NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Ah good God! Another laugh out loud moment for me!!!
Fan Configurations - (because I was very bored today....)
- Thread starter NoddyPirate
- Start date
Thatās twice Iāve made you laugh now, if I hit three times then I think itās time you consider making a certificate for me ššAh good God! Another laugh out loud moment for me!!!
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Itās a deal - although you only got a smile out of me for that last post.
Iām worried my wife thinks Iām seeing someone else - Iām always on the computer now typing epics and smiling and laughing. Sheās been looking over my shoulder recently and asking if Cooper is a girls name and do I have a thing for Spyders.
If I laugh out loud again then Iāll have my solicitor do up a nice Cert for you while Iām in with them sorting out the separation. š
TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Is Scott really Jimmy Broadbent?
No firbombino Jimmer!
No firbombino Jimmer!
There's a lot to unpack in there @Scott!
I can see why you may have felt I was suggesting to opt for an air cooler in order to avoid the risk of an AIO failure - but I genuinely was not - as that would be silly. If an AIO is best suited to your needs then it would be foolish to get anything other than an AIO. I was interested in looking at this simply because of a couple of recent threads here relating to likely AIO failure in the last couple of days - so there certainly has been some reports - but I'm only looking at it as a pondering - not as a one in favour of the other. Statistically a couple of failures here and there is irrelevant anyway of course. Just as your personal experience with AIO's is or equally mine with air cooling.
I don't think there will be any benefit in my replying to your specific points cos it would be nothing more than a difference of opinions on minutae mostly.
But perhaps take me as an example - I have no intention to Overclock now or in the future. I have a relatively low TDP CPU and any likely future upgrades would do also. However, I had read a lot (and I do mean a lot) of reports and reviews of the 5600X running very hot with the stock AMD cooler - the Wraith Stealth - which is the most basic of the AMD bunch right now. With the low TDP go figure why those reports are out there - bad pasting perhaps, or poor installs, or something more fundamental perhaps.....but they exist nonetheless.
Given I would be seeing some multi-core work, a little extra help seemed prudent. I can't see any justification that could be presented to spend Ā£100+ on an AIO when a Ā£30 tower cooler would give me exactly what I need - for now and later. Whatever extra cooling I would see with an AIO would make no discernable difference to performance, or CPU or build lifespan.
All the research I have done suggests that on a scale with Stock coolers on one end and AIO's on the other, in many cases tower coolers perform closer to AIO's than to Stock, across a wide range of coolers of all types, save of course for the more extreme setups. So I do think that the cooling improvement with a tower cooler is more marked than you suggest.
But I also think that Tower Coolers can be a bit of a four-letter word sometimes here. I'm just not really convinced that should be the case. Sometimes the middle ground might actually be a perfect fit.....?
In a contained set of circumstances I have no doubt that the aircooler is a fine fit. My comparison wasn't to the Ā£100 offering though, as that would be the Noctua level silent offering, it was more to the Coolermaster Lite 240, which will perform as well as a H100X but be significantly cheaper. In your circumstances it would appear to be Ā£15 wasted so it probably doesn't make any sense to get the AIO. When I'm purchasing anything, not even tech related, I like to get the most free option. The option that will not be limited should I want to change. Of course, this needs to be weighed up with the cost, but again my point here is to get a good air cooler I would personally want the Noctua.
I just think the opposite way though, I would spend the extra money to have the potential, rather than the limitations.
I wouldn't be worried about the stock cooler on the 5600X either. For a start it's meant to run warmer than the 3600(XT). Out of the people complaining of temps, what case were they running? I don't hold much confidence on those, especially if you consider that you ran yours with the fan effectively off. The Wraith is a well known decent heatsink, with only the acoustics being a known variable.
People tend not to use their own methodology and thinking when purchasing PCs. They just take whatever outlet they prefers word for everything. Unfortunately this ends up with a ton of hearsay and thigs taken as gospel when the people reciting it actually have no first hand experience of what they are talking about (again, I stress... not you).
