# Air Cooling -- Myths and setup tips for the novice performance / gaming builder



## An0maly_76 (Nov 4, 2022)

I've noticed there seem to be some rather ridiculous and utter myths and misinformation regarding cooling, particularly air cooling. First and foremost, a popular tech YouTuber did a comparison video testing various air and liquid cooler performance, concluding that while liquid cooling did deliver more consistent temperatures, they were only SLIGHTLY lower – 5C or less, and that air coolers performed quite comparably when properly sized and set up. They made a statement in that video – that liquid cooling was cool if you like to spend more time tinkering with your PC as opposed to using it. To me, that pretty much says it all, as a difference of less than 5 degrees in temp is more or less identical.

NOTE: If you’re planning a simple budget build with less than eight cores and entry-level graphics and other hardware, you won’t need a ton of cooling – in fact, stock air coolers should be just fine in most cases. However, if your build is a stepping stone to bigger and better later on, it makes sense to pave the way for this in choosing components with better cooling in mind for any future upgrade. Otherwise, you’re spending more money in the long run.

My 5900X build's cooling system uses an iCUE Commander with six 120mm fans, and the Scythe Mugen 5 which uses a 120mm fan, seven in total, but they don’t even run that hard below 70C. As illustrated in the screenshots below, CPU Package temperature idles in the 38C-42C range. Under light to moderate use, it hovers around 48-58C, sometimes as high as 63C. Cinebench R23 is the stress test to end all stress tests as far as I’m concerned. And even with a 30-minute CB R23 loop, temp peaks at 75-76C. Post-test recovery to idle temp range takes around 45-90 seconds. So it cools quite well, and at just 34 square inches of intake area for cooling, my Corsair 4000X case is hardly the best-ventilated case on the market -- the 4000D Airflow would do even better, although the 4000X has air filters where the D does not.









My build was hardly a typical process or timeline, but I admit that in the planning stage for my build, I was skeptical of air-cooling and thought the 5900X needed liquid cooling, but others convinced me that a properly set up air cooler is plenty for even the most robust builds, and more reliable than liquid cooling. However, component selection and initial set-up are a bit more critical. As no one else seems to have done so, I thought I'd explain a few myths and misconceptions, as well as share some insight on component selection and tips for proper setup of an air-cooling system.

MYTH #1 – “My processor requires liquid cooling”

This simply is not true in 99.99% of cases. While it is true that more cores and more threads = more heat, my recent R9-5900X build is proof that air-cooling is more than sufficient for consumer market applications. This is not meant to bash those who like liquid cooling, but VERY little, if anything, on the consumer market actually requires liquid cooling. Also, I feel it often is a band-aid for poor component selection and / or an off-the-shelf answer for those who don’t understand how to properly set up air cooling, or the dynamics of cooling.

MYTH #2 – “Air coolers are junk. They don’t work”

This is not true, either. Air coolers do take a bit more care in component selection and time in initial setup. But properly set up, they are actually more reliable than liquid cooling in most, if not all cases. However, certain factors determine whether a particular cooler is suited to your needs. A poorly-ventilated case can actually insulate the components, making your system a furnace even the best cooling system can’t tame. Conservatively speaking, poorly-ventilated cases hamper cooling by as much as 30-50%, and that’s not the cooler’s fault. For example, you simply cannot stuff a 360mm AIO into an NZXT H510 and expect it to cool. It simply will not be able to get air to do so, because the front is solid steel and your radiator is blocking your airflow. Common sense.

Cooling requires three things – heat transfer, ventilation, and airflow. Hotter processors need bigger coolers, because a cooler’s surface area determines heat transfer ability. Too little surface area substantially hinders cooling. Think of it this way – if you were to cut a Mugen 5’s heat sink into three equally sized sections top to bottom and lay them end-to-end, its surface area is quite comparable to a liquid-cooled radiator. Air coolers simply stack their surface area, where liquid radiators spread it out. Some also use two fans, as opposed to one, which can make a difference.

Another pair of factors apply to the larger, higher-performance air coolers as well. The impact of heat sink size has already been explained. However, what’s underneath impacts cooling capacity as well, and I don’t mean the processor. First, some have more heat transfer tubes than others. For example, the Scythe Mugen 5 has six heat tubes transferring CPU plate heat to the heat sink. Most, if not all Noctua offerings, such as the NH-U12A, have seven, others can have as few as three or four. And this directly impacts cooling capacity, as to a point, more tubes = better cooling.

That being said, it MUST be made for your processor and suited to your setup. My 12-core 5900X cools quite well with the six-tube Mugen 5, so while it may not be an official formula or manufacturer’s recommendation, it makes sense to theorize that air coolers need one tube for each pair of processor cores. And I think this is the biggest factor in misconceptions about air-cooling, that those having issues with air-cooling are simply not selecting the right cooler for their needs.

But there’s another factor to look at here, as shown below. This is one area where airflow comes into play. The right-side cooler has six heat transfer tubes, compared to the left-side cooler’s four. In addition, the right-side cooler’s tubes are also perfectly round throughout the cooling circuit. The left-side cooler’s tubes flatten / taper sharply at the CPU plate, reducing their diameter. This is a bottleneck and also impacts cooling capacity. No pipe (or tube in this case) can flow more than its smallest diameter.








So, as you can see, a PC system’s cooling and performance both come down to component selection. Case selection has a bigger impact on this than you might think. There’s nothing wrong with a case that uses tempered glass / acrylic panels, but be sure it either provides some sort of air gap around the nose or side for air intake, as well as ventilation to the top.

System board choice can impact cooling as well. Many don’t know that boards have a voltage regulator module (VRM) that controls voltage to the processor. This effectively controls clock speed, but also has an impact on temperature as well. And cooling the VRM is critical with processors with higher clock speeds and core/thread counts. This is easy to determine. Some boards have no heat sink near the processor socket. Others may have one or two, some have larger ones than others. Bigger is better in this situation, especially with processors known for running hotter.

Something to note about fan choice. Quieter fans may not perform as well as others, but you’re not stuck with airplane noise, if you’re willing to put a little work into a custom fan control profile, which I’ll get to shortly. And with a well-designed and well-ventilated case (open grill front such as the Corsair 4000D Airflow), three 120s can flow more than two 140s. My setup has three 120s pulling in at the nose, two exhausting topside, one exhausting to the rear, and one blowing across the cooler heat sink.

MYTH #3 – “Air coolers aren’t cost effective”

MAJORLY not true. Most budget / entry-level builders can find air-coolers to serve their initial needs for under $30-$50, depending on their CPU choice. Even the best ones are cheaper than a liquid cooling setup. Noctua’s NH-D15 averages $100-$110 USD. The Scythe Mugen 5 cools quite well and at an average of $50-$60 USD, I think it is hands-down the best bang for the buck for CPUs over eight-cores.

EASY SETUP OF AN AIR COOLING SYSTEM

First, use the proper thermal paste, and properly apply it. Too little won’t cool well and too much will spill onto the board and other components, potentially damaging them. You don’t need a lot, just a thin coating on the processor lid (two or three dots on the lid center are usually sufficient), and take care to wipe any excess squeezing out over the lid edges as the cooler is tightened down.

Tuning your case fan control curve is key. Most don’t like the airplane noise of constantly wide-open fans. Good news – it’s not necessary anyway. In a well configured cooling system, the fans generally need not exceed 70-85% capacity, as the upcoming screenshot of my fan curve shows. Also, the more options your fan controller software has, the better this will work. I use iCUE, which has adjustable settings to lock the fans at fixed percentages and RPM, as well as a custom fan curve, such as the one I use, shown below. Note that one size does not necessarily fit all when it comes to fan control curves.







Step 1: Most fan controllers can be set to a certain RPM and / or percentage of total output. Most fans max out around 900-1400 rpm, some at 1600. With the system idling (only your fan control software running), set all fans wide open for five minutes to get your lowest temperature. I know this will be annoying to listen to initially, but it is necessary to find the coolest temp your system can run. If you’re not seeing low 40s Celsius or better here, something is hindering cooling performance – my 5900X idles at 38C-42C.

Step 2: Every 1-2 minutes, dial your fans down 5%, or 100-250 RPM. Keep doing this until the temp starts rising, then dial the fans back up another 5% or 100-250 rpm to regain your lowest temperature. At this point, note your lowest temperature and fan RPM or percentage setting necessary to maintain it.

Step 3: If you don’t have it, download and install Cinebench R23.

Step 4: Set your fan control to wide open again.

Step 5: Set Cinebench R23 options for a 30-minute multi-core test, then start, minimizing the Cinebench window and switching to your fan control.

Step 6: Watch your CPU Package temp until it stops rising. If all is well, it should top out around 85% of max safe temp. NOTE: If it rises beyond 90-95% of max safe temperature for longer than 30 seconds, abort Cinebench and check to see that all fans are running and blowing the correct direction. Fans can create a deadlock of airflow when positioned and running against each other.

Step 7: Noting your highest stable temperature reading, repeat Step 2, noting the percentage / RPM setting necessary to maintain your recorded stable peak temp. When this has been determined, you can terminate the test.

Step 8: Open your fan controller software’s custom fan curve settings. Most will show dots on a graph, marked as fan percentage / RPM vertically, temperature setpoints horizontally. Each dot represents a setpoint.

Step 9: If silence is preferred, set your first setpoint at zero percentage or RPM just below or at your lowest temperature. Set your second setpoint by your lowest temperature and corresponding fan percentage / RPM setting. (Example: 0% below 30C, 20% at 30C)

Step 10: Find your fourth, fifth or sixth setpoint. Set it to your highest temp and fan percentage / RPM setting.

Step 11: The hard part is now over. The other setpoints between your high and low can now be tweaked to find a balance between stable temperatures and noise level.


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## dirtyferret (Nov 4, 2022)

I don't think any of our regular contributors have ever stated or believe those "myths" but thanks for the info


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## dgianstefani (Nov 4, 2022)

Air cooling has a hard limit on how much heat it can dissipate. Liquid cooling does not (within reason).


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## An0maly_76 (Nov 4, 2022)

dirtyferret said:


> I don't think any of our regular contributors have ever stated or believe those "myths" but thanks for the info



Keep in mind, I'm a migrant of sorts in from LTT forums. Just transferring a few of my useful threads before deleting my account there. I've seen a fair amount of misconceptions / myths in my time, as well as been flat-out-told my findings from real-world experience cannot be true (by people who have never used the specific components in question together, of course).  The final straw came when it became clear that not only were certain members were going out of their way to bird-dog my posts, certain moderators were content to pick and choose who the rules applied to and when. Hence, this thread may contain some rhetoric that spawned it initially.



dgianstefani said:


> Air cooling has a hard limit on how much heat it can dissipate. Liquid cooling does not (within reason).



Be that as it may, I'm air-cooling a 5900X using PBO and RTX3060ti OC without issue. Peaks around 70-72C in my use. Haven't seen any numbers from AM5 or 13th-gen Intel just yet, but I'd say my setup is pretty hard proof that liquid cooling isn't required and is overkill in a lot of cases. And that statement is backed up by the findings of a YouTube who tested multiple air and liquid cooling setups, finding less than 5C difference in the peak temps seen among them.


