# 3950x short cooler recommendations?



## burn (Oct 26, 2020)

I picked up a Noctua NH-D15 for this rig (A 3950X on an Asus Prime x570 Pro) and the top of the case will not fit. I considered breaking out the dremmel but as it's actually going in a rack, this feels unwise. It's going in an ancient Antec 4U rack mountable case if that helps. Looking for suggestions at this point on a new cooler. =)

If only I hadn't have used motherboard standoffs it would fit, it's that close.


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## Vario (Oct 26, 2020)

How much lower than the NHD15 do you need? 

edit:





						Noctua
					

Having received more than 6000 awards and recommendations from leading hardware websites and magazines, Noctua's heatsinks are serving hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers around the globe.




					noctua.at
				



Might want to check compatibility before you buy anything, and they also give you the cooler height, so if you have an idea of the excess in height dimension of the NHD15, you could pick something lower by at least that amount.


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## Caring1 (Oct 26, 2020)

Tried smaller fans on it?


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## PooPipeBoy (Oct 26, 2020)

burn said:


> I picked up a Noctua NH-D15 for this rig (A 3950X on an Asus Prime x570 Pro) and the top of the case will not fit. I considered breaking out the dremmel but as it's actually going in a rack, this feels unwise. It's going in an ancient Antec 4U rack mountable case if that helps. Looking for suggestions at this point on a new cooler. =)
> 
> If only I hadn't have used motherboard standoffs it would fit, it's that close.



Please for the love of god, don't take a dremmel to any heatpipes and try to shorten them. Trimming heatpipes is a BIG NO-NO because it will leak the refrigerant out and will render the heatpipes (and the whole cooler) completely useless. You're a wise man for not doing that to an expensive Noctua NH-D15.


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## burn (Oct 26, 2020)

I was considering putting holes in the case. the heat pipes are about 2cm too high for the case to close.



Caring1 said:


> Tried smaller fans on it?


It's the heat pipes preventing the case from closing. Not the fans.



Vario said:


> How much lower than the NHD15 do you need?
> 
> edit:
> 
> ...


Unfortunately the specs are not listed on Amazon.ca


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## Athlonite (Oct 26, 2020)

If an NH D15 is to tall but you want to stick with Noctua I'd look at an NH-D14 or go for an AIO water cooler


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## burn (Oct 26, 2020)

Looks like I'm getting a https://noctua.at/en/nh-l9x65 instead as it will most definitely do the job with two 80mm Vantec Tornadoes moving air through the case.  Plus I'd rather not risk turning this steel case into a giant heatsink. =)



Athlonite said:


> If an NH D15 is to tall but you want to stick with Noctua I'd look at an NH-D14 or go for an AIO water cooler


Water cooling is strictly prohibited in this facility. Also the U14 is only 7mm shorter.


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## NoJuan999 (Oct 26, 2020)

Noctua states that cooler will cause the 3950x to run below it's base speed:
"Possible but sustained clock speed will be below base clock."








						NH-L9x65
					

The NH-L9x65 is a taller, performance-enhanced version of Noctua’s award-winning NH-L9 low-profile coolers. With 65 instead of 37mm height and four instead of two heatpipes, the NH-L9x65 is more powerful than its smaller siblings yet retains their 95x95mm footprint, which guarantees 100% RAM and...




					noctua.at
				



And
"The NH-L9x65 is a highly-compact low-profile quiet cooler designed for use in small form factor cases and HTPC environments. While it provides first rate performance in its class, it is not suitable for overclocking and *should be used with care on CPUs with more than 84W TDP (Thermal Design Power)*. Please consult our *CPU compatibility list* and *TDP guidelines* to find out whether the NH-L9x65 is recommended for your CPU."

I'd definitely look for a better cooler that will fit your case.

Read these:








						AMD Ryzen 9 3950X vs Intel Core i9-9900K: The Battle for Mainstream Supremacy
					

Intel and AMD's finest mainstream chips go toe-to-toe in a seven-round faceoff.




					www.tomshardware.com
				











						AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review: 16 Cores Muscles Into the Mainstream
					

Turn the dial up to 16




					www.tomshardware.com
				



"Unlike other mainstream Ryzen processors, the Ryzen 9 3950X doesn't come with a bundled cooling solution. AMD recommends using a 280mm AIO cooler to keep the cores chilled, but we found even that to be somewhat inadequate. In our tests of the 3950X, our Corsair H115i struggled to keep core temperatures low enough to maintain the factory boost frequency. To extract the full potential of a 3950X, you're best with a custom water-cooling loop. "


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## burn (Oct 26, 2020)

PooPipeBoy said:


> Please for the love of god, don't take a dremmel to any heatpipes and try to shorten them. Trimming heatpipes is a BIG NO-NO because it will leak the refrigerant out and will render the heatpipes (and the whole cooler) completely useless. You're a wise man for not doing that to an expensive Noctua NH-D15.


