (PERFORMANCE) : 20-24c
asus intel extreme tuning utility (POWER SAVING): 30-32max.
asus intel extreme tuning utility (PERFORMANCE): 33-35c and sometimes 38 -50c INCONSISTENTLY keeps jumping in temps

No Load
asus intel extreme tuning utility (Power Saving)- 28c

Gaming: (Performance)

Battlefield 4: Ai Suite - 62-65c
Battlefield 4: asus intel extreme tuning utility - 55c

Don Bradman Cricket 17: Ai Suite - 55c
Don Bradman Cricket 17: asus intel extreme tuning utility - 45c

WWE 2k17 and 2k18: Ai Suite -73-75c
WWE 2k17 and 2k18: asus intel extreme tuning utility - 61-63c

GTA V: AISuite- 63c
GTA V: asus intel extreme tuning utility- 51c

wwe : When i use GPU BOOST to max voltage n freq from aisuite the temps in Aisuite goes to 97c while extreme tuning utility displays 83-86c around. so this makes me go mad when temps goes like 90+

I never thought i would get 60+ temperature while gaming but i have realized this might be a poor AIO or AISuite auto OC or whatever it does behind makes the temps raise in performance mode

core feq: 4.2 or 4.3Ghz max
core voltage : 1.35V and sometimes 1.4V . i dont totally understand this aisuite which automatically puts cpu into risk with over voltage and its auto basic OC by itself.

i usually love to keep my things upgraded and in near future if i have to upgrade my AIO, which one i better consider buying and which cooler standards i should not consider?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Like I said, a single width 120mm fan doesn't cool even as well as a single finstack 120mm air cooler. Even a very basic, but decent cooler like the Gammaxx 400 or Cryorig H7 will normally outperform every single fan 120mm AIO cooler on the market. They are just NOT very good.

You thermals aren't TERRIBLE, at all, except I have some concern with seeing 75°C in normal use on WWE. Actually, depending on the level of your overclock, you should probably not EVER see anything over 60°C when running normal games and applications.

You have to also consider that your CPU has four physical cores and four hyperthreads. It IS going to run hotter than something like the 6600k that has only 4 cores with no hyperthreads. I think that mostly you have a cooler that is not adequate for the TDP of your CPU.

It is however possible that you might also have a bad mount job of the cold plate/water block. You might want to double check that you've used the correct stand offs and backing plate, that nothing is hitting the bottom of the water block and not allowing it to fully seat and that all the mounting screws are adequately tightened.

Truthfully though, you probably just require a larger cooler.

Also, and this is INCREDIBLY important, your two top fans should NOT be intake. They should be exhaust. Top fans should NEVER be intake in any scenario IMO. There are some folks out there with top mounted 240 or 280mm radiators that configure the cooler as intake at the top, but it's not an efficient configuration. I can not agree with any configuration that uses top mounted intake fans. They need to be exhaust because most of the heat gravitates to the top of the case, so with those fans as intake you are simply blowing all that heat back down into the case instead of sucking it out.

Also, I don't see that your case supports any kind of second fan in the rear unless you are using a two fan setup on your radiator and your radiator is located in the rear exhaust position, OR, unless you are counting the power supply fan as a second fan which should not be included.

The power supply should be oriented with it's intake grill facing down towards the bottom of the case, not up into the case, and is considered to be it's own closed system. Otherwise you have a situation where heat from the PSU can escape INTO the case when the PSU fan is not running at a high speed and FURTHERMORE, when it is, you are then using heated case air to try and cool your PSU components. You want the PSU to take in cool air from below/outside the case and then expel heated air out the back of the case but in no way should it be a part of the actual case cooling system.


I do not see that your case is even supposed to support liquid cooling, there is no mention of it on the Circle product page for your case at all, so I think that a larger cooler is likely out of the question.

Also, it's a rather skinny case and only supports air cooler up to 155mm which really narrows the options. I think your first move should be for a case that offers better options and features. I know Circle cases and power supplies are common in Mid-Eastern countries, but much like iBall, they are generally not of high quality and offer extremely limited features. Sometimes you simply have to bite the bullet and pay a bit more to get something that is really going to serve you well.

 

[ghemanth]

@darkbreeze
gammaxx 400 can outperform my AIO? now i feel so looted with my aio 🙁 im kinda rgb guy who loves to make my things look in wow factor but in the same time everything is restricted in budget. my 2 years of experience with AIO is somehow impressed bcoz intel stock cooler gave me 75c on gta v while this aio restricted to 45 or 50c but if a cheap Air cooler can outperform a cheap AIO then its a slap in my face.

i did mount the psu to downward as it suppose to mount facing towards down... so i didnt used psu fan as the extra fan. its an xtra fan i have to put it leaning towards the hdd portion.

my cabinet support upto 120mm liquid cooler and yes even water cooling is supported but limited to stick with basic cooling choices. water cooling 2 way pipe system is available for at rear outside the cabinet

yes, i have used two side exhaust fans mounted to radiator as its the only way to mount the radiator to my cabinet

front fans were pre installed with cabinet and they are only 1400rpm while the top mounted fans are at 2800rpm. so if i mount top fans as exhaust, i dont believe the front fans can cool down the case with its 1400rpm and also the front fans are suppose to cool the ssd and hdd only. so if top fans are being exhaust, then there will be no intake fans that can cool motherboard or processor or vram. i guess for my cabinet top exhaust are not suitable.