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## dirtyferret (Nov 4, 2022)

An0maly_76 said:


> Keep in mind, I'm a migrant of sorts in from LTT forums. Just transferring a few of my useful threads before deleting my account there. I've seen a fair amount of misconceptions / myths in my time time, as well as been flat-out-told my findings from real-world experience cannot be true (by people who have never used the specific components in question together, of course).  The final straw came when it became clear that not only were certain members were going out of their way to bird-dog my posts, certain moderators were content to pick and choose who the rules applied to and when. Hence, this thread may contain some rhetoric that spawned it initially.


welcome to TPU, the forums here have knowledgeable posters (for the most part ) and the mods are really good.


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## dgianstefani (Nov 4, 2022)

An0maly_76 said:


> Keep in mind, I'm a migrant of sorts in from LTT forums. Just transferring a few of my useful threads before deleting my account there. I've seen a fair amount of misconceptions / myths in my time, as well as been flat-out-told my findings from real-world experience cannot be true (by people who have never used the specific components in question together, of course).  The final straw came when it became clear that not only were certain members were going out of their way to bird-dog my posts, certain moderators were content to pick and choose who the rules applied to and when. Hence, this thread may contain some rhetoric that spawned it initially.
> 
> 
> 
> Be that as it may, I'm air-cooling a 5900X using PBO and RTX3060ti OC without issue. Peaks around 70-72C in my use. Haven't seen any numbers from AM5 or 13th-gen Intel just yet, but I'd say my setup is pretty hard proof that liquid cooling isn't required and is overkill in a lot of cases. And that statement is backed up by the findings of a YouTube who tested multiple air and liquid cooling setups, finding less than 5C difference in the peak temps seen among them.


No offence, but that isn't a demanding heat load.

Or particularly good temperatures.

Air cooling has it's place, so does liquid cooling. Simply because your use case has acceptable results on air does not prove or disprove anything.

You seem to essentially be setting up an argument noone is making, then refuting it, before coming to conclusions not supported by evidence.

Here's an example of what liquid cooling can do (silently), while running a CPU + GPU under load, pushing locked 1440p 236 FPS, from a single 240 mm radiator in a case the size of a shoebox.


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## ShiBDiB (Nov 4, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> No offence, but that isn't a demanding heat load.
> 
> Or particularly good temperatures.
> 
> ...



That's a nice way of saying "why does this thread exist?"


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## tabascosauz (Nov 4, 2022)

An0maly_76 said:


> Be that as it may, I'm air-cooling a 5900X using PBO and RTX3060ti OC without issue. Peaks around 70-72C in my use. Haven't seen any numbers from AM5 or 13th-gen Intel just yet, but I'd say my setup is pretty hard proof that liquid cooling isn't required and is overkill in a lot of cases. And that statement is backed up by the findings of a YouTube who tested multiple air and liquid cooling setups, finding less than 5C difference in the peak temps seen among them.



5900X being "hard to cool" is a common assumption from people who have never really OC'd one...

You only need something around a NH-U9S to cool a stock 5900X without throttling. With more airflow you cna do it with a NH-L12S. It's not even remotely hard to cool. 3060Ti also is not a high wattage GPU. GPUs (shouldn't) don't affect CPU air cooling temps nearly as much as you think.

If you want a challenging heat load that separates the men from the boys, push for 24k+ R23 score with 200-240W power draw. I could tame it pretty easily on custom loop but I don't have any air coolers that can do it (some of us on TPU do but it can be a challenge @freeagent )


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 4, 2022)

dirtyferret said:


> I don't think any of our regular contributors have ever stated or believe those "myths" but thanks for the info


I wish that were true but sadly, there are a few who do believe myth #1, their processor requires liquid cooling and myth #2, air coolers are junk. 

I do agree those really are myths - perpetrated, in part, by the marketing weenies of liquid cooling products, and in part by a few people who misunderstand the importance and/or how to properly set up case cooling for sufficient air flow through the case. 

That said, most myths have roots in truth. And that is the case here. For example, there are always exceptions, of course. For those who do "extreme" overclocking during stress testing, they _may_ need some form of alternative cooling. 

And it is true that early (like 20 years back) "OEM" cooling solutions were barely adequate for the CPUs they came with. This is due to several factors. 

1. Computers were designed for simple office tasks, and low demand games like solitaire.​2. The heatsinks were relatively small.​3. In many cases, the heatsinks were all or mostly aluminum instead of more efficient copper.​4. The thermal pads back then were slightly better than basic silicon paste, which was barely better than nothing,​5. The included fans were small, many 60mm or less, and thin which means they could not move much air.​6. Demanding games were not very demanding.​
However, it did not take long for 3rd party air cooler makers to start making excellent coolers. But more importantly (when it comes to these myths) both AMD and Intel saw the light, heard the complaints, learned their lessons and started providing much more efficient (and quieter!) OEM coolers with their CPUs.

Sadly, many are still in denial of that fact, however. Yet it is just makes no sense for those people to assume AMD and Intel would include coolers that are incapable of cooling the CPUs they come with. If that were true, those CPUs would always be throttling back and we know that is not the case. So not only are the OEM coolers much superior than those of yesteryear, so are the thermal pads and/or OEM supplied TIM. 

And we also know that both AMD and Intel sell CPUs sans coolers - again indicating they learned their lessons. 



An0maly_76 said:


> This is a bottleneck and also impacts cooling capacity. No pipe (or tube in this case) can flow more than its smallest diameter.


Ummm, first that is irrelevant to the point of this thread. Your thread is about air cooling in general vs liquid cooling in general. Tube/pipe design is a totally different discussion. 

 However, that is a much smaller problem than you make it out to be - if a problem at all. Be careful you are not forming the historic basis for yet another unfortunate myth. 

Just because a oval shaped tube may "appear" to be a squished circle, that does NOT mean the volume capacity of the tube is lessoned. Unless the tube is actually smashed to where the inside walls of the tube are touching, a cross-sectional slice of the tube will still have nearly identical area. Thus they will have the same or nearly equal amount of liquid flow capacity. While one dimension will have a smaller diameter, the other dimension will have a significantly larger diameter. 

Plus, heat will still radiate from the outer surfaces of the tube and whether circular or oval shaped, that surface area is the same. 

My point is, when it comes to those pipes/tubes, one design is not inherently inferior or superior to the other. 



An0maly_76 said:


> Keep in mind, I'm a migrant of sorts in from LTT forums. Just transferring a few of my useful threads before deleting my account there. I've seen a fair amount of misconceptions / myths in my time time, as well as been flat-out-told my findings from real-world experience cannot be true (by people who have never used the specific components in question together, of course). The final straw came when it became clear that not only were certain members were going out of their way to bird-dog my posts



I second dirtyferret's welcome. 

But I might suggest before you transfer more of your threads here, you might become familiar with this site first to see just how useful they may be. Otherwise, you risk being seen as just another newbie trying to impress us by making a splash with a bunch of posts consisting of old news. 

For example, you put a lot of emphasis on case cooling, saying such things as "_Case selection has a bigger impact on this than you might think._" If you had done just a little researching here at TPU before jumping in, you would see that most of us know very well, the importance of case selection and proper case cooling for good air flow. 

So while I personally believe your intent was good and sincere, not sure the impact you wanted, or impression you were trying to achieve was what you really got.


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## Count von Schwalbe (Nov 4, 2022)

Welcome to TPU! 

Don't worry about some of the others - sometimes we forget not everyone is as knowledgeable as the others. I call that a good guide for someone starting out - it would have been nice to have when I first got into PC building and immediately jumped on the liquid bandwagon.


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## ir_cow (Nov 4, 2022)

Let me know when you find a 


An0maly_76 said:


> MYTH #1 – “My processor requires liquid cooling”
> 
> This simply is not true in 99.99% of cases. While it is true that more cores and more threads = more heat, my recent R9-5900X build is proof that air-cooling is more than sufficient for consumer market applications. This is not meant to bash those who like liquid cooling, but VERY little, if anything, on the consumer market actually requires liquid cooling. Also, I feel it often is a band-aid for poor component selection and / or an off-the-shelf answer for those who don’t understand how to properly set up air cooling, or the dynamics of cooling.


I'm that .01% because NO air cooler can handle 300+ watts.


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## Tomgang (Nov 4, 2022)

Aircooling has all ways been my favoridt cooling type. Cheaper, most reliable and easy to/less maintinense needed compared water cooling. The downside of aircooling is that not every one like a big ass dual tower cooler in there system and aircooling can dissapate less heat than a proper custom water loop, limit overclock in some cases.

With the rate CPU´s goes in form of power consumption. Aircooling and high-end cpu´s like 13900K and 7950X really pushing the limit for what even the best air cooler can handle with stock power consumption of all ready 300 watt and 230 watt respectivly. Even the zen 4 6 core now has a power of 105 watt compared to my 5600X of 65 watt. Zen 3 is easy to aircool while zen 4 is a nightmare. Specially for the 170 watt rated parts. 5950X rated for 105 watt (in realioty it uses stock 141 watt) while 7950X is 170 watt (in reallity it more like 230 watt). The higher clock speed the latest gen of CPU´s are capable of hitting, has a back side to that. More heat and  power consumption that needs even better cooling. Intel and AMD pushes there cpu all ready at stock now to the limit of what air cooling can handle.

My 5950X cooled by a Noctua NH-D15 hits stock single core up to 72C while multicore load is 58 C. Witjh PBO single core load is the same while multi core load raises to 76 C (that is at 200 watt my motherboard allows as max). Manuel all core OC to 4.65 GHz at 1.375 volts i hit 86 C and is really the limit for my cooling before throttle temp is reached at 90 C.

What i try to say is that aircooling is apselutely sifficiant for Zen 3 based CPU´s, while Zen 4 and alder lake/meteor lake is really pushing aircooling to the limit because of the increased core clock and power consumption. This unfortunaly can mean this is my last aircooled high-end build do to cpu are pushed so hard all ready at stock. I can off cause limit power, but how fun is it to buy an exspensive cpu to just limit it´s capabillity.

I will say a good big dual tower air cooler is just as good as at least a 240 MM AIO, maybe even 360 MM in some cases.

My system is at least a prove of that a high-end system dosent have to be water cooled to perform it´s best. My system is completely aircooled and i will not call my system low end by any means.

My system (se all spec in my profil):


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## freeagent (Nov 4, 2022)

ir_cow said:


> I'm that .01% because NO air cooler can handle 300+ watts


I have one cooler rated for 320w and another cooler rated for 360w, but that’s for old school 45nm and 32nm chips. At 22nm and under they lose their grip and don’t do so well with the smaller nodes. They could just need a lap though..


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## Udyr (Nov 4, 2022)

An0maly_76 said:


> Keep in mind, I'm a migrant of sorts in from LTT forums. Just transferring a few of my useful threads before deleting my account there. I've seen a fair amount of misconceptions / myths in my time, as well as been flat-out-told my findings from real-world experience cannot be true (by people who have never used the specific components in question together, of course). The final straw came when it became clear that not only were certain members were going out of their way to bird-dog my posts, certain moderators were content to pick and choose who the rules applied to and when. Hence, this thread may contain some rhetoric that spawned it initially.


Welcome to TPU!

Unfortunately, that happens in other forums as well. They start pretty decent, with useful information provided by knowledgeable people, new information submitted by curious folks and new stories by upcoming enthusiasts. But then it grows too wild with some loud folks providing misinformation and turning everything into a marketplace for some products. Then every question is replied by an attempt of making you buy something you don't actually need or solves the problem.

In here you can find a variety of friendly, grumpy and geeky folks, and even if some might justify their purchases, no one (or far few) will try to entice you to buy X or Y.