LOL



NoJuan999 said:


> Noctua states that cooler will cause the 3950x to run below it's base speed:
> "Possible but sustained clock speed will be below base clock."
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks! You saved me a bunch of hassle. Looks like I'm going with a NH-9US instead as AIO is prohibited in this facility. =)


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## crazyeyesreaper (Oct 26, 2020)

Scythe Big Shuriken 3.








						Scythe Big Shuriken 3 Review
					

Scythe looks to corner the small form factor market with their latest down-draft, low-profile Big Shuriken 3 cooler. A great solution for systems where space is at a premium, it not only fits in small spaces, but also delivers solid performance with whisper-quiet noise levels.




					www.techpowerup.com


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## dont whant to set it"' (Oct 26, 2020)

Noctua nh-d9l is listed with a height of 110mm and compatible in 3U chassis.


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## joemama (Oct 26, 2020)

Just change to water cooling, 3950x is hot enough that lower tier coolers can't suppress the temperatures.


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## xman2007 (Oct 26, 2020)

joemama said:


> Just change to water cooling, 3950x is hot enough that lower tier coolers can't suppress the temperatures.


He's already stated he cannot use water cooling for this build in 2 different posts


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## theonek (Oct 26, 2020)

Also there is another noctua 








						NH-C14S
					

Successor to the award-winning NH-C14, the NH-C14S is an elite class top-flow CPU cooler that is extremely efficient, highly compatible and remarkably adjustable. Thanks to its deeper fin stack and the renowned NF-A14 PWM fan, the single fan NH-C14S provides similar quiet cooling performance to...




					noctua.at
				



142mm hight with fan on top mounted and it is not 165mm like D15


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## jesdals (Oct 26, 2020)

Perhaps you could modificeret the case side something like this


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## PooPipeBoy (Oct 26, 2020)

burn said:


> LOL
> 
> Thanks! You saved me a bunch of hassle. Looks like I'm going with a NH-9US instead as AIO is prohibited in this facility. =)



The Noctua NH-U9S is very nice, I got one of them for my Ryzen system just a few weeks ago.
It's quite small but it has decent performance with the five heatpipes and it outperforms the NH-D9L.


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## Deleted member 193596 (Oct 26, 2020)

i'd buy a new case instead..


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## xtreemchaos (Oct 26, 2020)

yes i agree with above buy a new case put a big air cooler on it prob solved.


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## freeagent (Oct 26, 2020)

AXP-100-Full Copper – Thermalright
					






					www.thermalright.com
				




Can soak up 180w.. should be decent.


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## Athlonite (Oct 26, 2020)

theonek said:


> Also there is another noctua
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That would be eminently better than a 92mm HSF


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## Jetster (Oct 26, 2020)

Or just leave the side off


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## tabascosauz (Oct 26, 2020)

This thread is pretty wild lmao. I have had the L9i and currently have the L9x65, D9L, U9B SE2, U9S and C14S.

Current Ryzen CPUs are impressively "smart" and you'll hardly run into outright thermal throttling like you would on an Intel CPU with grossly insufficient coolers, because of the various "soft" temperature and voltage limits that automatically and constantly temper your maximum achievable boost speeds both single- and multi-thread. Thermally, the cooler you choose, the ambient temperature, case airflow, other heat-generating components (GPUs during games) can all affect clocks...you get the idea.

You're not going to want anything less than a L12S minimum on that 3950X, period. Assuming a mild 20-22C ambient temperature and a case that isn't an open testbench:

You can expect an appreciable loss of performance by running the 3950X in a closed case with the L9x65 and D9L. How much exactly is up to your own testing to determine, but it's far more than margin of error.
The U9S is right on the edge because it depends heavily on directional case airflow. Most consensus in SFF land is that the U9S should always be passed up for the C14S when running a 3900X or 3950X for the noise advantage alone, but also because full load can get closer to 90C than would be comfortable.
L12S works like a mini C14S, and usually trades blows with the U9S for less noise. Both of them the *bare *minimum for high core count Ryzen, without any expectations of getting full stock performance.
The C14S works best with the stock A14 140mm fan (or equivalent, or better like iPPC2000) on top of the heatsink. The fact that the side panel on the case is solid and doesn't afford the C14S direct outside airflow doesn't make as much a difference as you people seem to think, as long as there's plentiful fresh air moving through the case. Which seems to be the case as OP has described. But if the C14S is absolutely choked from having say, barely 1cm of clearance to the side panel, that's a different story and might justify cutting a hole in the side panel.
In slightly height-restricted cases, the C14S and Scythe Fuma 2 are usually the top contenders, and both will require plenty of case airflow. But the Fuma 2 / Mugen 5 present obvious height clearance issues at 155mm.
If you stay far away from the computer and run everything at full blast, keep the room ice cold and/or don't care much about load temperatures or performance loss, there's nothing stopping you from going with a U9S. Just keep in mind that with high core count CPUs, running dual-fan on the U9S is less of an optional choice as it should be mandatory to get as much air flowing through that heatsink as possible.