With regards to the AIO failings..... I have a caveat..... AIO failings in coolers we would recommend. I know of the issues with the PCS offerings, we always recommend people stay away from them. There are also well known failings with the original Coolermaster 240 (non-lite). This was a design flaw and corrected with the lite model. The AIOs are much more complex so they do need to be chosen more carefully than air coolers, I would suggest that we (the collective) would help negate that problem with our advice. Of course, that doesn't cater for people who don't follow the advice or don't seek it to begin with, which further compounds the AIO hearsay as gospel.
Similarly when it was suggested that I may be the Stig... I resemble the American counterpart.
Depends how much current you have running through the chickens
D
Deleted member 41971
Guest
you can also run doom on 16 billion crabs, for some reason
You could run Doom on 16 billion crabs
Someone figured out how to make logic gates based on crabs, so running Doom on crabs is now only a matter of time (and crabs)
www.pcgamesn.com
Here is my take on it:
Exhaust fans are more important than intake. Especially for GPU temps. So you need exhaust fans regardless. If you buy a Noctua tower cooler (probably the best choice) - you have a cooler for your cpu and that is all.
You still need to go out and buy the exhaust fans etc, with some cases anyway.
Say you go H100i and compare it with a Ā£70 Noctua... 2 ML120ās is going to set you back maybe Ā£60, so really, youāre only paying Ā£50 or so for the AIO.
Exhaust fans are more important than intake. Especially for GPU temps. So you need exhaust fans regardless. If you buy a Noctua tower cooler (probably the best choice) - you have a cooler for your cpu and that is all.
You still need to go out and buy the exhaust fans etc, with some cases anyway.
Say you go H100i and compare it with a Ā£70 Noctua... 2 ML120ās is going to set you back maybe Ā£60, so really, youāre only paying Ā£50 or so for the AIO.
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Thanks again Scott....
The reports and reviews of the 5600X temperatures include all sorts of setups - inlcuding awful 'cupboard' setups, gaming and airflow cases, and open test benches. All the usual suspects of random Joe's compaining with their bedroom testing, but also more reputable sources with controlled testing too. Single core stuff was a breeze, but multi-core appeared to push the Wraith to it's headroom limit. None of the reports I would trust saw anything dangerous or imminently damaging, but they did see throttling alongside temperatures which would I'm sure would not be a good idea for prolonged use.
Would I have had any signficant issue with temperatures with the 5600X and stock cooler in my use case? Probably not. But I was convinced I could run it cooler to take any possible concerns away entirely. Why would I buy a fancy fast IPC CPU only to let it possibly throttle itself for the sake of a low additional investment? With the 220T that probably wasn't necessary perhaps, but still.
My fan choices were intended to keep the noise down too - which as you say yourself doesn't necessarily get fully dealt with with a Ā£45 AIO.
I actually think we are on the same page here in many ways. My last test was really just making the same point that you have here - an AIO cooler is a more complicated setup with more points of failure - so don't go with budget options or no-name brands if you want to avoid any issues. If you buy a well-known brand with a proven record, then you should expect everything to be fine.
Avoiding specific AIO's is sound advice, and sound advice is priceless, but I do wonder if that has spilled over at times to encompass any cooler that isn't a respected AIO. For example, I've seen it said here more than once that the cheap Tower Coolers 'upgrades' perform worse than Stock Coolers - when there appears to be no evidence of that whatsoever, in fact quite the opposite, nor any technical or physicsal reason why it would be the case. A heatpipe Tower with a 120mm fan would have to be really badly built to be outperformed by a small 90mm block heatsink, and such build issues in such a design would likely render it completely useless. Of course, if there is any info out there I have missed then I would be delighted to see it naturally - which is part of the point of this entire thread. But is it sound advice to say stick with a Stock rather than a basic Tower upgrade on the basis of cooling performance alone, all other things being equal? I don't really think so....
All the information that I have found and consumed suggests that the most basic Tower Cooler will likely outperform the average Stock Cooler on every platform - not as good as an AIO by any means, although Jayztwocents actually ran a review recently where a $30 Tower outperformed his personal AIO - he was devastated!