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## Vario (Nov 4, 2022)

tabascosauz said:


> 5900X being "hard to cool" is a common assumption from people who have never really OC'd one...
> 
> You only need something around a NH-U9S to cool a stock 5900X without throttling. With more airflow you cna do it with a NH-L12S. It's not even remotely hard to cool. 3060Ti also is not a high wattage GPU. GPUs (shouldn't) don't affect CPU air cooling temps nearly as much as you think.
> 
> If you want a challenging heat load that separates the men from the boys, push for 24k+ R23 score with 200-240W power draw. I could tame it pretty easily on custom loop but I don't have any air coolers that can do it (some of us on TPU do but it can be a challenge @freeagent )


It can be done quite easily on undervolted 12900KS on air (NHD15S), but don't know about the 5900X.


			https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachments/5ghz-1-2v-cinebench-r23-multi-png.262851/


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## Shrek (Nov 5, 2022)

Didn't Apple have a liquid cooled power Mac G5 Mac that had a tendency to leak?


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## Space Lynx (Nov 5, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> Air cooling has a hard limit on how much heat it can dissipate. Liquid cooling does not (within reason).



this is why you always set a slightly higher fan curve than what is stock on air coolers. I always do. sucks it right out the exhaust rear, since all 3 fans are lined up perfectly.  2x in push/pull on the heatsink, 1x rear exhaust.

i have no issues with noise, I don't do anything crazy, just a slightly higher fan curve than stock. its always worked wonders for me, and kept temps down to almost liquid cooler levels. Not sure how well my new V5 cooler will do, I got as a budget experiment. I intend to try it soon. I may end up doing something better though like a U12A or a AIO, haven't decided yet. If the V5 does what I need it to do though, and I expect it will, especially with the fan curve I will be using, all will be well.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Nov 5, 2022)

An0maly_76 said:


> That being said, it MUST be made for your processor and suited to your setup.


The only 'must be made' should be referring to mounting. I'd rephrase this to


> That being said, it should be RATED for your processor and fit inside your case.




Its rare that I openly agree with Bill, but... most instances of poor cooling is because of poor case design and insufficient airflow thru the case. An air cooler thats _slightly_ underrated can still work with the right case with good airflow, along with some cable management.


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## dgianstefani (Nov 5, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> this is why you always set a slightly higher fan curve than what is stock on air coolers. I always do. sucks it right out the exhaust rear, since all 3 fans are lined up perfectly.  2x in push/pull on the heatsink, 1x rear exhaust.
> 
> i have no issues with noise, I don't do anything crazy, just a slightly higher fan curve than stock. its always worked wonders for me, and kept temps down to almost liquid cooler levels. Not sure how well my new V5 cooler will do, I got as a budget experiment. I intend to try it soon. I may end up doing something better though like a U12A or a AIO, haven't decided yet. If the V5 does what I need it to do though, and I expect it will, especially with the fan curve I will be using, all will be well.


Nothing you said in any way refutes the simple fact that air cooling has a hard limit.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 5, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> Nothing you said in any way refutes the simple fact that air cooling has a hard limit.



not for a casual gamer it doesn't. it's all relative


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## AlwaysHope (Nov 5, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> Air cooling has a hard limit on how much heat it can dissipate. Liquid cooling does not (within reason).


Of course this is true, but what is also true is air is pushed through radiators to cool the liquid. No getting away from the fact that air is still vital to cooling the system obviously, then there is the question of ambient temperatures & what each end user is tolerant with however that is another discussion but still relevant to overall efficiency of the cooling solution.

A lot of variables come into this & literally endless discussions on many enthusiasts forums will never satisfy everyone.



ir_cow said:


> Let me know when you find a
> 
> I'm that .01% because NO air cooler can handle 300+ watts.


A question of relevance though. One could have 10C ambient or even lower & that high end air cooler will compete with water coolers. 
As I said before in the first quote of my post, it all depends on what the end user can put up with & can control.


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## dgianstefani (Nov 5, 2022)

AlwaysHope said:


> Of course this is true, but what is also true is air is pushed through radiators to cool the liquid. No getting away from the fact that air is still vital to cooling the system obviously, then there is the question of ambient temperatures & what each end user is tolerant with however that is another discussion but still relevant to overall efficiency of the cooling solution.
> 
> A lot of variables come into this & literally endless discussions on many enthusiasts forums will never satisfy everyone.
> 
> ...


Instead of being pedantic we could understand that the difference is liquid has the ability, by nature, to quickly and constantly move heat away from the source, whereas air coolers (you know what I'm talking about) have to use heatpipes or vapor chambers to do so (guess what, there's liquid in these). Its getting harder and harder with the increasing transistor density of CPUs especially, to do this.

On a liquid system you can add as much surface area as you want through radiators, there are no limits, assuming you have a pump strong enough, or several in series. On an air system, you are limited by the thermal conductivity of the heatpipes/vapor chambers, which decrease with more distance from the heatsource, fundamentally limiting the effective size of any air cooler heatsink. Liquid also has the ability to have a large thermal reservoir, serving as a buffer for spikes in thermal load. There's also the advantage of liquid cooling systems to directly exhaust the heat outside of the case, instead of blowing it on the other components (like RAM), or GPUs exhausting very hot air directly into the CPU cooler.

Additionally, you can position the various elements of a liquid cooling system anywhere in the case, for aesthetics or space efficiency. Air cooling forces you to have your heatsink directly on top of the heat producing element - leading to absurdities like 4 slot GPUs, or huge tower coolers forcing large case sizes.

There is a good reason almost every serious heat producing element in any part of any industry or product (cars, industrial machinery, nuclear reactors etc.) all use liquid cooling. Air can potentially be lower maintenance, but it depends on the design of the loop, air is fundamentally a lower capacity, worse cooling system. The advantages are simplicity, cost, and to a certain extent, lack of maintenance.


----------



## damric (Nov 5, 2022)

freeagent said:


> I have one cooler rated for 320w and another cooler rated for 360w, but that’s for old school 45nm and 32nm chips. At 22nm and under they lose their grip and don’t do so well with the smaller nodes. They could just need a lap though..


This. I've pushed older CPUs over 300w on TPC-812, but I've found 7nm to need water for the awful things I like to do to them. The 14nm 1st gen ryzens could do it, but even the 12nm ones were just too heat dense to push that hard.

That dang FX Bulldozer I was able to cool it at 5300MHz 1.8v on a Hyper 212+ while unloading upside down cans of duster into the fins.


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## dgianstefani (Nov 5, 2022)

damric said:


> That dang FX Bulldozer I was able to cool it at 5300MHz 1.8v on a Hyper 212+ while unloading upside down cans of duster into the fins.


Interesting technique for sub ambient


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## AnotherReader (Nov 5, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> Instead of being pedantic we could understand that the difference is liquid has the ability, by nature, to quickly and constantly move heat away from the source, whereas air coolers (you know what I'm talking about) have to use heatpipes or vapor chambers to do so (guess what, there's liquid in these). Its getting harder and harder with the increasing transistor density of CPUs especially, to do this.
> 
> On a liquid system you can add as much surface area as you want through radiators, there are no limits, assuming you have a pump strong enough, or several in series. On an air system, you are limited by the thermal conductivity of the heatpipes/vapor chambers, which decrease with more distance from the heatsource, fundamentally limiting the effective size of any air cooler heatsink. Liquid also has the ability to have a large thermal reservoir, serving as a buffer for spikes in thermal load. There's also the advantage of liquid cooling systems to directly exhaust the heat outside of the case, instead of blowing it on the other components (like RAM), or GPUs exhausting very hot air directly into the CPU cooler.
> 
> ...


This is all true, but the VF curve being nonlinear means that the added capacity of liquid cooling doesn't do much for actual performance as proven by TPU in the 7950X cooling test. The clincher for me though is that air cooling is vastly more reliable than cooling using electrically conductive liquids.


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## maxfly (Nov 5, 2022)

An0maly_76 said:


> I've noticed there seem to be some rather ridiculous and utter myths and misinformation regarding cooling, particularly air cooling. First and foremost, a popular tech YouTuber did a comparison video testing various air and liquid cooler performance, concluding that while liquid cooling did deliver more consistent temperatures, they were only SLIGHTLY lower – 5C or less, and that air coolers performed quite comparably when properly sized and set up. They made a statement in that video – that liquid cooling was cool if you like to spend more time tinkering with your PC as opposed to using it. To me, that pretty much says it all, as a difference of less than 5 degrees in temp is more or less identical.
> 
> NOTE: If you’re planning a simple budget build with less than eight cores and entry-level graphics and other hardware, you won’t need a ton of cooling – in fact, stock air coolers should be just fine in most cases. However, if your build is a stepping stone to bigger and better later on, it makes sense to pave the way for this in choosing components with better cooling in mind for any future upgrade. Otherwise, you’re spending more money in the long run.
> 
> ...


Welcome to TPU AnOmaly_76!

There's always a place for a good guide imo. 
*IF you're prepared to care for it.*
Of course all guides must be vetted properly. That's the easy part. 
The second part of an effective guide is having someone there to consistently answer all of those newbie questions. That means you OP (shes your baby afterall). That's the difficult part. Most guides are abandoned because the questions are almost always repetitive, very similar and they get boring. Help will be plentiful at first but inevitably it will die off. That's when you will prove your mettle or not.

 May your guide be a success and help many a new member!!


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## fevgatos (Nov 5, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> No offence, but that isn't a demanding heat load.
> 
> Or particularly good temperatures.
> 
> ...


I have a small single tower air cooler on a 12900k. Score 30k cbr23 at 270 watts or roundabout. Yes, temps will get high (94-95c) after 30 minutes, but that's 270 watts on a small air cooler.


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## fevgatos (Nov 5, 2022)

ir_cow said:


> Let me know when you find a
> 
> I'm that .01% because NO air cooler can handle 300+ watts.


Depends on the CPU being used, I think it's possible. Seeing how my u12a can  cool 270w on a 12900k, it should be able to hit 300 on the bigger 13900k die. A bigger heatsink like FC140 or assassin 3 would p robably achieve this a little bit easier as well


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## nguyen (Nov 5, 2022)

fevgatos said:


> Depends on the CPU being used, I think it's possible. Seeing how my u12a can  cool 270w on a 12900k, it should be able to hit 300 on the bigger 13900k die. A bigger heatsink like FC140 or assassin 3 would p robably achieve this a little bit easier as well



IceGiant CPU cooler


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## Mussels (Nov 5, 2022)

I believe the short version of this is

Budget AIO watercooling is garbage and aircooling is the better choice until you pass a certain threshold
Any CPU can be ran on any cooler, it's just that weaker performing coolers require louder fans



The size of the heatsink/coolant dictates how long it can take heat before it saturates
fan speed dictates how fast they cool.
Low threaded workloads erratic will be fine with a big cooler and low fan speeds, which is why AIO's shine for gaming builds


So when you're buying:

Physically smaller CPU's need a high quality contact surface (Get a good branded heatsink, air or water even if its just as 120mm tower) (AM4)
High wattage CPU's need more cooling area (larger heatsink or radiator Intel/AM5)


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## 95Viper (Nov 5, 2022)

Stay on topic!

Thank You.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 5, 2022)

fevgatos said:


> Depends on the CPU being used,


Not really. That is, the CPU being used determines how much heat may be generated and needs to be extracted. But the efficiency of the CPU's cooling systems depends on many factors _besides_ the CPU. 

