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#1
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
The recent announcement of the 3950X from AMD startled me.
Unlike the other new Ryzens, it doesn't include a Wraith cooler in the box. Instead, it is recommended that at least a 280mm AIO cooler be used with it. Not being an overclocker, I had to do some web searching to get a feel for what was being referred to. What I found out was: An AIO cooler is a water cooler that comes with the radiator, the tubes, and the water block all in a single unit. (You might still have to screw the fans on yourself.) Not much chance of a leak, no need to periodically top up the fluid. The 280mm dimension refers to the length of the cooler. A two-fan cooler will typically be 240mm, and a three-fan cooler 360mm, the fans being 120mm square, but there are extra-wide two-fan coolers. My case has two holes in the back of it - for the more expensive and dangerous custom water-cooling solution. I'm not sure where in the case I would mount the fans of an AIO. But then I've only got a 12-core 3900X, not a 16-core 3950X. Supposedly, the Wraith cooler is good enough for that. Not only did the 3950X announcement raise some doubts, in my searches I found that with the stock cooler temps on a 3900X can go up to 95 degrees Celsius. Apparently the chip can survive that. But I'd like to prolong the chip's life. So I also looked into high-end air coolers. Mind you, the Wraith cooler looks pretty impressive to me already. Would a fancy air cooler really be better? One comparison of the best air and water coolers showed an air cooler - a Noctua that was one tier down from the top end, a #14 with two heatsinks but only one fan - as sneaking into 360mm AIO territory. So maybe the two that I'm considering, that are available at my local computer store, are both reasonable choices (they mount on Threadrippers as well as AM4)... the Noctua NH-D15, and the Phanteks PH-TC14PE. These are both their respective manufacturers' top-of-the-line air cooler models, with two fans and two heatsinks. They're basically similar to another air cooler I saw in a video about someone taking apart a video card and replacing the existing fans with a fancy air cooler (DeepCool Assassin III). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3YnpwAAHhM DeepCool products are (or at least _were_) sold under the name Logisys in the United States. John Savard |
#2
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
John Savard wrote:
The recent announcement of the 3950X from AMD startled me. Unlike the other new Ryzens, it doesn't include a Wraith cooler in the box. Instead, it is recommended that at least a 280mm AIO cooler be used with it. Not being an overclocker, I had to do some web searching to get a feel for what was being referred to. What I found out was: An AIO cooler is a water cooler that comes with the radiator, the tubes, and the water block all in a single unit. (You might still have to screw the fans on yourself.) Not much chance of a leak, no need to periodically top up the fluid. The 280mm dimension refers to the length of the cooler. A two-fan cooler will typically be 240mm, and a three-fan cooler 360mm, the fans being 120mm square, but there are extra-wide two-fan coolers. My case has two holes in the back of it - for the more expensive and dangerous custom water-cooling solution. I'm not sure where in the case I would mount the fans of an AIO. But then I've only got a 12-core 3900X, not a 16-core 3950X. Supposedly, the Wraith cooler is good enough for that. Not only did the 3950X announcement raise some doubts, in my searches I found that with the stock cooler temps on a 3900X can go up to 95 degrees Celsius. Apparently the chip can survive that. But I'd like to prolong the chip's life. So I also looked into high-end air coolers. Mind you, the Wraith cooler looks pretty impressive to me already. Would a fancy air cooler really be better? One comparison of the best air and water coolers showed an air cooler - a Noctua that was one tier down from the top end, a #14 with two heatsinks but only one fan - as sneaking into 360mm AIO territory. So maybe the two that I'm considering, that are available at my local computer store, are both reasonable choices (they mount on Threadrippers as well as AM4)... the Noctua NH-D15, and the Phanteks PH-TC14PE. These are both their respective manufacturers' top-of-the-line air cooler models, with two fans and two heatsinks. They're basically similar to another air cooler I saw in a video about someone taking apart a video card and replacing the existing fans with a fancy air cooler (DeepCool Assassin III). