Is the CPU cooling adequate for this build?

M

MM556

Member
Hi all,
This is my chosen system. The CPU air cooler I wanted, the Frost Flow 200, isn't available.
Will the FrostFlow 150 be adequate for the i9-14900K, or do I need to go for an AIO watercooled solution? I've never had watercooling before. Any suggestions for which one? Anything I need to watch out for?

ALSO am I right in thinking that the FRACTAL DEFINE 7 XL BLACK QUIET TOWER CASE had 5.25" bays?
Thank you!


Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 XL BLACK QUIET TOWER CASE
Promotional Item
Get Alan Wake 2 with Select GeForce RTX 40 Series!
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 24-Core Processor i9-14900K (Up to 6.0GHz) 36MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® PROART Z790-CREATOR WIFI (LGA1700, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 6E, 1 x 10GbE)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 6000MHz (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4070 Ti - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 6500MB/sW)
1st Storage Drive
4TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 150 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [MUP-00005]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
48 HOUR INSURED PALLET DELIVERY TO UK (MON-FRI, INC. HIGHLANDS & ISLANDS)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 6 working days
 
T

TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
No!

The bare minimum we'd suggest would be the H150i from Corsair...and even then we wouldn't like to guarantee that there wouldn't be some throttling on heavy workloads.

I think the accepted solutions are 1) run it on liquid nitrogen; or 2) run an AMD CPU instead.
 
sck451

sck451

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
The answers are "no it is not enough" and "yes it has 5.25" bays".

But what's the PC for? What monitor will you use? What is your budget? You may well be able to do better...
 
M

MM556

Member
sck451 said:
The answers are "no it is not enough" and "yes it has 5.25" bays".

But what's the PC for? What monitor will you use? What is your budget? You may well be able to do better...
Click to expand...
Thank you. Budget is £3K or so inc VAT.

It's for video editing and basic compositing with Adobe Premiere and After Effects, plus a fair amount of photo editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. Not for gaming
I work with a 3 monitor setup: 2 x Dell 27" UHD monitors and a colour accurate EZIO WUXGA 24" monitor
Most of the decoding / encoding is done on the GPU.
I have been managing very well on a 9 year old PC Specialist system - testament to their build quality - but am working more and more with HEVC encoded footage and need the Intel QuickSync for hardware HEVC decoding.
 
sck451

sck451

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
OK, I think your build isn't a long way off. I'm afraid I can't replicate it, though: I don't know which config tool you found the ProArt motherboard on, but I can't find it now! I'd suggest some minor changes to storage (an M.2 SSD for project files doesn't cost significantly different and is way faster), to cooling (and even the H150i might not always be enough for the 14900K) and probably the case.

The Fractal Define 7 is a great case, but you have some hot components in it and the airflow quite simply is not good enough. It will be straining to keep up. You should get a case with inherently better airflow. Now, there aren't many of these that also have external 5.25" bays (they get in the way of good airflow). My choice would be to use external drives connected by USB (there's no speed difference with modern USB), but you may prefer to go with one of the few choices that works well: the Fractal Pop Air XL. You'd need to do "send in your own case" but that's really easy to do. You can buy the case for around £100 on Amazon, get it shipped direct to PCS, and they'll build in it for you.

(I presume, by the way, that you already have the drives that you'll fit into the case...)

Here's what I'd be inclined to suggest for you:

Case
Send In Your Own Case Fractal Pop Air XL as above
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 24-Core Processor i9-14900K (Up to 6.0GHz) 36MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX Z790-F GAMING WIFI (LGA1700, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 6E)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 6000MHz (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4070 Ti - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 6500MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
4TB CORSAIR CORE XT MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 5000 MB/R, 4400 MB/W) Much faster second SSD. Maybe consider a third M.2 SSD as a scratch drive?
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX XT RGB High Performance CPU Cooler As good a cooler as PCS offers
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [MUP-00005] Are you sure you need this?
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI) If you're not getting the massive Define 7 XL, you can save here as you don't need pallet delivery
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 6 working days
Price: £2,794.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z790-ddr5-pc/3GmKkqDuGk/
 
M

MM556

Member
@sck451

Thanks so much for your feedback. You get to the ProArt via the Workstation Configurator. It has 2 x TB4 ports and 10GB Ethernet, both of which I need for attaching to my Thunderbolt RAIDs and my NAS.

PCSPECIALIST - Configure the Intel Z790 Workstation to your ideal requirements.

PCSpecialist is an award-winning manufacturer of high quality custom PCs & Laptops. Configure the Intel Z790 Workstation to your ideal requirements.
www.pcspecialist.co.uk www.pcspecialist.co.uk

Frustratingly USB isn't an option for external 5.25", as my LTO Tape Drive is an internal SAS model... and my budget right now doesn't stretch to getting a an external TB case for it.
Thanks also for the feedback about additional drives for projects and scratch: I have them already :)

And thank for recommending that CPU cooler. I've never had any liquid cooling before. Is there anything I need to watch for? Do they need maintenance? Topping up?

Really interesting what you're saying about airflow, thank you. As always with video and audio editing there's a trade-off between cooling and noise. When I'm on my own I can edit with headphones, but with clients we need to be able to hear the audio above the noise of the computer!

Thanks again, really appreciate your thoughts on this.
 
sck451

sck451

MOST VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Ah, awesome, that makes a lot of sense, both for the motherboard and the 5.25" drives. Unfortunately that adds quite a bit to the price but it sounds like it's justified for you. I presume you have a SAS HBA to connect the tape drive to?

The AIO cooler doesn't need any maintenance, other than occasionally cleaning out the fans. It doesn't need topping up.

The trade-off is going to be there, you're right. The noise level won't be loud when the system's not under load as the fans will ramp up with load. Most editing won't put it under a massive load, so it'll be all right. And a quiet case will only limit noise to an extent, and sometimes can be noisier as the fans have to fight for air in a restrictive case. If you have a good case with good inherent airflow, the fans can be slower and therefore quieter.

Here's the system as I'd suggest it:

Case
Send In Your Own Case
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 24-Core Processor i9-14900K (Up to 6.0GHz) 36MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® PROART Z790-CREATOR WIFI (LGA1700, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 6E, 1 x 10GbE)
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 6000MHz (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4070 Ti - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 6500MB/sW)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
4TB CORSAIR CORE XT MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 5000 MB/R, 4400 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX XT RGB High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [MUP-00005]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 4 to 6 working days
Price: £2,953.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/Intel-z790-workstation/m49sX5gz7Y/
 
M

MM556

Member
@sck451

Excellent! Thanks so much for your help!
It sure does seem to be a problem finding a big case with good airflow and 5.25" bays.
Maybe I should send them my old Coolermaster HAF! :)

Thanks again!
 
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