Heatsink composition (pure copper conducts heat better than aluminum),
Contact surface composition (an aluminum heatsink with a copper contact surface is better than all aluminum, but not as good as all copper),
Cleanliness of the mating surfaces,
Flatness of the mating surfaces,
Perfection (fewer microscopic pits and valleys) of the mating surfaces, 
Heatsink size,
Heatsink design (lots of fins creating greater surface area results in more efficient extraction of heat from heatsink,
Proper application of TIM (thermal interface material),
Heat transfer efficiency of TIM,

Cooler's fan(s) (more CFM across fins for greater extraction of heat),

And last, but certainly not least - or of less importance - is case cooling. It is the case's responsibility to ensure there is a sufficient supply of cool air flowing through and out the case, with no stagnant pockets of heated air. And it is the user's responsibility to set up case cooling. The case must bring in a sufficient supply of cool air AND exhaust the heated air out of the case. The CPU cooler need only move the CPU's heat away from the CPU and into that flow, or directly out the case. If the case fails to exhaust the heat out of the case, it does not matter how efficient or effective the CPU cooler is. 

Many are surprised at how much cooler, and more stable (and quiet!) their entire computers run (CPU, GPU, RAM, PSU, motherboard, etc.) just by adding or upgrading to a decent, and relatively inexpensive  case fan in front (to pull more cool air in) or in back to push more heated air out. Of course, the case must be about to support adding or upgrading the fan. If not capable, then maybe the user needs to upgrade to a better case! 

And let's not forget, ambient (room) temp plays a HUGE role here too. Even the best, most efficient liquid cooling system is incapable of cooling anything lower than the ambient temp. It takes some sort of "active" cooling system, such as refrigeration, to achieve that. That "threshold" mentioned above is exactly the same regardless if air cooled or liquid cooled. It just typically takes a little longer to get there with liquid.


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## Bones (Nov 5, 2022)

nguyen said:


> IceGiant CPU cooler
> View attachment 268633


I have one of those - Modified it so I can use it with my older AMD stuff such as AM3 for example but can now be used for anything from AM2 to AM3+ and still used for AM4 too.
Yes, it's actually a good cooler.
Only caveat is how expensive these things are but they do cool well.




Bill_Bright said:


> Not really. That is, the CPU being used determines how much heat may be generated and needs to be extracted. But the efficiency of the CPU's cooling systems depends on many factors _besides_ the CPU.
> 
> Heatsink composition (pure copper conducts heat better than aluminum),
> Contact surface composition (an aluminum heatsink with a copper contact surface is better than all aluminum, but not as good as all copper),
> ...


Bill is right about all this but the single most important factor I've noticed is cooling inside the case itself.
A cooler always has to depend on the air already inside the case that's getting heat from other components too and if that's warm/hot, your chip will be warm as well - No way around it.

That should always be a "First Step" to check and fix if required for solving problems with things getting too warm for a typically encased setup - _Make sure it's getting good airflow to *and through *the case_ for removing heat in the first place and the rest should follow if all else is OK.
And if not, I guess you still have some work to do.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 5, 2022)

Bones said:


> but the single most important factor I've noticed is cooling inside the case itself.


Right - which is why I said where you quoted me,


Bill_Bright said:


> If the case fails to exhaust the heat out of the case, it does not matter how efficient or effective the CPU cooler is.


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## Bones (Nov 5, 2022)

Exactly, that backs up your statement because you nailed it. 

I've noted the same thing myself and said as much to that end to emphasise the point of it - A point you made no less.


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## freeagent (Nov 5, 2022)

Air cooling can be tricky. A major advantage to an AIO is that it has a direct source of fresh outside the case air, something that most air coolers do not get. That is a large reason why most people say its night and day the first time they use one. Chances are their system was under ventilated to begin with since no one except me likes computer noise haha. When air cooling a CPU, everything depends on how much air you can get in and out of the case. I'm not saying you need 700CFM through your case (I've tried) But a solid supply from a well designed airflow chassis is better than cooling in open air Imo.

Edit:

700CFM through a Meshify C is pretty impressive


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 5, 2022)

freeagent said:


> Air cooling can be tricky.


Ummm, but liquid cooling is not?

Another HUGE issue with liquid cooling (and tower/upright/side firing air coolers) is the heat sensitive devices clustered around the CPU socket are often starved of cool air they would otherwise get with an air cooler, particularly a downward firing air cooler. If those devices lack the necessary cooling, stability may be impacted. 

Hoses can become brittle with age, crack and leak. Fittings can come loose, and leak. Impellers can seize. And all kinds of evil, wicked, mean and nasty stuff can grow inside that loop if any air manages to get inside.



freeagent said:


> A major advantage to an AIO is that it has a direct source of fresh outside the case air


This is true. But then that heated air (1) gets pumped into the case where it may affect other heat sensitive devices - unless (2) there is an adequate flow of air exhausting that heated air out. 

I am just saying, "tricky" applies to whatever type cooling we use.


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## Calenhad (Nov 5, 2022)

Let me just get this out there right away: I love my AIO/open-loop watercooling setups. And I would rather put a 120mm AIO, at a bit higher cost, than a similarly performing air cooler in a more reasonably specd computer. Unless the budget is so low that I use the stock cooler. I am not saying there are anything wrong with air cooling. But my preference is to move the hot part to the case exhaust.



Bill_Bright said:


> Another HUGE issue with liquid cooling (and tower/upright/side firing air coolers) is the heat sensitive devices clustered around the CPU socket are often starved of cool air they would otherwise get with an air cooler, particularly a downward firing air cooler. If those devices lack the necessary cooling, stability may be impacted.
> 
> Hoses can become brittle with age, crack and leak. Fittings can come loose, and leak. Impellers can seize. And all kinds of evil, wicked, mean and nasty stuff can grow inside that loop if any air manages to get inside.


Let's be honest here. Most air coolers, that are not stock, will be tower coolers that do not provide good air flow to the VRM(++) either. Proper use of case fans is much more important these days. And motherboard manufacturers are aware, even budget offerings have heatsinks on the heat "sensitive" parts near the CPU socket these days. Just like my bent motherboard horror story below, this is not a HUGE issue anymore. The HUGE issue would be failure to have good air flow through the case.

My personal horror story is having experienced a couple motherboards that, over time, bent enough under the load of an air cooler to die. Obvious banana shape when put on a flat surface. Luckily I would say this only have a chance to happen if you use a substantial air cooler on a motherboard with few layers these days. But I just prefer to not hang a weight off the top of the motherboard. Add the fact I can move the hot part to an exhaust port and that is my main reasoning for using AIOs. I have no grand illusions that they offer better performance. I just want the same performance with better control of where the heat goes. Unless we get into custom open-loop watercooling, but that is an entirely different beast.

Are there more failure modes for an AIO? Sure. They can spring a leak. Pump can die. Manufacturers have done oopsies so the cooler fills up with gunk. What are the odds it happens to you? Pretty damn low.
I don't have any statistically significant personal experience with them, but it is a two-digit figure that does not start with 1. For me the only failure has been an old 120mm Silverstone first gen AIO that started dripping after about 6 years. You find pre-built computers with AIO coolers from big, mainstream manufacturers now. They build computers in the many thousands a month. I gurantee they would've quickly stopped using AIOs if a significant portion died and took the rest of the computer with it.

In the end there are no correct answer to this. Air coolers and AIO coolers both have their positive and negatives. Your preference can be based on build requirements, educated knowledge, user experience (If I had a few AIOs burst and kill computers I would not prefer them anymore for sure), looks, religious beliefs, coin flip, and more. Imho this is another of those AMD vs Nvidia/Intel (fanboy) type of discussions.

I have a degree in computer engineering with a touch of mechanical engineering and fluid mechanics on the side. I favour AIO coolers based on my technical knowledge, and user experience/preference. But I can't fault a good air cooler either. You do you. And make sure you have good airflow through your entire case no matter your choice of cooler!


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 5, 2022)

And the bottom line is:





Calenhad said:


> And make sure you have good airflow through your entire case no matter your choice of cooler!


^^^This!^^^


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## freeagent (Nov 5, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> ^^^This!^^^


That is why I ran a case full of 120x38s for eons 

Moved up to 180x38s


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## Vayra86 (Nov 5, 2022)

Nice OP! Well done and welcome


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## Shrek (Nov 5, 2022)

I think this has been brough up before, but worth mentioning again: an air-cooled CPU might deliver some air flow to the VRMs, while a water-cooled CPU might leave the VRMs without air flow.

If so, this would favor air cooling over water.


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## Mussels (Nov 6, 2022)

To half of the posts since my last one, i can spot the intel users

You're all focused on the high wattage parts and what it's like dealing with them, but i can guarantee you higher case airflow and spinning those fans up on the CPU cooler will do nothing for a 5800x or 5900x - because they truly only care about how good your contact is between the IHS and the baseplate of your heatsink.

Custom water didnt change my temps compared to a be quiet dark rock slim, a tiny 120mm air cooler - because the contact on that tiny die area was the limit of getting heat to the cooler, not getting heat out of the heatsink


Yes, it matters to know about the CPU you're getting. You need to know if it's high wattage, but low wattage parts can run hot too - for entirely different reasons with entirely different solutions


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## chr0nos (Nov 6, 2022)

Mussels said:


> To half of the posts since my last one, i can spot the intel users
> 
> You're all focused on the high wattage parts and what it's like dealing with them, but i can guarantee you higher case airflow and spinning those fans up on the CPU cooler will do nothing for a 5800x or 5900x - because they truly only care about how good your contact is between the IHS and the baseplate of your heatsink.
> 
> ...


Try ocing a 5800X and not get it to 90C...


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## freeagent (Nov 6, 2022)

Intel wattage only sounds scary. Hitting 250-300w has been a thing since Westmere.


Edit:

235w on 7nm is just as tough..


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## Bones (Nov 6, 2022)

Lemme stick my 120's in the case - I've got a pair of 170 cfm and a single 240 cfm fan, all being Delta fans.
If those can't move enough air to help nothing will.

BTW I'd also need some noise-cancelling earmuffs for everyone in the house and takeoff clearance everytime I'd start it up.


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## freeagent (Nov 6, 2022)

Bones said:


> Lemme stick my 120's in the case - I've got a pair of 170 cfm and a single 240 cfm fan, all being Delta fans.
> If those can't move enough air to help nothing will.
> 
> BTW I'd also need some noise-cancelling earmuffs and takeoff clearance everytime I'd start it up.


Lol yup when I was running all iPPC I could hear the system from the basement on the main floor no problem! It was far too intense to daily


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## fevgatos (Nov 6, 2022)

Mussels said:


> To half of the posts since my last one, i can spot the intel users
> 
> You're all focused on the high wattage parts and what it's like dealing with them, but i can guarantee you higher case airflow and spinning those fans up on the CPU cooler will do nothing for a 5800x or 5900x - because they truly only care about how good your contact is between the IHS and the baseplate of your heatsink.
> 
> ...


Υeap, zens are just harder to cool due to density - way smaller dies need much better contact. Intel doesn't care about contact that much cause it's a huge die



freeagent said:


> Lol yup when I was running all iPPC I could hear the system from the basement on the main floor no problem! It was far too intense to daily


If  you really really don't care about noise, get the fhp141s. I swear youve never seen anything like it in terms of airlfow and static pressure. You cannot use them if your PC is in the same room as you, they create all kinds of noises (vibrations, rattling etc.) but man do they deliver on performance.  I have some a12x25s, some phanteks t30s, some 180x38 and a bunch of ippc's, nothing compares to the fhp141. To give you an idea, I turn off my GPU fans and spin the fphs at 100%, the pressure is that much that fancontrol registers my GPU fans as spinning at 600 rpms. That's just naughty.


