In my waterloop, I've got the following components in order:
- Aqua D5 Next
- EKWB Velocity 2 AM4 (Ryzen 5900X)
- EKWB Vector2 w/ ABP (EVGA 3080 Ti FTW3)
- Aqua HighFlow Next
- 3 x Alphacool NexXxoS ST30 360mm
- EPDM Tubing between all connections
My flow rates (as identified by the HF Next) are around 138L/h. The one part that interests/concerns me is the water temperature readings coming from the D5 Next vs. the HF Next. Under minimal load, the D5 Next reads ~30C where as the HF Next is about 33.5C, with an Ambient Temperature of about 25C. Under load, the temperatures increase proportionally, with the HF Next staying around 3.5C higher then the D5 Next, reaching some 38C on the HF Next.
What I'm curious about is whether my fluid temperature is truly rising/dropping that 3.5C between the 2 sensors vs whether the 2 sensors just aren't properly calibrated and the fluid temperature is more normalized between the 2. Intellectually, is would make sense for there to be a temperature difference between the 2, since one is right after all the heat components vs. the other being after all the heat dissipation. However, I'm not sure if *that much* of a variance is proper, especially when it's not really under load and the same variance is seen as the load increases (with increased load, I would have expected increased variance).
Assuming that the water sensors are off and I would need to set some offsets to properly calibrate them, anyone have good suggestions on how I'd go about finding the "true" temperature?