Liquid Cooler (H60) Problems?

[TZwien]

Just finished my first ever build. It was amazing when everything booted up. One of the best feelings I've had honestly.

I have a Corsair H60 liquid cooler, and after putting my hand next to all the fans in my system to check that they're working correctly (maybe 30 seconds), I go into the BIOS to check temps. This is my very first boot. CPU temp was already at 80C and was climbing a degree every few seconds so I shut down immediately. Was this an overreaction? Just got scared temps would have kept on climbing.

So I wait about an hour, open the case up, and make sure the heatsink is tightened down enough to contact the CPU. I also tried plugging the pump into a different fan header. I ran it again and the same thing happened. 80C within a minute of booting up. So I shut down again.

I didn't know what else to do so I took off the heatsink to see what was up. The pre-applied thermal paste was a little too spread out and was overflowing over the edges of my CPU just a bit in certain areas. So there was definitely contact with the CPU. I put my ear next to the H60 when it was on and it sounded like it was working, but I'm a noob and don't really know.

I asked around other places and some said it might be bad default motherboard settings. Another said maybe I just had a bad installation the first time. Another said maybe a loose power cord somewhere on the motherboard. Could it just be a defective H60 or is this something I can fix?

I bought some new thermal paste and 91% IPA to clean the CPU and heatsink. I'll reinstall the H60 and I'll try booting again soon.

Thanks for the help. I was fist pumping when my build worked but was quickly disheartened when I saw the temps. If it matters, I have a Gigabyte x79-UP4 motherboard and an i7-4820k with a Corsair CX600M PSU.

 

[i7Baby]

Well there's tales of people not taking off the plastic protector on the cpu block! I hope you're not one of them.

Did you follow the instructions that came with the cooler? What did you connect the cooler pump and fans to?

 

[TZwien]

Lol, no. I followed the manual. It says to plug in the pump to any 3 or 4 pin fan header. But I went to their website just now and under an H60 FAQ it says "The cable leading from the fan should connect to the CPU FAN header on your motherboard. The power cable that leads from the pump should be connected to the POWER FAN or CHASSIS FAN header on the motherboard."

So it gives me two different stories from their manual and website, and my motherboard has 1 CPU Fan Header and 4 System Fan Headers. So I'll try the H60 fan plugged into the CPU Header and the pump into one of the System Fan Headers.

I'm having a hard time getting all the old paste residue off. The heatsink on the H60 looks clean but there's still a silvery discoloration on my qtips. I've gone through about 10 qtips on an apparently clean heatsink and it's still picking stuff up. I haven't even gotten around to cleaning the CPU off yet.

 

[TZwien]

So the H60 seems weird after I cleaned off most of the paste. Here's what it looks like:

And here's what I found on google for a clean one:

And here was my setup last night before I took the H60 off to try and see what was wrong:

 

[TZwien]

Nevermind. Guess it's just copper oxidation from what I've read and it doesn't affect temps. I still can't clean it all the way, though. Still getting thermal paste residue on every try.

 

[TZwien]

I reinstalled the H60 with new paste and booted a few different times with different configurations. I tried a few different fan headers for the pump. I even tried plugging it directly into my PSU with a molex adapter. Then I unplugged the rest of my fans for my final test and I couldn't hear anything. So it has to be a DOA pump. The problem is I've never had liquid cooling before and I don't know if they even make noise. Maybe this mess could have been avoided if I just knew what to listen for (or not listen for). Noob problems I guess.

 

[i7Baby]

That's OK. Seasoned veterans with the new stuff can also come undone. Quite often it's like a kid with a new toy - just rip of the packaging and use it. It's only when something goes wrong that we read the instructions.

But in your case having something dead when it shouldn't have been is a double whammy.

 

[TZwien]

So the H60 was DOA and I sent it back. I bought a Hyper 212 EVO and I'm idling right around 30 and under 100% load all 4 cores are in the high 50s. Pretty incredible cooler for such a cheap price. My 4820k is only at the stock turbo 3.9GHz, so with such low temps I might try to overclock a bit. The CPU is so fast I haven't felt the need to mess with anything yet, though.

 

[i7Baby]

Nice one. It's nice to see when someone actually buys what we recommend and that it actually works.

I'll stick to air cooling. Lots of cooler problems here are with water cooling. The H100i is worse. But I think because its got dumb instructions more than anything else.