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## ThrashZone (Nov 6, 2022)

Bones said:


> Lemme stick my 120's in the case - I've got a pair of 170 cfm and a single 240 cfm fan, all being Delta fans.
> If those can't move enough air to help nothing will.
> 
> BTW I'd also need some noise-cancelling earmuffs for everyone in the house and takeoff clearance everytime I'd start it up.


Hi,
Yeah I've gone mostly with manual fan controllers to avoid the startup crap
I just give the boards a couple bs sp fans to mess up  

By the way nice tips on the op although "myths" for every good cooler there are a lot of bad ones so that is not a myth it's fact 
Same goes for aio's and custom water cooling parts and designs as well not myths again just fact.


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## QuietBob (Nov 6, 2022)

@An0maly_76
Thanks for putting together this guide, I'm sure it will be useful to a lot of people. Air cooling is certainly good enough for most use cases, and the importance of adequate air flow cannot be overstressed.

And while many users of this forum will consider themselves enthusiasts/experts in computer matters, let's not forget that for every member there are 10-100 unregistered people visiting TPU at any one time. Not all of them may have the knowledge and experience of some of the regulars here.


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## AlwaysHope (Nov 6, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> Instead of being pedantic we could understand that the difference is liquid has the ability, by nature, to quickly and constantly move heat away from the source, whereas air coolers (you know what I'm talking about) have to use heatpipes or vapor chambers to do so (guess what, there's liquid in these). Its getting harder and harder with the increasing transistor density of CPUs especially, to do this.
> 
> On a liquid system you can add as much surface area as you want through radiators, there are no limits, assuming you have a pump strong enough, or several in series. On an air system, you are limited by the thermal conductivity of the heatpipes/vapor chambers, which decrease with more distance from the heatsource, fundamentally limiting the effective size of any air cooler heatsink. Liquid also has the ability to have a large thermal reservoir, serving as a buffer for spikes in thermal load. There's also the advantage of liquid cooling systems to directly exhaust the heat outside of the case, instead of blowing it on the other components (like RAM), or GPUs exhausting very hot air directly into the CPU cooler.
> 
> ...


You can call it pedantic if you like, but no getting away from the fact that _all things technical are pedantic by nature_. Every variable has to be considered, if that's pedantic then so be it. 
There is also no getting away from the fact that air is still needed to cool the radiator(s) of a given water cooling system. 
What happens if you get a situation of having hot air being forced into a radiator to cool the water cooling loop via the fans? it is not going to work very well isn't it? Unless of course you have air conditioning & then we have the issue of electricity costs coming into the total cooling solution & that's another argument in itself. 
So in effect the entire situation gets back to how well the ambient air temps in the space or room that the water cooling solution is placed in ultimately influences the water cooling efficiency result.


----------



## dgianstefani (Nov 6, 2022)

AlwaysHope said:


> You can call it pedantic if you like, but no getting away from the fact that _all things technical are pedantic by nature_. Every variable has to be considered, if that's pedantic then so be it.
> There is also no getting away from the fact that air is still needed to cool the radiator(s) of a given water cooling system.
> What happens if you get a situation of having hot air being forced into a radiator to cool the water cooling loop via the fans? it is not going to work very well isn't it? Unless of course you have air conditioning & then we have the issue of electricity costs coming into the total cooling solution & that's another argument in itself.
> So in effect the entire situation gets back to how well the ambient air temps in the space or room that the water cooling solution is placed in ultimately influences the water cooling efficiency result.


It's pedantic because you're stating the obvious as if it's a point. Liquid cooling being "air cooled" because it still uses air and radiators is pedantic. You're not considering a variable by stating this, you're stating a fact that is obvious to everyone.


AlwaysHope said:


> What happens if you get a situation of having hot air being forced into a radiator to cool the water cooling loop via the fans? it is not going to work very well isn't it? Unless of course you have air conditioning & then we have the issue of electricity costs coming into the total cooling solution & that's another argument in itself.


Hence the advantage of being able to place your radiator wherever you want to draw in cool air and exhaust hot air out of the pc case. If you're simply talking about ambient air temperature, then this is more of a problem for air coolers than it is for liquid coolers. Liquid coolers by nature run much closer to ambient temperatures due to increased efficiency.


AlwaysHope said:


> So in effect the entire situation gets back to how well the ambient air temps in the space or room that the water cooling solution is placed in ultimately influences the water cooling efficiency result.


Thanks Sherlock.

You can be detailed without being pedantic.








I think the novice builder should focus on having all their fans pointed the right way and plugged in, that's always a good place to start.


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## AlwaysHope (Nov 7, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> It's pedantic because you're stating the obvious as if it's a point. Liquid cooling being "air cooled" because it still uses air and radiators is pedantic. You're not considering a variable by stating this, you're stating a fact that is obvious to everyone.
> 
> Hence the advantage of being able to place your radiator wherever you want to draw in cool air and exhaust hot air out of the pc case. If you're simply talking about ambient air temperature, then this is more of a problem for air coolers than it is for liquid coolers. Liquid coolers by nature run much closer to ambient temperatures due to increased efficiency.
> 
> ...


Sometimes the obvious has to be stated because in this case, H2O cooling adherents overlook this plain fact and waffle on justifying the expense they have invested in a H2O cooling solution. Just FYI, air cooling is used more extensively than you think. Although that link is associated with air cooled engines, the principle doesn't change & too think, one of the most successful sports cards of the 20th century had an air cooled engine.. aka Porsche 911 at least until 1998.


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## bobbybluz (Nov 7, 2022)

As a sidenote to this discussion I've been mounting the radiators for my AIO's externally for years now. If I was home at the moment I'd take pictures to post (I did post a pic a while back of the NZXT H440 I externally mounted an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 on top of after some Dremel surgery. My most recent is a LF II 420 externally on top of a Cooler Master Cosmos II) of some of them. External mounting has advantages including a few that physically can't be done with air coolers.

I've discussed this at length with Arctic and not only do they agree with my reasons for doing it they also said it's an excellent idea for the extremely hot running CPU's we have today. Of course case modding skills and the proper tools are needed to do this and it's not for a beginner. I do have one of my Z690 rigs temporarily set up with a LF II 280 sitting vertically on the top of a Corsair 300R case minus the right side panel (I may make a Lexan panel or mod the stock side panel for hose clearance and adding a 140mm fan) that runs amazingly cool with an i5 12600K @5.3GHz and a XFX RX 6800 XT Merc 319. No modding at all was needed to do this one so far.


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## Mussels (Nov 7, 2022)

chr0nos said:


> Try ocing a 5800X and not get it to 90C...


You do know i've made plenty of threads doing exactly that? They're in my signature.

1. Always be sure you know what you're talking about
2. Double check who you're saying it to





standard PBO ranges were around 60C.

I should bench my ITX rig on it's little 240mm AIO now it's got the 5800x

Since you politely asked:

ITX rig
240mm EK AIO with MX4 - no liquid metal on this one
RGB Jellyfish for extra performance
27C ambients at the start of the test before someone pissed off thor and it began bucketing hail at me, about 25C and humid when i stopped




15 minutes of R23 because a massive thunderstorm/hailstorm combo just hit out of nowhere and the house is shaking and the roads are flooding :/









And CPUz to cover the 4.8 boost (No +200) on this one


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## Kissamies (Nov 7, 2022)

chr0nos said:


> Try ocing a 5800X and not get it to 90C...


Does someone manually OC their Ryzens? I've been running my 3600 with PBO +200 since I got this.


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## Mussels (Nov 7, 2022)

Lenne said:


> Does someone manually OC their Ryzens? I've been running my 3600 with PBO +200 since I got this.


I did a 4.6GHz OC on the 5800x for a long time, it's well known that they run a lot colder that way than with boost/PBO - but you clearly lose some single threaded performance doing so (4.85Ghz to 4.6 was pretty minimal, for the lower heat and especially sustained clocks vs the stock 4.4 all core)


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## Vayra86 (Nov 7, 2022)

AnotherReader said:


> This is all true, but the VF curve being nonlinear means that the added capacity of liquid cooling doesn't do much for actual performance as proven by TPU in the 7950X cooling test. The clincher for me though is that air cooling is vastly more reliable than cooling using electrically conductive liquids.


Exactly, that thermal reservoir is for most intents and purposes completely pointless _exactly because of the thermal density_ of current chips. They just jump to their peaks, no matter what, hell, Zen is now even designed to keep at peak temp. The differentiator there is ambient temp.

Even liquid today is vastly limited by the weakest link: thermal transfer _out of the die. _Its why people delid.

The advantage of liquid on today's CPUs is quite limited, dynamic boost technologies fix a lot of the problems before cooling comes into play. Sure, you can push a continuous load for longer on water at a higher wattage, and if that's the use case, then certainly liquid offers the advantage.



dgianstefani said:


> There is a good reason almost every serious heat producing element in any part of any industry or product (cars, industrial machinery, nuclear reactors etc.) all use liquid cooling. Air can potentially be lower maintenance, but it depends on the design of the loop, air is fundamentally a lower capacity, worse cooling system. The advantages are simplicity, cost, and to a certain extent, lack of maintenance.


Car analogies are always problematic, and they are here too. Most PC's are idling and then drag race to the finish, to go idle again. Cars don't, and cars also have the advantage of 'increased air intake' when they increase their speed. PCs really don't, unless you put an array of Delta fans in there and are ready to go for their limit.

About pedantic or not... this topic is all about that, to be fair  When we're in the territory of high performance cooling, anything goes.  And that really is the segment where liquid comes into play - in a custom loop - and below that air is much more cost effective without much if any perf sacrifice.


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## OkieDan (Nov 7, 2022)

I like my AIO because I can control fan speed based on liquid temps, which takes a pretty heavy load a few minutes before the fans speed up.

The 4000D Airflow comes with filters BTW.


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## Vario (Nov 7, 2022)

Vayra86 said:


> About pedantic or not... this topic is all about that, to be fair  When we're in the territory of high performance cooling, anything goes.  And that really is the segment where liquid comes into play - in a custom loop - and below that air is much more cost effective without much if any perf sacrifice.


A good point, one would have to spend a few hundred dollars for custom water over an inexpensive air cooler and the gains are so marginal that a reasonable person wouldn't notice them.  They would, however, notice if the money for the watercooling was instead spent on the next higher SKU part(s).


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## Bomby569 (Nov 7, 2022)

the thing that bugs me most on the air cooling, is it makes working on the pc much harder, getting to those small places, fan connectors or the cpu 8 pin power for example, or even get the gpu out, reaching for the gpu release hatch. Apart from that mount and forget.


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## ThrashZone (Nov 7, 2022)

Hi,
Large chunk of aluminum 
I have one d15 in my entertainment center using a test bench it's about the only way I can deal with a air cooler that large and nope memory access is not going to happen still seeing it's on a x99 with sticks on both sides of it  maybe I've not tried yet


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## DeathtoGnomes (Nov 7, 2022)

Bones said:


> Bill is right about all this but the single most important factor I've noticed is cooling inside the case itself.


I said that too, it cant be said enough, but it can be said in several different ways.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 7, 2022)

Vayra86 said:


> Car analogies are always problematic, and they are here too. Most PC's are idling and then drag race to the finish, to go idle again. Cars don't, and cars also have the advantage of 'increased air intake' when they increase their speed. PCs really don't, unless you put an array of Delta fans in there and are ready to go for their limit.


