u/DesertPunked

I was honestly just looking to shave a few degrees off my CPU spikes, but looking at the HWiNFO logs from my stability tests with AIDA64, the actual restructuring of the case airflow allowed my GPU to finally breathe.

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I'm running an ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5080, which has that fourth pass-through exhaust fan dumping air straight upward. Turns out, having that massive metal Noctua tower sitting directly above it inside a Fractal Meshify C was acting like a physical air dam. Paired with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D it makes for a very limited amount of airflow.

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By getting rid of the massive tower and swapping to a tiny water block, it cleared out the whole center chamber and gave that hot air an open space to shoot straight out the top of the case via the AIO radiator.

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Here’s the peak data comparison from the AIDA64 stability tests.

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Air cooling 30 minute run / AIO 30 minute run

GPU Hot Spot Max: 85.3°C / 58.6°C (-26.7°C drop!)

GPU Core Max: 71.5°C / 53.8°C (-17.7°C drop)

CPU Max (Tctl/Tdie): 84.2°C / 73.1°C (-11.1°C drop)

CPU CCD1 (Core Avg Max): 79.8°C / 77.1°C (-2.7°C drop)

Motherboard VRM Max: 58.0°C / 54.0°C (-4.0°C drop)

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CPU max temps are the initial spike of the stability test. AIO soaks the heat much better from my observations.

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AIO idle temps are also higher, but fluctuate much less under load. GPU idle temps are around the same with it climbing to 45°C due to its 0db fan stop option.

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All fans are operating at a 35/55/70/100% fan curve with temps of 50/65/70/76°C.

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TL;DR: The liquid cooler did its job soaking up sudden CPU thermal spikes, but breaking that nasty heat recirculation loop under the GPU was the best possible result.

Transitioning from my nh-d15-g2 to nl-lc1-24 for my r7 9800x3d.

Magnetically mounted on the back of my pixel 9 pro xl, it is such a convenient way of breaking that screen time habit with a legitimate book. This is using AtkinsonHyperLegible font.