For me the physics of cooling options is interesting and more complex than might first meet the eye. Perhaps there is an asusmption for some that a Tower Cooler is just a simple heatsink block like a stock cooler, made bigger to fool you into thinking it will be better. But there's a lot more to them than that. The Wraith Prism is a great example - considered one of the best AMD Stock Coolers - it has multiple heat pipes in it's design alongside a larger heatsink surface area - so it's no surprise at all that it does a better job. But it still gets beaten by Tower coolers it seems - even just because of surface area alone.
Anyway, there has already been far too much discussion about coolers specifically - which wasn't really the point of my thread here - even if I have inadvertently steered it that way!
Thanks so much for engaging @Scott - it's good to talk!!!
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
I'm not so sure really @Ash_ - a fresh cool air supply from intakes do seem to be key for internal air cooing - and my examples certainly seem to suggest that with the CPU cooler running, the exhausts made little or no difference at all - exluding the possibly VRM implications - where the intakes alone could significantly change things. Of course with a high power GPU pumping huge amounts of heat into the case then exhausts probably would become much more important?
A positive pressure setup seems to be the most recommeded - and in such setups the exhausts don't really add a lot other than flow control it seems.
The Noctua is king of the hill at the moment - I agree. But is far from the only choice when it comes to Towers - it leads the bunch but it isn't an order of magnitude out in front - if you know what I mean.
Last thing to add - the PCS Frostflow 100 which I have in my yoke - appears to be a rebranded ID Cooling SE-224-XT - every single detail that I can see is identical save for the PCS logo on the top and sticker on the fan spindle. PCS certainly haven't invested in a factory to make their own coolers and rebranding an existing model is what almost everyone else does anyway. All major brands buy from the same few suppliers and simply add their own branding or tweak the basic design to differentiate themselves. That goes for Towers and AIO alike. But the core components come from the same small number of places.
ID Cooling are a cheap offering out there in component land - but in a few reviews the SE-224 outperformed many well-respected alternates including the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO. So cheap doesn't mean poor in all cases - and my point really is that in a simple and static design, such as with a Tower Cooler, cheap can also be perfectly fine!
Iāve played around with the fan setup in my case, having the more powerful ML120 elite capellix fans as my intake and less powerful ML120 RGB Pro as my exhaust, actually caused me issues with my 3070/5800X. When i adjusted the performance profiles, so the ML RGB Proās ran 500rpm higher than intake, my gpu temperature dropped 10 degrees. Just simply by exhausting more than intake.
To add context for that, intakes at 700rpm and outtakes at 1200rpm, my pc ran cool and silent (apart from the pump, but that is another story). As my pump is currently an issue, i upped my fans to 1500 and 1000rpm, as this is the noise level that drains the pump and the fan sound (36db) is a lot nicer than a 29db high pitched squeal, but all my temps are kept well in check (62 cpu and 65 gpu or so).
I believe Gamers Nexus (i think it was) also showed in the 5000X (i think it was) review, that 2 intake and 1 exhaust, outperforms the stock 3 intake front fans.
The differences are likely magnified as you go up components, also the PCS AIO isnāt one iād recommend. Noctua would be my go to, but i think towers are really ugly and especially the brown and white noctua.
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Just re-reading that bit makes me nervous - badly written and hopefully hasn't peed anyone off.
I don't mean staying with Stock is bad advice. What I mean is:
Saying Stock is fine and no other option is needed - is perfectly fine.
Saying moving to a Tower Cooler will make actually things worse - I'm not so sure.
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Agree with Noctua colours! Although they do have all balck versions now. No way I could have brown and white in my case!
Also agree that heavy duty GPU's will see different results. My yoke is piddly, runs cool, and probably has little effect. Also Cinebench testing doesn't task my GPU at all.
Gamers Nexus are great - however they test all their CPU's with the same AIO cooling setup - for consistency of course which is the right thing to do. I'm not sure the fan config results would be quite the same with a fan cooler CPU though....?
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
My GPU is so small that an AIO would make my case look completely empty. The Tower Cooler sort of filled the space nicely for me!!
Interestingly though, i am sure Noctua makes a tower cooler for threadrippers š¤£.