I think car analogies work very well "_most" _of the time. And that is because most users are much more familiar with cars so they can relate. Yet electronics are magical to many. Not to mention, some seem to think electronics and computers are totally different - but that's a different issue. 

As far as variable fan speeds - I have to disagree with you there. CPU, PSU, GPU and many "system" fans commonly do indeed, vary in speed, depending on need. Not all, of course, but many do. 

That said, to your point about car analogies being problematic, in this case, I agree. Liquid cooling is used in cars for several reasons but one big one is the engine block - a massive hunk of metal with a bunch of precision, moving parts that need to be "evenly" cooled to avoid warping, separations, and binding. Engine coolant is "piped", under pressure, throughout the engine block and heads to places no forced air can reach - and that is a critical difference. 

Other differences include the fact a car engine is designed to operate at a specific temperature, typically between 195 and 220°F - which is why car engines have thermostats in the cooling system. Plus a big tank of water (the radiator) takes a lot more energy to heat up, and longer to cool down. In that sense, it acts like a capacitor to help avoid rapid changes. 

Then there is us humans. We like to be warm in our cars in the winter. So hot water is pumped through the heater core (basically a tiny radiator) inside the cabin through which the blower motor blows air to keep our little piggies warm (and windows clear).


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## Shrek (Nov 7, 2022)

I wrote that the military could dissipate engine heat through air cooling, but it got deleted as 'off topic'


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## qubit (Nov 7, 2022)

@An0maly_76 Great info you've got there, very useful for newbies and perhaps not so newbies.

Note that you should explain that air cooling works as an offset of the room temperature, eg a 20C room could have the CPU at 40C say, while a 30C room, 10 higher at 50C. Therefore, you can't say that the CPU should necessarily idle at around 40C without specifying the room temperature. If the room is already 41C, say (global warming, hot country) then 40C is literally impossible and it's likely to sit at 55-60C with flat out operation potentially overheating.


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## caroline! (Nov 8, 2022)

Air cooling works when you're not running an extreme overclock. 

Liquid cooling is better but it's also expensive, in the order of 10 times more expensive than air cooling. I'm obviously not counting gaming AIO liquid coolers because they're the same as an air cooler, just with extra steps, proper liquid requires good parts, and good parts cost money. OR, if you don't mind the looks you can pretty much build a working loop out of a dead AIO and a fish tank pump, I've done it, works wonders with overclocked chips.


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## ColinB123 (Nov 8, 2022)

Missing from the OP's Guide, is any mention of the GPU. 

In my case (literally), an R5 3600 produces 65w, but the RTX3070 up to 240w and dumps a high percentage of that into the case. The guide doesn't discuss running the GPU at max speed, or even how it can be monitored to drive case fan speeds. I have one set of case fans (in/out) assigned to CPU temperatures, and another pair to GPU temperaures, and try to partition the case so that the airflows are not clashing. Spare temperature sensors can also play a role. 

A large tower air-cooler takes up a lot of space in a mid-sized case, and an AIO would free that space up, making for better airflow to support the GPU airflow cooling.


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## Mussels (Nov 9, 2022)

Vayra86 said:


> Exactly, that thermal reservoir is for most intents and purposes completely pointless _exactly because of the thermal density_ of current chips. They just jump to their peaks, no matter what, hell, Zen is now even designed to keep at peak temp. The differentiator there is ambient temp.
> 
> Even liquid today is vastly limited by the weakest link: thermal transfer _out of the die. _Its why people delid.
> 
> ...


This is pretty much it
Zen3/4 on the smaller die process are entirely limited by how good the CPU is soldered to the IHS, and then its all about how good your mounting is and how good that contact is
You dont need bigger coolers, you need better ones

And the market is saturated with low quality junk designed for bigger CPU dies, so a lot of coolers simply suck on these CPUs - a giant heatsink or radiator means nothing if the heat never reaches it



ColinB123 said:


> Missing from the OP's Guide, is any mention of the GPU.
> 
> In my case (literally), an R5 3600 produces 65w, but the RTX3070 up to 240w and dumps a high percentage of that into the case. The guide doesn't discuss running the GPU at max speed, or even how it can be monitored to drive case fan speeds. I have one set of case fans (in/out) assigned to CPU temperatures, and another pair to GPU temperaures, and try to partition the case so that the airflows are not clashing. Spare temperature sensors can also play a role.
> 
> A large tower air-cooler takes up a lot of space in a mid-sized case, and an AIO would free that space up, making for better airflow to support the GPU airflow cooling.


Air temperature in cases evens out incredibly fast, a CPU at 100C would cool down to ambient air temps before moving a centimeter off that heatsink

You need to set the system up for air flow, simply slightly more in than out, blowing across the entire system and out. The temps even out so fast that a 400W GPU would barely make any difference to a CPU, and this HAS been tested and proven









3080 FE blowing its heat INTO an air cooler lowered temps and not raised them, because airFLOW is what matters regardless of if it being warmed up or not first


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## claes (Nov 9, 2022)

TBF, as debau8er points out, the FE blows air, including the CPU heat, out of the case in a way axial coolers don’t.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 9, 2022)

Mussels said:


> because airFLOW is what matters regardless of if it being warmed up or not first


Exactly! Well, almost.

I think it slightly more accurate to say, _"airFLOW is what matters *'most'* regardless... ."_

I say that only because ambient (room) temperature "_may_" play a role here - potentially a significant one *"IF"*, for example, you live in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona in July and August and your AC is out.

But I quickly add that same ambient temp affects both air and liquid cooling systems.



Mussels said:


> You need to set the system up for air flow, simply slightly more in than out
> 
> Air temperature in cases evens out incredibly fast, a CPU at 100C would cool down to ambient air temps before moving a centimeter off that heatsink


 Yup and yup! I agree 100% on both points. While a CPU can go from cool to overheated in just a few clock cycles (and remember, for many CPUs there are 3 billion+ clock cycles per second) it can cool down almost as quickly, when air flow is properly setup.


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## ThrashZone (Nov 9, 2022)

Hi,
Only thing I don't like is saying something is a *"myth" "without all context included that you're refuting"* and just adding a 1-7 word sentence as the myth you attempt to argue against.

Then tying it up with a bow with *"This simply is not true in 99.99% of cases"* as your conclusion 

Good cooling tips but a bad incomplete example of a myth.


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## Shrek (Nov 9, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> While a CPU can go from cool to overheated in just a few clock cycles (and remember, for many CPUs there are 3 billion+ clock cycles per second) it can cool down almost as quickly, when air flow is properly setup.



That is a few billionths of a second; a CPU can't go from "cool to overheated" on that time scale.


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## damric (Nov 9, 2022)

Sorry about taking the thread OT, but that jellyfish thing looks awesome @Mussels


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## Count von Schwalbe (Nov 9, 2022)

Shrek said:


> That is a few billionths of a second; a CPU can't go from "cool to overheated" on that time scale.


Dang it Shrek, don't do this to me. A 13700K* will go from 20C to 100C, or thermally throttling in an air-conditioned room, in 92 ms. This is equivalent to around 472 million clock cycles for the P-cores, and around 361 million E-core clock cycles at full turbo. Note that this is still less time than it takes you to blink once.

*Assuming pure silicon, a die .5mm thick, PL2, and no heat loss

Edited, thanks to Shrek catching my math error.


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## Shrek (Nov 9, 2022)

Count von Schwalbe said:


> Dang it Shrek, don't do this to me. A 13700K* will go from 20C to 100C, or thermally throttling in an air-conditioned room, in 92 ms. This is equivalent to around 18 million clock cycles for the P-cores, and just shy of 14 million E-core clock cycles at full turbo. Note that this is still less time than it takes you to blink once.
> 
> *Assuming pure silicon, a die .5mm thick, PL2, and no heat loss



92 ms is around a tenth of a second, so are we not talking around 300 million clock cycles?

Either way, a tad bigger than 1, so it seems to me we are agreeing.


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## dirtyferret (Nov 9, 2022)

Here is my personal experience with Air vs AiO liquid cooler debates - I don't care, use whatever you want to get the performance you want

90% percent of the opinions and stats posted are useless to other users unless you are running the exact same set up (including exact same case & fans @same rpm) in the exact same environment running the exact same software all at the exact same hardware settings.

too many people flip flop from generic, _AiO outperforms Air!_ to specific, _well my stock i7-7700k had better temps on my Noctua U14S than my Corsair H60 therefore Air is better than AiO_ _on any and all CPUs!_  Some even mix and match, _my Artic Freezer II 280 beats any air cooler I ever used!_...well if your history of air coolers consists of the intel stock cooler and CM 212+ than I really hope a $100 AiO would outperform them. 

too many people confuse spike temps with regular performance temps.     

I know top end AiO outperform Air coolers, Ive read all of crazyeyes reviews but I choose air coolers for the following reasons;

1. for the performance I need (more on that below) and the price I'm willing to spend, Air gives me more for my money
2. I don't need to worry about pump failure or tube leaks
3. Noise is part of performance and I don't know where this myth that AiO are silent comes from.  A) the pump makes a noise and B) AiO _generally _come with 2-3 fans that run at higher RPM than Air coolers which _generally _stick to 1-2 fans at lower RPM. I'm a noise freak so if I have to tone down the fan profile for a top end AiO that means there is good chance I will be paying top end dollars for hardware that won't be giving me top end results (obviously due to me holding it back).

Now, can other people have the exact opposite opinion on all that?  Sure.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 9, 2022)

Shrek said:


> 92 ms is around a tenth of a second, so are we not talking around 300 million clock cycles?
> 
> Either way, a tad bigger than 1, so it seems to me we are agreeing.


 Come on, Andy! Talk about picking nits. To go from cold to overheated in less than 1/10th of a second is pretty darn quick - which clearly was my point - which was to agree with Mussels and his comment that temps can change "incredibly fast".


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## Shrek (Nov 9, 2022)

Absolutely, but 300 million times slower than your claim... hardly nitpicking.


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## Vayra86 (Nov 9, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Absolutely, but 300 million times slower than your claim... hardly nitpicking.


We ain't in space or something where these orders of magnitude somehow matter 

We're in a world where any temp throttling creates a performance penalty, that's the context, and 1 second or 1/100th of a second in that sense is not quite so relevant in it.

The high temp targets are a result of architecture, and almost impossible to circumvent with cooling.


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## Shrek (Nov 9, 2022)

OK, so two orders of magnitude... but eight?


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## Vayra86 (Nov 9, 2022)

Shrek said:


> OK, so two orders of magnitude... but eight?


Context. How fast does it take a liquid or an air cooling setup, to change its cooling capacity? The main differentiator here is fan speed, and it has pretty stringent limits.

These limits can't keep up with how fast CPUs can increase temp.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 9, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Absolutely, but 300 million times slower than your claim... hardly nitpicking.


Oh? And what was my claim? I never put a number to how many clock cycles it takes. I said a "few". A "few" is a relative number. And IMO, 1/10th or 1 out of 10 (a number YOU picked) is definitely a "few". 

So absolutely, you are being nitpicky and argumentative when CLEARY even you understand "we" were pointing how fast the temps can go from one extreme to the other.


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## Shrek (Nov 9, 2022)

Few ≠ 100,000,000


Your claim



Bill_Bright said:


> While a CPU can go from cool to overheated in just a few clock cycles (and remember, for many CPUs there are 3 billion+ clock cycles per second) it can cool down almost as quickly, when air flow is properly setup.