But i have an idea, if i switch the top speedy fans to front and front slow fans to top as exhaust, will the front speedy fans can put cool air to motherboard by passing hdd portion? its a long way to flow and i still dont think it is posible.

want me to switch the fans from front to top and top to front?

Im planning to get a new case which is in budget again and i have two choices here: Masterbox 5 lite RGB vs Phanteks eclipse p300. i look for both performance and looks in budget while its pretty hard to get but i really love CM 5 lite RGB but it has terrible intakes than my present cabinet but the p300 does fulfill the air flow thing but no rgb front look. damnnn!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, we've got SOME amount of language barrier going on, because I'm not FULLY understanding you, but that's ok. Are you able to take some pics of your case and where all the fans are? Maybe include a little note on each one saying whether that fan is intake or exhaust. In any case, the two fans you have up top should be exhaust. The rear fan should be exhaust. The front fans should be intake. Every single system, except very old ones with top mounted power supplies or a very few water cooled configurations (Not yours) should look like this.

 

[ghemanth]

screenshots

https://ibb.co/mGYCgb
https://ibb.co/dC4k1b
https://ibb.co/dpzUSG
https://ibb.co/ks0a1b
https://ibb.co/nwJv1b
https://ibb.co/kgxYnG

i just took my time to switch the top intakes to exhausts and well i dont get any warm/hot air pull out upwards but a lot of cool air

Tested my beloved temperature sucking WWE game and found 1c greater than yesterday's reading (63c to 64c) and with browser opened idle temperature is 30-32c which is no change at all in idle and gaming temperatures

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, to answer the question you posted on that second to last picture, there is not supposed to be a need for ANY fan to directly cool the motherboard unless you have VRM throttling issues from a low quality motherboard or too high of an overclock/voltage.

The residual airflow from air being brought in through the front intakes and passing over the motherboard on the way to the rear and top exhaust fans should normally be all the airflow you need for the motherboard AND having more exhaust fans than intakes is actually preferred for better cooling performance as this creates a negative pressure arrangement and negative pressure arrangements have better cooling performance.

I think there are a couple of other things you can do right away that would help immediately, but a case with a better airflow arrangement would really be helpful.

First, I'd move those lower hard drives into the upper drive bays, tryig to leave as many of the lower drive bays empty as possible. That is one thing that could help get additional air into the case. Removing those lower drive bays altogether would even help more, but I'm not sure if those bays are removeable on your case OR if you have the tools and skills that would be needed to modify the case by cutting them out. Probably just getting the drives out of the air path of at least one of those front fans would help a little.

Two, if you have a fan location in the bottom of the case in between the power supply and drive cages that will actually fit a fan in there the way it's supposed to fit in there, not just sitting there loose, then putting another intake there certainly wouldn't hurt. You can tell for sure if airflow is the reason for the lack of cooling by running any of a number of benchmarks or stress utilities with the side panel on, then remove the side panel and run the same operations over again and compare the two. If your temperatures are significantly lower with the side panel off there is an issue with a lack of adequate air supply through the case.

If it does not improve temperatures then the problem is that the CPU cooler is not up to par. And actually, it's probably both.

 

[ghemanth]

So, to answer the question you posted on that second to last picture, there is not supposed to be a need for ANY fan to directly cool the motherboard unless you have VRM throttling issues from a low quality motherboard or too high of an overclock/voltage.

The residual airflow from air being brought in through the front intakes and passing over the motherboard on the way to the rear and top exhaust fans should normally be all the airflow you need for the motherboard AND having more exhaust fans than intakes is actually preferred for better cooling performance as this creates a negative pressure arrangement and negative pressure arrangements have better cooling performance.

I think there are a couple of other things you can do right away that would help immediately, but a case with a better airflow arrangement would really be helpful.

First, I'd move those lower hard drives into the upper drive bays, tryig to leave as many of the lower drive bays empty as possible. That is one thing that could help get additional air into the case. Removing those lower drive bays altogether would even help more, but I'm not sure if those bays are removeable on your case OR if you have the tools and skills that would be needed to modify the case by cutting them out. Probably just getting the drives out of the air path of at least one of those front fans would help a little.

Two, if you have a fan location in the bottom of the case in between the power supply and drive cages that will actually fit a fan in there the way it's supposed to fit in there, not just sitting there loose, then putting another intake there certainly wouldn't hurt. You can tell for sure if airflow is the reason for the lack of cooling by running any of a number of benchmarks or stress utilities with the side panel on, then remove the side panel and run the same operations over again and compare the two. If your temperatures are significantly lower with the side panel off there is an issue with a lack of adequate air supply through the case.