Moral of the story, you should be looking at a bigger case, unless there's obvious something preventing you from doing so.


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## kayjay010101 (Oct 26, 2020)

WarTherapy1195 said:


> i'd buy a new case instead..





xtreemchaos said:


> yes i agree with above buy a new case put a big air cooler on it prob solved.





Jetster said:


> Or just leave the side off


The OP already stated they are using a rackmount case. If you guys are unaware, rackmounts adhere to certain heights. In this instance, the case is a very standard 4U, which means 4 rack units. That equates to a total height of 177.8mm, which is why the NH-D15 doesn't fit. 

Taking the "side" off wouldn't make any sense here, as since it's a rackmount, what would constitute the normal side in a standard desktop is actually the top. And in that case, you'd be interfering with the rack unit above it. Which means OP would need to (I presume) rent another rack unit in the rack, which costs extra. Another thing that OP has mentioned is the facility prohibits watercooling, so AIOs are out of the question, and so are custom loops. Only air coolers (or passive coolers) that fit in a 4U height, while accounting for motherboard + standoffs + panel thickness. So realistically OP's only choice is to go passive and run some really fast Delta fans in front (standard server-style) or to use an air cooler that is less than ~160-170mm in height.

Personally I've used the Noctua NH-U9DX i4 with my server. They fit nicely in my 4U chassis, with some room to spare. My dual Xeon 2683 v4's never go above ~65C even at full load. Not sure if they have an AM4 mount for that one though.


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## Deleted member 193596 (Oct 26, 2020)

kayjay010101 said:


> The OP already stated they are using a rackmount case



well then stop using a rack mounted case?


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## kayjay010101 (Oct 26, 2020)

WarTherapy1195 said:


> well then stop using a rack mounted case?


???
Stop using a rackmount case, in a server rack? Or are you saying use a normal desktop case, at home?
They mention a "facility", so I'm assuming this is rented space in a datacenter-type environment; i.e NOT a home computer, which means rack only...


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## tabascosauz (Oct 26, 2020)

kayjay010101 said:


> Personally I've used the Noctua NH-U9DX i4 with my server. They fit nicely in my 4U chassis, with some room to spare. My dual Xeon 2683 v4's never go above ~65C even at full load. Not sure if they have an AM4 mount for that one though.



This isn't some sort of novel discovery. They're Xeons that are capped at a sub-3GHz clockspeed under heavy load, already binned out of the factory for the best possible volt-freq within their CPU family, strictly adhering to 120W TDP, with physically massive dies and heatspreaders, governed only by a "dumb" Turbo table and Tjunction, and made on a much older process with zero thermal density issues. Power draw (and even then, 3900X and 3950X are allowed to draw ~142W package power) means next to nothing in relation to temperatures that a 3950X will reach, that's not how they work.

As to @burn query, this guy faced a similar issue finding air coolers for a 3900X in a 4U case and settled on the Fuma Rev B:

It looks like it'll have to be a <150mm cooler to fit in most 4U cases. The one 120mm tower that fits the bill is the Scythe Fuma Rev. B, but it'll have to be picked up from leftover stock or second hand as I doubt they make it anymore (and probably needs an AM4 mount too). Otherwise, as has been already explained, 4U would be limited to top-down coolers and 92mm towers; the former might be starved for air in a 150mm tall case, and the latter would be howling at full speed to keep thermals under control. Which might or might not be a problem, people don't always use rackmount cases in their envisioned role. OP never said where exactly he would put it, only that he has a 4U case.


__
		https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/cgrbm4


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## kayjay010101 (Oct 26, 2020)

tabascosauz said:


> This isn't some sort of novel discovery. They're Xeons that are capped at a sub-3GHz clockspeed under heavy load, already binned out of the factory for the best possible volt-freq within their CPU family, strictly adhering to 120W TDP, with physically massive dies and heatspreaders, governed only by a "dumb" Turbo table and Tjunction, and made on a much older process with zero thermal density issues. Power draw (and even then, 3900X and 3950X are allowed to draw ~142W package power) means next to nothing in relation to temperatures that a 3950X will reach, that's not how they work.


I wasn't saying it was a novel discovery, I was only sharing my experience. I realize a 14nm Xeon is very different from a 7nm Ryzen; very different thermal outputs, thermal densities and load patterns.



tabascosauz said:


> ...the former might be starved for air in a 150mm tall case, and the latter would be howling at full speed to keep thermals under control. Which might or might not be a problem, people don't always use rackmount cases in their envisioned role.


Again, OP mentions a "facility", so It sounds to me like it's a datacenter where noise is of no concern. In which case, put some jet engine 92mm's on it and call it a day. But if noise is a concern, then yes, might want to look elsewhere. In fact, I'd probably say if noise is a concern then 4U isn't exactly the best option. 5U and 120mm fans would be ideal... but no rackmount cases with standard layouts are 5U+, afaik, not to mention the added cost of renting additional rack space. Or, watercooling, but that's not an option.


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