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## dirtyferret (Nov 9, 2022)

Vayra86 said:


> Context. How fast does it take a liquid or an air cooling setup, to change its cooling capacity? The main differentiator here is fan speed, and it has pretty stringent limits.
> 
> These limits can't keep up with how fast CPUs can increase temp.


I recall reading a test several years ago on how an AiO can take temp down faster than an Air cooler due to the larger "area" (not volume) of the radiator and higher RPM fans.  Maybe that's still true or not but the real question is, "is the high spike impacting CPU performance?"  Obliviously no one wants to be near the limits of of operational temp and get throttled but I get the same CPU performance at 60c as I do at 68c.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 9, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Your claim


Yes. My claim said a "few". 

100,000,000/3,000,000,000
100 million divided by 3 billion
*.03!!*!  

That's 3/100! 

3 100ths

Or *3 out of 100*. Yes, Andy, that's a "few". 

You can keep being nitpicky, if you choose Andy. That is still *incredibly fast! *

I'm done here.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 9, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> And the bottom line is:^^^This!^^^



My final setup:  3x Arctic Storm 120mm exhaust fan, 2 at top and 1 at rear. and 2x200mm intake fans up front. and my noctua nhd15s in the middle with its 1x140mm noctua fan.

should be a pretty good rig overall as far as airflow and cooling goes. keeping it nice and simple.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 9, 2022)

To me, you likely have more than you need - but for me, that is due in part because I hate fan noise. At least with that many, you can move massive amounts of air while keeping your fan rotation speeds slow - thus more quiet.


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## claes (Nov 9, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> My final setup:  3x Arctic Storm 120mm exhaust fan, 2 at top and 1 at rear. and 2x200mm intake fans up front. and my noctua nhd15s in the middle with its 1x140mm noctua fan.
> 
> should be a pretty good rig overall as far as airflow and cooling goes. keeping it nice and simple.


Too much exhaust if you ask me, but if negative pressure is what you’re after then go for it


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## Count von Schwalbe (Nov 9, 2022)

claes said:


> Too much exhaust if you ask me, but if negative pressure is what you’re after then go for it


It is positive pressure - the area alone of a 200mm fan is almost a great as 3x 120mm fans, and he has 2. Also, a larger fan moves more air for its area at the same speed, as the tips of the fan blade are moving faster.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 9, 2022)

Don't forget, unless the PSU has its own intake, it is adding to the exhaust side. 

Negative is fine - if your case does not have air filters because then the vacuum will pull in the extra that it needs through every _unfiltered_ crack, crevice and port. This allows dust inside the case, but also allows the dust to get packed into uncovered ports, like unused USB and audio ports. If you have an optical drive, it will also allow dust to collect near the lens area - not good. 

But if the case is filtered (and you don't want to bypass those filters), you want the slight over (positive) pressure as that pulls in the air through the air filters, and pushes out any extra air through those cracks, crevices and ports - good.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 9, 2022)

I'm not opposed to switching it around. My case is the Montech Air X.

Any suggestions welcome.

How about 1x extra fan attached to the NH-D15S + 2 top exhaust and no rear exhaust?

and this case has dust filters everywhere, the PSU draws from the bottom of the case fan down


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## freeagent (Nov 9, 2022)

If you use good fans, you don't really need to use an exhaust fan. I do have one installed for now, just for old times' sake. It's a 140mm fan that snaps right into the Torrent Compact, don't even need to use screws lol. It's a TY-143 that is limited to 75%. Funnily enough, my TY-147 will not fit and they are pretty much the same fan, at least in shape. NF-A14 iPPC will never fit. So, it's just there for the novelty, not out of necessity. I do have 2x NF-A14 iPPC at the bottom of my case, but they are limited to 37% lol...

When I stopped using my Meshify C, I had the top blocked off and was just using 2x140s and a 120 in the front. They were iPPC 3Ks, but they still worked great. Loud AF though if you don't limit them.


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## Sithaer (Nov 9, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> Don't forget, unless the PSU has its own intake, it is adding to the exhaust side.
> 
> Negative is fine - if your case does not have air filters because then the vacuum will pull in the extra that it needs through every _unfiltered_ crack, crevice and port. This allows dust inside the case, but also allows the dust to get packed into uncovered ports, like unused USB and audio ports. If you have an optical drive, it will also allow dust to collect near the lens area - not good.
> 
> But if the case is filtered (and you don't want to bypass those filters), you want the slight over (positive) pressure as that pulls in the air through the air filters, and pushes out any extra air through those cracks, crevices and ports - good.



Thats exactly whats happening with my In Win 101 case, I have it set up the default way based on In Win's instructions but this way I get air sucked in at the right and left side of the glass panel cause there is a small gap. _'its not a completely shut panel'_

Bottom 3 fans intake, side 2 exhaust and also the backside 1 fan exhaust but since this case has a top PSU mount it also exhaust from inside of the PC.
Only filtered at the bottom, I thought about either removing the side 2 fans or turning them intake but that area is not filtered so it would take even more dust inside the case..

Luckily the gap between the glass and the case _'well the case's side next to the gap'_ catches most of the dust and I just clean it off every now and then but it does allow some dust inside the case so a full case cleaning with an air compressor is needed every few months/half year and around once a month glass panel cleaning.

As much as I like the look of this case its a bit of a pain in the ass to build in/keep clean but I don't really feel like buying a new case and to be honest most case designs nowadays doesn't catch my fancy or they are simply too expensive for my budgets. _'at least the temps are fine'_


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## Vayra86 (Nov 9, 2022)

dirtyferret said:


> I recall reading a test several years ago on how an AiO can take temp down faster than an Air cooler due to the larger "area" (not volume) of the radiator and higher RPM fans.  Maybe that's still true or not but the real question is, "is the high spike impacting CPU performance?"  Obliviously no one wants to be near the limits of of operational temp and get throttled but I get the same CPU performance at 60c as I do at 68c.


Roger but that's the problem with recent top end CPUs, they push so much power through the chip you do get temps at throttle target. AMD even designed to maintain near it.


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## Udyr (Nov 9, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> I'm not opposed to switching it around. My case is the Montech Air X.
> 
> Any suggestions welcome.
> 
> ...


I got the same case with the 2x200mm (intake) in front and the 120mm (exhaust) in the rear, but I added two Noctua fans I had from a previous build, 1x120mm at the bottom as intake (yes, you can put fans there, even if it's not officially supported) and 1x120mm on top of the CPU cooler (cooler has 2x120mm fans) as exhaust. The PSU is set to exhaust with the fan always on.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 9, 2022)

freeagent said:


> If you use good fans, you don't really need to use an exhaust fan.


I think that really depends on the case and what it has for exhaust vents. If the exhaust vents are limited, the cooling may need a little help from a fan to help push the heated air out. Otherwise, you just keep pushing air in but it has nowhere to go but build up and become stagnant - and very warm. 

I see this on a bigger scale for my main bathroom. It has a furnace vent pushing warm air in, but the return vents are out in the hallway. If I want a toasty bathroom in the morning, I close the door so the only "flow" is through the gap at that bottom of the door. The warm air from the furnace builds up, and heats up that room nicely. If I forget to close that door, the heated air from the vent goes straight through.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 9, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> I think that really depends on the case and what it has for exhaust vents. If the exhaust vents are limited, the cooling may need a little help from a fan to help push the heated air out. Otherwise, you just keep pushing air in but it has nowhere to go but build up and become stagnant - and very warm.
> 
> I see this on a bigger scale for my main bathroom. It has a furnace vent pushing warm air in, but the return vents are out in the hallway. If I want a toasty bathroom in the morning, I close the door so the only "flow" is through the gap at that bottom of the door. The warm air from the furnace builds up, and heats up that room nicely. If I forget to close that door, the heated air from the vent goes straight through.



how would you recommend i set up the montech air x case?



Udyr said:


> I got the same case with the 2x200mm (intake) in front and the 120mm (exhaust) in the rear, but I added two Noctua fans I had from a previous build, 1x120mm at the bottom as intake (yes, you can put fans there, even if it's not officially supported) and 1x120mm on top of the CPU cooler (cooler has 2x120mm fans) as exhaust. The PSU is set to exhaust with the fan always on.



I don't think I will do this, why is another intake needed when you already have 400mm of it?

I'm thinking just 2x200mm intake, then 1x rear exhaust and 1x top exhaust nearest to the rear one, and leave the other exhaust blank... just to give it a directional diagonal flow at least? Cause the heat from the gpu will be pumping into the case as well.


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## claes (Nov 9, 2022)

Count von Schwalbe said:


> It is positive pressure - the area alone of a 200mm fan is almost a great as 3x 120mm fans, and he has 2. Also, a larger fan moves more air for its area at the same speed, as the tips of the fan blade are moving faster.





CallandorWoT said:


> I don't think I will do this, why is another intake needed when you already have 400mm of it?


Why are you guys measuring airflow in terms of fan size? CFM is what matters here — the area of a fan frame has no bearing at all on how much air it can move…

More, with intakes you have to account for the chassis frame, filters, and any other obstructions, all of which will significantly reduce airflow. Even a fine mesh filter can cut CFM in half. Combine that with low speed, low pressure 200mm fans (this is where size matters) and you have very limited intake.


CallandorWoT said:


> I'm thinking just 2x200mm intake, then 1x rear exhaust and 1x top exhaust nearest to the rear one, and leave the other exhaust blank... just to give it a directional diagonal flow at least? Cause the heat from the gpu will be pumping into the case as well.


Your intakes are rated for 90 CFM, so 180 CFM - obstructions. The Air X seems to have a fair bit of them, so let’s say 60% of 180, or 108 CFM. I tried to find an Arctic Storm 120 but no dice, so I can’t help there.

Looking at your case I’d probably add an intake at the top front if you need it and just leave the single, rear exhaust.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 9, 2022)

claes said:


> Why are you guys measuring airflow in terms of fan size? CFM is what matters here — the area of a fan frame has no bearing at all on how much air it can move…
> 
> More, with intakes you have to account for the chassis frame, filters, and any other obstructions, all of which will significantly reduce airflow. Even a fine mesh filter can cut CFM in half. Combine that with low speed, low pressure 200mm fans (this is where size matters) and you have very limited intake.
> 
> ...



Antec Storm, sorry, my bad.

"Provide the High Performance max. 66.56 CFM, max. 2.7 mmH2O through narrower frame and bigger air inlet area."

Montech Air X has a TPU review, and it was reviewed very well for airflow. I guess I can just look at pictures of the review setup and go from there


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## Udyr (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> I don't think I will do this, why is another intake needed when you already have 400mm of it?
> 
> I'm thinking just 2x200mm intake, then 1x rear exhaust and 1x top exhaust nearest to the rear one, and leave the other exhaust blank... just to give it a directional diagonal flow at least? Cause the heat from the gpu will be pumping into the case as well.


I added the extra fans because I had no other use for them. The bottom one was directly below the GPU, redirecting fresh air to it, and the top fan was exhausting from the CPU and VRMs. None of the parts were running particularly hot or anything, but the added fans helped reduce about 3-5C from the GPU and about 2-4C from the CPU... a "feels good" result.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 10, 2022)

Udyr said:


> I added the extra fans because I had no other use for them. The bottom one was directly below the GPU, redirecting fresh air to it, and the top fan was exhausting from the CPU and VRMs. None of the parts were running particularly hot or anything, but the added fans helped reduce about 3-5C from the GPU and about 2-4C from the CPU... a "feels good" result.



care to share a picture of your fans setup? if not its cool. just curious what is actually looks like, don't need any picture of other parts of the case or the 200mm intake, just your top/bottom fan setup would do.

again if you don't want to go through the hassle its fine. just curious is all


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## dirtyferret (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> I'm not opposed to switching it around. My case is the Montech Air X.
> 
> Any suggestions welcome.
> 
> ...