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3YnpwAAHhM DeepCool products are (or at least _were_) sold under the name Logisys in the United States. John Savard The thing that makes an air cooler work, is the heat pipes. The heat pipes are "phase change", and there is a liquid and and a vapor phase inside the pipe. The "heat of vaporization" is a powerful driver for thermal flux. A heatpipe can move more heat, than a solid copper tube of the same diameter, many times over. The purpose of the heatpipe then, is to transport heat into the cooling fins. The fins have thermal resistance, and if the fin is "too long", the tip of the fin will be cold, because the heat doesn't travel up there all that well. So if you started with a Noctua "cubic foot of fins" and had no heatpipes, it would be virtually worthless. Only about an inch to two inches of fin, near the CPU, would provide cooling. The rest of the fins would be deadweight. By weaving heatpipes through the fin assembly, the thermal resistance of the pipe is "zero", and then the "fin length" is measured from where it touches the pipe. I have the Noctua NH-D15 here, on a 156W (measured) processor. I only use the center fan. And I have a home-made "stand" that sits underneath the Noctua, to push up against the force of gravity. This is intended to take some stress off the socket. Not everyone will particularly care to do that, so this is just an experiment on mine. It makes it inconvenient to put cards into slots - if I had to do it again, I'd make a frame anchored to the top of the case. The other part of the solution, is the rear cooling fan. A Noctua by itself, would smother under the "cloud" of hot air it makes. Initially I started with a 110CFM fan on the back (with a speed controller and turned down), but even turned down it was still too loud. I went from the large fan, to a thinner fan, and still got decent performance. My processor "hasn't had a hot day in its life", so air for me, was an OK choice. If you're an overclocker, lock all the cores, or use some exotic setting, it's always possible to have a huge power dissipation on the CPU. Then perhaps that air solution would not be enough. (Like, if your motherboard BIOS has a setting to defeat the power limiter.) ******* Regarding the large coolers, some computer cases have a bay at the top, and the cooler blows its exhaust air upwards. There's room for at least a two-fan cooler. I don't know if a three-fan cooler would fit. The PSU in those cases, sits at the bottom of the case, out of the way. You would still benefit from a rear exhaust fan, in situations where the video card is not similarly cooled, and the video card has contributed to a "hot cloud" near the back of the case. The notion of an AIO that blows hot air around inside the case is silly. You want cooling solutions where if there is to be a fan, it moves the air outside the case immediately. If I had a liquid loop, I'd probably drill some holes in the back of the case, and run the plumbing for an external radiator. Whereas heatpipes operate on "phase change", liquid coolers always work with liquid, and the amount of heat flux the liquid can carry, isn't quite the same as a heat pipe. In some situations, the diameter of the plumbing has to go up, to be able to carry enough "liters per second", to get the desired cooling effect. You use whatever metrics are available, and do the maths. If an air cooler states a "max watts", that avoids doing maths and it also prevents doing maths. If the air cooler has a theta_R, you can work out what the delta_T will be, for a given amount of heat from the watts of electricity. I don't know what kind of rating scheme they use with liquid coolers. There's a thermal resistance (so there would be a theta_R), but the elements in the loop, the plumbing diameter, pipe length, probably factor into the math too. And the radiator size, number of fans (air velocity in LFM), would all play a part in determining how much heat the radiator can remove from the fluid before it heads back to the CPU. ******* https://www.anandtech.com/show/14605...ing-the-bar/19 "Package Power Tracking (PPT): The power threshold that is allowed to be delivered to the socket. This is ... 142W for 105W TDP processors. " That says (in my opinion), the NH-D15 would be fine. And probably fine, with just the center fan installed. It should not be hitting 95C with that thing on it, unless you turned off the rear fan on the computer case and the air was dead around the cooler. But also consider the heat dumped by the video card. If your project needs a 1200W PSU, then you'll need a more fancy solution. I think mine runs off a 550W supply, and draws over 300W on Furmark. (I haven't tried Furmark and Prime95 together yet... I could probably drive it to around 390W if there weren't limitations.) When shopping for a motherboard, make sure the VCore has a decent heatsink on it. That's the mistake I made on my build. I didn't notice when I bought it, that the VCore heatsink was too small. While testing with the motherboard sitting on the kitchen table, I burned myself on the VCore cooler. When I assembled the system in the case, I added a fan just for VCore. (That's why you test on the kitchen table first, to spot deficiencies before assembly.) Paul |
#3
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
Thank you for your helpful information.
