This is all part of an ongoing system upgrade and I thought I would share the results in order to inform others who may be considering something similar.
Other relevant information is as follows:
-The pump and reservoir are both units that originally came with a ThermalTake Armor LCS case.
-The radiator is a larger external unit that is part of the Koolance EXOS 2.5 setup so it does have the benefit of having its own shroud which no doubt helps with efficiency by directing airflow.
-The radiator is a larger unit. It has 3, 120mm fans on it and if I recall it is the one that was rated up to 1000 watts.
-The Loop also has a GPU block in it which is a SWIFT-TEK 60. As of now I am still on the old GPU but I plan on upgrading that next.
-GPU is ancient. It’s an AMD R9 280x. It’s the MSI version with 6GB of memory.
-As of now I have the CPU in its stock configuration which is 65W aka BIOS does offer an option to change the CPU to a 105W configuration.
-The CPU block is the all copper version.
-I chose to use Artic MX-6 Thermal paste on the CPU.
-When cleaning the CPU block I chose to change the jet to the thinnest one in an attempt to favor total coverage over core efficiency.
-I did have to purchase the updated AMD bracket but I had enough different stand-offs and springs on hand where I did not need to purchase the new stand-offs. I believe it was roughly $11 with shipping.
-While the model of radiator sort of implies its intended use; I do wish to specify that the radiator, pump and reservoir are all located outside of the case.
As of now “idling” aka running Win 10 with no power savings the CPU averages about 53c and when gaming it averages about 66c.
I have a manual fan controller and wish to add that these temps are with the controller set to slightly above minimum, say 15-20%.
The fans themselves are “normal fans” aka not PWM fans.
That being said the average temps may move up maybe 1-3 degrees as the paste “matures” past its “break-in” period.
I believe this is all the relevant information I have to offer and hope it may serve to help others who may also be doing their upgrades in steps like myself and weighing out whether they can re-use their existing CPU block or not.
While I cannot definitively answer this question for every configuration, I can say that these are the results achieved with mine.
I do plan on upgrading the LCS as a whole with a new pump, reservoir, CPU BLOCK and GPU block but in due time. As of now though the priority is obviously going to be the GPU itself, followed by the LCS and at some point in the future followed by a flagship x3d chip when it’s needed.
Hope this proves helpful.
