First off get 2 of these fans, a Y PWM fan cable, 30mm 6-32 screws and washers, I bought a Corsair fan screw kit.
Remove GPU, side panels, top panel, and the cooler assembly, refer to service manual.
Currently trying to find the max offset viable for the new corsairs.
You can set to 100, the corsairs will turn at 2400rpm.
However when Top Fan temperatures increase, that is the sensor inside the case near the CPU, the fans will go higher than the offset you decided. When this happens, the fans will cut as AWCC thinks it has an OEM fan that can go much faster than 2400rpm and the corsairs cannot, they cut.
In Timespy I couldn't set more than 80 offset.
First find your offset value by fixing it in AWCC and testing like with Timespy, however do not limit your tests to just that benchmark.
If you want to set a curve in AWCC, it must look something like this. Make sure it is no more than your max offset that you have found.
However remember that this is in relation to the top fan temperature, near the CPU, it is not related to direct CPU temperature.
If you experience that the fans cut and drop, you have to do something, either use the 25mm front fan in the sandwich connected on 4wire Y PWM cable, otherwise you may have to lower your Top Fan offset.
I have finished my preliminary tests with Timespy to find my Top Fan offset, fixed setting.
The settings used for the tests are :
- Bios XMP1
- AWCC Overclock Off
- System High Performance
- NVIDIA High Performance
- NVIDIA GSYNC Off
- Precision X1 Aggressive Fan Control
This is the order of my tests:
- Before repasting, no front bezel
- CPU Repasted
- Bezel added
- ML120 Pros on Cooler assembly in pull/push
- Adjusting fan offsets
I will use the following AWCC Profile profiles for comparison, I have linked them to games to automatically apply the profile when any game starts:
- "Full Gaming" for COD CW and future intensive CPU/GPU games (max offets shown in bold on the first table: 80)
- "Gaming" for most other games
- "Low Gaming" for CSGO (50-55° CPU and GPU)
- "Increased Front" as default
I have highlighted 2 particular test lines in red, they show that adding the front Bezel without having cut it up or made any modifications to it whatsoever, as a first impression it doesn't seem to restrict airflow that much. When you look at how the Bezel fits on the front, it does not block air as the plastic rectangular lip does not actually sit flush to the case.
I highlighted the Max Top Fan on one of the tests, this is because the ML 120 Pro non RGB no LEDs 400-2400 rpm cuts out during the Timespy CP Test leaving a Max speed on HWINFO at 2515.
I can stress bench my CPU with CPU-Z (100% all cores) and the CPU sits at 65°.
I have highlighted in blue my AWCC Profile settings that I will use from now on, if I encounter any further problems with top fan cutting out, I may adjust offsets and may resort to trying with the OEM Front fan in the push side.
Suggestions
When adding a non-blower type high end GPU, as many have said here before, it will heat up the inside upper half of the R8 or similar AW nano cases. This will cause your CPU to register higher temperatures.
The most significant thing you can do, add an upper front intake fan in the HDD bay to get cooler air inside to mix. It makes a lot of difference on CPU temperatures, for me it went from 100° with the CPU throttling to 82°.
If you want to look at the liquid cooling assembly, not much improvement, except you can get the machine very quiet by comparison to the OEM fans and still push enough air around.
There are possibly other things you can try, like extract the hot air from the GPU before it gets into the radiator with another fan, but I suspect it will make a negligable difference, most of that hot air from the GPU mixed with the cooler air from the upper front fan will go up though the TOP Fan, result warmer air cools less the liquid to cool your CPU.
Conclusion
I started out with an R8, a beautiful box that sits under my desk, and I was and still am very happy with it. I under spec'ed it when buying to have the best CPU available, an M2 drive, the lowest NVIDIA GPU and the lowest amount of RAM. I had two intentions, immediately boost the RAM from 8GB to 32GB and put a decent graphics card in some years down the road.
I bought 4 fans, some screws, some nice filters and a few cables, all in, insignificant to the price of my EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 Ultra Gaming card.
I now have a beautiful R8 in my eyes, with i9-9900k, 32GB RAM and GTX 3080 + 2xM2s + 1HDD + 1SSD. I love this machine, it is still beautiful, even without the case LEDs*. I have achieved what I set out when I clicked "buy" 2 years ago.
* I broke a wire during this adventure.
I hope all of you modding fans and cooling assemblies will be very careful unconnecting the right panel slim connector/s used for the right panel LED and the 👽 LED. I hope all of you also take much care when refitting the right panel*.
I broke a plastic panel clip during this adventure.
I have not got bad temperatures considering the heat generated from the RTX 3080 and so this project is a result in my eyes. All the credit goes to past AW members and their posts all over this forum, but especially to @Dell630i @r72019 and @GTS81 for being here and following this adventure to give amazing advice. I feel very lucky they were here to help. Thanks a lot, you awesome guys rock as 👽 rockstars!
Moving Forward
Let's do that case swap and rectify what I broke 🙂
Awesome and detailed instructions of your progress! Since the additional front fan helped improved the temps just curious if you made any mods to the front bezel / grill before adding it back?