Since my post, I've found some interesting things from some additional research. Going up from the stock Wraith cooler on a 3900X will only produce slight additional performance, but it will make the chip cooler, from about 93 degrees C to about 75 degrees C. However, another article notes that even at 60 degrees C, chip lifetime is being shortened, although not as much as at higher temperatures. Ideally, one would like 50 degrees C. A 360 mm AIO is what got down to 75 degrees C or so, and that's the best commercially available cooling solution other than potentially leaking and expensive watercooling kits. There's just no mainstream cooling solution that would achieve the goal of indefinite lifespan and full performance. Not that I'm going to have to worry about this for a while. Even after I make the new build my daily driver, I won't be pushing it hard for months, until I figure out something worthwhile to do with it. John Savard |
#4
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 06:31:27 -0800 (PST), John Savard
wrote: Since my post, I've found some interesting things from some additional research. Going up from the stock Wraith cooler on a 3900X will only produce slight additional performance, but it will make the chip cooler, from about 93 degrees C to about 75 degrees C. However, another article notes that even at 60 degrees C, chip lifetime is being shortened, although not as much as at higher temperatures. Ideally, one would like 50 degrees C. A 360 mm AIO is what got down to 75 degrees C or so, and that's the best commercially available cooling solution other than potentially leaking and expensive watercooling kits. There's just no mainstream cooling solution that would achieve the goal of indefinite lifespan and full performance. Not that I'm going to have to worry about this for a while. Even after I make the new build my daily driver, I won't be pushing it hard for months, until I figure out something worthwhile to do with it. John Savard On an ideal MB, a few being presumably within this discussion, what balances remain are between revisions of W10 and AMD "power balance" plans -- the 50C- being evident, at least by some reports, although at a low/thread idle/state, apparently without, especially, undue cooler considerations overall. Ideally, how hard and long and at what cut-off limits is then within an adjustable leeway otherwise from exceeding a satisfactory ambient/idle state where chips virtually last forever. https://community.amd.com/thread/241414 |
#5
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
John Savard wrote:
Thank you for your helpful information. Since my post, I've found some interesting things from some additional research. Going up from the stock Wraith cooler on a 3900X will only produce slight additional performance, but it will make the chip cooler, from about 93 degrees C to about 75 degrees C. However, another article notes that even at 60 degrees C, chip lifetime is being shortened, although not as much as at higher temperatures. Ideally, one would like 50 degrees C. A 360 mm AIO is what got down to 75 degrees C or so, and that's the best commercially available cooling solution other than potentially leaking and expensive watercooling kits. There's just no mainstream cooling solution that would achieve the goal of indefinite lifespan and full performance. Not that I'm going to have to worry about this for a while. Even after I make the new build my daily driver, I won't be pushing it hard for months, until I figure out something worthwhile to do with it. John Savard It could be, the performance is a function of the TIM used under the lid. You'd need to see a picture from a de-lidding sequence, to see what they used. https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/EF...eNB-650-80.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/14...52_678x452.jpg Paul |
#6
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 12:49:13 PM UTC-7, Flasherly wrote:
On an ideal MB, a few being presumably within this discussion, what balances remain are between revisions of W10 and AMD "power balance" plans -- I've continued researching information. Looking for a better cooler, I found the Phononics HEX 2.0. This was an air cooler with one fan and two cooling towers. However, only one tower had its heat pipes going to the plate touching the chip. The other tower had its heat pipes going to a plate that had a thermoelectric element between it and the first plate. I was interested. Unfortunately, this cooler wasn't very successful; for most users, it would have only been slightly better than less expensive coolers. As I wanted to keep the chip really cool, it might have been more useful to me. But because it wasn't successful - it wasn't followed up with a newer model; this one doesn't have mounting hardware for the AM4 socket. And I found *another* similar cooler, based on the same two-plate design, from 2007, the Ultra ChillTec. However, now that the latest version of Ryzen Master allows one to select an "Eco Mode" for the chip - well, giving up a little performance to extend chip life is reasonable, so I don't need to look for some amazing super cooler. John Savard |
#7
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
Even the Noctua NH-D15 and the Phanteks PH-TC14PE don't have AM4 mounting
hardware. At my local computer store, only smaller air coolers have AM4 mounting hardware - and, also, high-end AIO coolers, so at least 3950X owners have something available. John Savard |
#8
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
Checking out the Noctua site, NH-D15s made in 2019 and later have had AM4 mounting
hardware added. But old stock won't have it. The Phanteks site didn't specify what sockets their cooler supported at all, it just named the supplier of the mounting hardware. John Savard |
#9
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
John Savard wrote:
Checking out the Noctua site, NH-D15s made in 2019 and later have had AM4 mounting hardware added. But old stock won't have it. The Phanteks site didn't specify what sockets their cooler supported at all, it just named the supplier of the mounting hardware. John Savard https://noctua.at/en/nm-am4-mounting-kit "Owners of Noctua CPU coolers* can obtain the NM-AM4 Mounting-Kit free of charge via this form. A proof of purchase (electronic version, photo or scan of the invoice) of both a Noctua CPU cooler and either a socket AM4 mainboard or socket AM4 CPU are required." Paul |
#10
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12-core AMD 3900X - does it need better cooling?
On Thursday, November 14, 2019 at 9:35:41 PM UTC-7, Paul wrote:
John Savard wrote: Checking out the Noctua site, NH-D15s made in 2019 and later have had AM4 mounting hardware added. But old stock won't have it. The Phanteks site didn't specify what sockets their cooler supported at all, it just named the supplier of the mounting hardware. John Savard https://noctua.at/en/nm-am4-mounting-kit "Owners of Noctua CPU coolers* can obtain the NM-AM4 Mounting-Kit free of charge via this form. A proof of purchase (electronic version, photo or scan of the invoice) of both a Noctua CPU cooler and either a socket AM4 mainboard or socket AM4 CPU are required." I've kept the reciept from my 3900X, so that is an option. At this point, though, it appears that using Eco Mode in Ryzen Master and keeping the stock cooler is more likely to achieve my goals, and it will also save me the trouble and risk of hooking up the motherboard again. I think the NH-D15 will fit in my case, but I'm not 100% sure. I mean, I could also buy a 360mm AIO which does come with AM4 mounting hardware in the box. There, the problem would be that I am not sure I could find a good spot for the radiator. John Savard |
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