Also i used to have an i5-7600 and that thing started running super hot, so i repasted and put the stock cooler back on, but it still fan hot (intel stock coolers are poor). So i added a Coolermaster 240 and the temps dropped from like 75 down to 40 degrees, although in fairness, the coolermaster was audible and the intel was not. The intel cooler was also so small, it wasnāt an eye sore.
Ultra quiet builds and lower than 12 cores, i would probably go Noctuaās new black one, but pcs donāt sell any Noctua at the moment (i donāt believe anyway).
Also i used to have an i5-7600 and that thing started running super hot, so i repasted and put the stock cooler back on, but it still fan hot (intel stock coolers are poor). So i added a Coolermaster 240 and the temps dropped from like 75 down to 40 degrees, although in fairness, the coolermaster was audible and the intel was not. The intel cooler was also so small, it wasnāt an eye sore.
Ultra quiet builds and lower than 12 cores, i would probably go Noctuaās new black one, but pcs donāt sell any Noctua at the moment (i donāt believe anyway).
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Noise is the missing element sometimes - youāre right. Iām sure plenty have gone cheap thinking theyāre being clever only to complain later that their system is too noisy.....
NoddyPirate
Grand Master
Today while clearing out old boxes of junk - because lockdown provides such opportunities - I discovered my old FLIR One buried in a wardrobe which I completely forgot I had. It's a super little yoke which plugs into your iPhone - I originally bought it almost 5 years ago when trying to locate a hidden leak from our heating system - without success I might add. But what better use for it than to add another page or two to this thread!
First fun bit - here's what a motherboard looks like at idle - chipset the warmest bit by a decent margin with a little rectangular hotspot on the heatsink too. Both M.2 drives also with hotspots around 40 degrees.
And then at 100% full CPU load - Rear VRM now leading the way......(the temperature range on the camera resets to match the temperature range in the image - so the chipset and M.2's looks cooler, but they aren't - it's just the VRM is the warmest now)
And then some VRM temps - highly inaccurate results I expect - due to me having the glass panel off as the camera can't measure through glass - and also because it's so hard to get the hottest measure in the crosshairs when you're lying under a desk on your back at my age.
CPU fan only running:
Adding Front Fans to the mix.....
And finally roof and rear exhausts on too:
I was initially surprised at these VRM temperatures being so low - I have read bout more like 90-100 degrees C for VRM's - but then this is just a heatsink temperature and not the actual MOSFETs or Chokes - but also my 5600X is drawing 88W OC'd, where the PRIME B550 PLUS can actually handle up to 395W. So the VRM isn't being asked to do too much here at all in the big scheme of things.
So, proof that front fans help your CPU cooling along with other internals such as the VRM? And that exhausts help the VRM too? Perhaps - is the best conclusion that can be drawn I think.
But my OC'd CPU is not making my VRM run hot which is nice to know. And the pictures are nice too. So win-win.
First fun bit - here's what a motherboard looks like at idle - chipset the warmest bit by a decent margin with a little rectangular hotspot on the heatsink too. Both M.2 drives also with hotspots around 40 degrees.
And then at 100% full CPU load - Rear VRM now leading the way......(the temperature range on the camera resets to match the temperature range in the image - so the chipset and M.2's looks cooler, but they aren't - it's just the VRM is the warmest now)
And then some VRM temps - highly inaccurate results I expect - due to me having the glass panel off as the camera can't measure through glass - and also because it's so hard to get the hottest measure in the crosshairs when you're lying under a desk on your back at my age.
CPU fan only running:
Adding Front Fans to the mix.....
And finally roof and rear exhausts on too:
I was initially surprised at these VRM temperatures being so low - I have read bout more like 90-100 degrees C for VRM's - but then this is just a heatsink temperature and not the actual MOSFETs or Chokes - but also my 5600X is drawing 88W OC'd, where the PRIME B550 PLUS can actually handle up to 395W. So the VRM isn't being asked to do too much here at all in the big scheme of things.
So, proof that front fans help your CPU cooling along with other internals such as the VRM? And that exhausts help the VRM too? Perhaps - is the best conclusion that can be drawn I think.
But my OC'd CPU is not making my VRM run hot which is nice to know. And the pictures are nice too. So win-win.