If it does not improve temperatures then the problem is that the CPU cooler is not up to par. And actually, it's probably both.

i took off the side case and monitored the temps with wwe game and i see no significant change in temp

i remember i use to monitor the temps of mobo about 2years ago and i see 5-8c temp difference when i turn on the top intake fans. thats how i was influenced with top fans are better as intake

the lower hdd bays cannot be settled at upper bays as the upper bays are small and for SSD only

anyhow im planning to get a new case like i have mentioned in above posts "Masterbox 5 lite RGB vs Phanteks eclipse p300"
i kinda feel both those cases wont show me any difference comparing to my current case. check those cases and suggest me top 2 or 3 cases to get (Budget friendly)

 

[Darkbreeze]

What country are you in?

 

[ghemanth]

India

 

[Darkbreeze]

You are right, neither of those cases is going to offer you really any benefit over what you have now. You need something that has room for either a high end air cooler or a 280mm water cooler.

So, whether or not you plan to do this now or later, how much do you think you would want to budget for both a case AND a new cooler?

 

[ghemanth]

You are right, neither of those cases is going to offer you really any benefit over what you have now. You need something that has room for either a high end air cooler or a 280mm water cooler.

So, whether or not you plan to do this now or later, how much do you think you would want to budget for both a case AND a new cooler?

im planning to sell my entire pc xcept Ram,ssd,hdd, cooler.
so after selling for good price i'll have to invest extra 6000 bucks to get a new 8700k , z370E Gaming, trendy look cabinet like masterbox 5 lite...so yeh.. its almost getting heavy for right now to invest more than this so no plans to upgrade cooler as a 280mm cooler will double my investment

i would rather get a gfx than investing for a 280mm cooler yet. in future if i have a plan to upgrade my cooler than i would go for h80i v2 for my budget. will it be a good choice than any air cooler with lesser price?

 

[Darkbreeze]

That's still a single fan (Width) radiator cooler. Those are a waste of money like I said before. If that's what you want then great but I'm telling you that almost any good air cooler will grossly outperform one of them. They are, as you say, trendy items for people who just want to say "hey, I have a water cooler. How COOL is that?" but don't really care about cooling performance. None of the 120 or140mm water coolers on the market are worth using IMO. If you do not at least use a very good 240 or 280mm AIO cooler then you might as well use air, and in SOME cases even then air coolers outperform a lot of those closed loop coolers too in the real world.

The results you see on reviews are usually NOT real world results because those tests are usually done on open air test benches, not in enclosed cabinets like real people will use.

So anyhow, I suppose if you're planning to upgrade everything anyhow there's not much point in worrying about any of this right now anyway. When you are ready to do that let me know and I'd be happy to help you out if you would like me too. Otherwise, best of luck to you and hope it all works out for the best. Good luck.

 

[ghemanth]

each and every word of u made me learn something i dont know and yes u helped me alot on how to maintain a pc for better performance. thanks for that and ya i have decided not to waste my money on avg performance things but to buy a worthy things. will surely follow ur advice but i hope i will get all the new setup by the end of 2018.

one thing that came to my mind is Thermal Paste might be a Cheap role here... it looks healthy factory applied by deepcool which i have recently had my AIO replacement.... but i have never applied a true branded thermal pastes but to get a generic brandless thermal pastes from local stores and well i see them become lil liquid kind loose paste. u getting me? it doesnt look like a solid paste after some days of usage but to look wet/loosen.

will it show like 10c difference in temps?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, on thermal paste you might have to order some in, but here's what I do.

Any closed loop or air cooler than comes with thermal paste or a thermal "pad" already applied from the factory, I take off. Using soft lint free cloths, coffee filters or good quality paper towels (Only use paper towels as a last resort because they CAN leave little bits and pieces behind) and isopropyl alcohol or specific thermal paste remover (Nothing else. No other solvent. No gasoline or turpentine. Nothing except thermal paste remover or isopropyl alcohol) you clean both mating surfaces until there is no thermal paste left.

There are plenty of tutorials online to show how much to use but I generally like to use about 1/4 of the size of a #2 pencil eraser or pinto bean. This is also about the size of 3 grains of uncooked rice. That's not much, but it doesn't need much. It is ONLY there to fill in the microscopic pores in the metal and nothing more.

I like Noctua NT-H1, Arctic Silver 5, Cryorig Cryo-paste or Cooler master X1 extreme fusion. There are many others that are good, but those are easy to work with and are usually pretty readily available in most regions.

You will probably not see anything like a 10 degree difference unless there was an issue with the previous application to start with. From best thermal paste to worst thermal paste, there is only like an 8 degree difference and most have maybe 3-5 degree difference.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-comparison,5108-9.html