I think I have that case sitting in an unopened box in my basement.  Regardless, I would personally remove the top front fan as all it's doing is taking cool air coming in from the front panel away from your noctua cooler.  See link


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## Udyr (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> care to share a picture of your fans setup? if not its cool. just curious what is actually looks like, don't need any picture of other parts of the case or the 200mm intake, just your top/bottom fan setup would do.
> 
> again if you don't want to go through the hassle its fine. just curious is all


Not a hassle at all.

Dark room. Didn't turn on the light, but my radioactive light shows the way. The fans don't match the "all black" theme cause they're gray, but I didn't care much.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 10, 2022)

Udyr said:


> Not a hassle at all.
> 
> Dark room. Didn't turn on the light, but my radioactive light shows the way. The fans don't match the "all black" theme cause they're gray, but I didn't care much.
> 
> ...



so you have 1x intake at top, blowing down into cpu cooler, 1x rear exhaust right next to it (wont that just suck out the cool air thats being blown in right next to it?) and 2x200mm intakes?

then the fan at bottom is blowing air on to your psu, sucking it away from the gpu

have to say i have never seen anything like this before. hmm


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## claes (Nov 10, 2022)

Generally speaking, the open side of the fan is intake and the side with strator vanes (is this the right term? I forget) is exhaust, so top/rear exhaust and bottom fan blowing at the GPU.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 10, 2022)

ah ok, I understand now. this is not a bad idea. I do have a couple spare fans too. I might do this.


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## fevgatos (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> I don't think I will do this, why is another intake needed when you already have 400mm of it?


Might sound weird but having more intake fans means you have more air exhausting. See the fractal torrent, it only has intake fans, they build positive pressure in the case and so the air moves out naturally without any exhaust fans needed


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## Udyr (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> ah ok, I understand now. this is not a bad idea. I do have a couple spare fans too. I might do this.


Like @claes said, top/rear are exhaust and front/bottom are intake.

For the bottom fan you need two of the long radiator screws to hold the front (the glass side) of the fan, and nothing plugged on that part of the motherboard (for ATX). If your board is mATX, then the fan should fit easily.


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## Mussels (Nov 10, 2022)

Shrek said:


> That is a few billionths of a second; a CPU can't go from "cool to overheated" on that time scale.


Zen3 runs on the 1ms scale, so they can go from max power to idle in that time, 1/1000th of a second.


damric said:


> Sorry about taking the thread OT, but that jellyfish thing looks awesome @Mussels


Birthday present, it is in fact awesome. I modded it to run off USB power instead of 3xAA.
It's one of those things that cameras have issue seeing the same way the human eye does, but they dance around and the bubbles (literally detergent) catch the RGB lights




You always want more fans in than out, or if not possible more airflow via setting the fan speeds

I tried a rear intake into my top radiator to see if it would help, and it simply clogged its dust filter in about 48 hours - and then started sucking dust around the filter in all the gaps and cracks and clogged the rad too



You simply want air in, air out in a straight as line as possible, as close to the hot components as possible (Through their heatsinks, preferably)

Having air in/out in multiple locations with obstructions just leads to eddies, whirlpools and dead spots. You can visualise it like how water works because airs technically a fluid too - imagine a hose in a bathtub, get it going down the drain directlyand its gone, but get it splashing to the side and you get a whirlpool happening that while it still leaves, it takes longer


There is always exceptions, or times it matters only the tiniest amount - but dust is always a long term problem for everyone, and parts are only getting higher wattage so it's critical people adjust their thinking


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> montech air x case


I would start with the default setup from the factory. Then use a real-time temperature monitor like Core Temp to monitor CPU temps. If my temps are maintained comfortably within normal operating ranges, I would leave it alone.



Mussels said:


> Having air in/out in multiple locations with obstructions just leads to eddies, whirlpools and dead spots


I have seen so many times where the use of a side panel fan actually degrades cooling because it disrupts that desired "front-to-back" flow of air. I always recommend removing (or unplugging) any side panel fan for that reason.

There is one exception and that is "IF" the side panel fan blows directly into a tube that channels the air directly on to a downward firing CPU or GPU cooler. That sometimes helps with the processor cooler but may still adversely affect over all cooling. So use a real-time temp monitor and, through trial and error, determine the best setup.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 10, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> I would start with the default setup from the factory. Then use a real-time temperature monitor like Core Temp to monitor CPU temps. If my temps are maintained comfortably within normal operating ranges, I would leave it alone.
> 
> 
> I have seen so many times where the use of a side panel fan actually degrades cooling because it disrupts that desired "front-to-back" flow of air. I always recommend removing (or unplugging) any side panel fan for that reason.
> ...



your right, it isn't that hard to add fans later on. I could even do some of my own testing. I think I will do this, thanks


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## freeagent (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> I could even do some of my own testing.


This is honestly the best way to do things. Everyone has their own ideas on how things should be, but by testing on your own, you will know for certain what works best with your components. I've tried all kinds of crazy and not so crazy stuff just to see what differences would come of it. You won't be disappointed.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 10, 2022)

CallandorWoT said:


> I could even do some of my own testing. I think I will do this, thanks


You should. And don't forget cable management is very important too - not just for aesthetic (neatness looks more professional) but good cable management makes the best (as in least) impact on air flow too. And does not collect as much dust, and the dust it does collect is easier to clean.


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## Vario (Nov 10, 2022)

freeagent said:


> This is honestly the best way to do things. Everyone has their own ideas on how things should be, but by testing on your own, you will know for certain what works best with your components. I've tried all kinds of crazy and not so crazy stuff just to see what differences would come of it. You won't be disappointed.



I've found in my testing that, beyond a certain point, additional case fans can raise temperatures and noise in a lot instances, and that adding additional fans to large high end aircoolers (example: NHD15S, PHTC14PE) often makes no difference on real world temperatures.  Also filling every fan opening with a fan doesn't always generate an optimal result.  As we are custom computer enthusiasts, every case and set up is slightly different.

I also don't bother with filters, my room is fairly dust free as the case sits elevated on a desk surface and I have no pets or carpet.  Filters increase noise and temperatures by adding obstruction. After a year, there was no appreciable visible dust. Even so, I open it up about once every 6 months to a year and use a metro datavac to blast any dust out.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 10, 2022)

Vario said:


> Filters increase noise and temperatures by adding obstruction.


I have never had a problem with increased noise. If anything, they help suppress fan noise. If they obstruct the flow that much, they are lousy filters, dirty filters or both. 

As for temperatures, not there either. In fact, when I see my temps start to rise, that is their signal to me to clean them! 

I agree if your computer sits a bit off the floor, and you don't have shedding pets or a bunch of kids running around stirring up dust, the filters will not be of much use. Still, I do not enjoy breaking down my computers to lug them outside to blast them clean. So all my cases will always have filters.


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## Vario (Nov 10, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> I have never had a problem with increased noise. If anything, they help suppress fan noise. If they obstruct the flow that much, they are lousy filters, dirty filters or both.
> 
> As for temperatures, not there either. In fact, when I see my temps start to rise, that is their signal to me to clean them!
> 
> I agree if your computer sits a bit off the floor, and you don't have shedding pets or a bunch of kids running around stirring up dust, the filters will not be of much use. Still, I do not enjoy breaking down my computers to lug them outside to blast them clean. So all my cases will always have filters.


For my O11 Air Mini, the feet don't raise very far above the desk surface and the bottom intake filter has a thick plastic frame that decreases the desk top clearance.  In this instance, removal of the filter helps, not because the filter has poor flow but because it decreases the intake volume due to its thick plastic framing.  If I recall correctly, Gamer's Nexus's main complaint with this model was high videocard temperatures due to the limited bottom intake.  I don't have any issues with card temperatures but I removed this filter from day one.

The other intake region is the front, which doesn't have a filter, just a steel mesh.  The mesh face does filter some dust but its minimal, I just don't have much dust in this room.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 10, 2022)

Ah, so it is not the filter material itself, but the location and mounting frame. That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.


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## claes (Nov 10, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> I have never had a problem with increased noise. If anything, they help suppress fan noise. If they obstruct the flow that much, they are lousy filters, dirty filters or both.
> 
> As for temperatures, not there either. In fact, when I see my temps start to rise, that is their signal to me to clean them!


With all respect, this is simply untrue. Filters significantly reduce CFM and, while they (mostly) don’t increase noise in a noticeable way in and of themselves, the increase in CFM in their absence allows lower fan speeds, which does reduce noise (and dust, incidentally, though a filter obviously wins in that regard).


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 10, 2022)

claes said:


> With all respect, this is simply untrue. Filters significantly reduce CFM


"Significantly"? With all respect - no they don't. Not good filters and not unless they are dirty. 

Now for sure, there are cheap air filters - cheap as in poorly designed that do restrict more than others. But please note, I never said or implied they don't restrict some - of course they do. Even the steel mesh covering filter-less fan vents offer some resistance - and a significant amount when clogged with dirt. 

But quality and clean filters only impose a very small bit of resistance that any quality fan can handle with aplomb.


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## claes (Nov 10, 2022)

I mean, GN has demonstrated 10* differences in CPU temps but for your review:








						Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM: The most fine-tuned fan of its kind - Page 13 of 43 - HWCooling.net
					

Results: Airlow w/o obstaclesAll the glory and respect of the Noctua NF-A12x25 “sterrox” fan is well deserved. We waited a long time to release its tests, mainly because it was necessary to analyze more seemingly similar designs first. This is necessary to understand why Noctua’s most popular...




					www.hwcooling.net


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## freeagent (Nov 10, 2022)

Big fans, big heatsinks, big air, big noise, that's the way to really fly 

Maybe a big AIO I guess if you're into that 

Anything less than that and you are going to be complaining about hot temps 

Especially in the summer


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## Space Lynx (Nov 10, 2022)

freeagent said:


> Big fans, big heatsinks, big air, big noise, that's the way to really fly
> 
> Maybe a big AIO I guess if you're into that
> 
> ...



Or just two top of the line fans and a smallish heatsink like the U12A. That sucker apparently can cool better than a D15, I have seen some say its a couple behind, others say it wins.

Who knows


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## bobbybluz (Nov 11, 2022)

I have several of these in use. As far as I know they push the most cfm of any 120x120x25mm 12 volt fan. 150 cfm at full speed. The price can't be beat either. 1PC for Delta 12cm 12V 1.74A wind speed high speed supercharger fan FFB1212EH | eBay

For 140mm fans I use the SilverStone FHP-141 V2 (173 cfm). Currently $23 on Amazon. I don't care about the noise when it comes to cooling. 140x140x38mm.


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## Mussels (Nov 11, 2022)

fans with higher static pressure and a good seal against the case/radiator etc are less affected by a filter

Obviously a poor design will block a lot more airflow, i've got a bottom intake at a whopping 800RPM through a filter because it doesnt need to shave a cat, it's just there to guide the airflow up towards those top and rear exhausts


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## Space Lynx (Nov 11, 2022)

Has the air cooling community decided if the U12A or the D15S/D15, between the two, which is the best? I have watched several reviews, and it seems to go either way. With the U12A winning in the last two reviews I watched.

my guess is with a slight fan curve bump on two of the best fans ever made (U12A) it might even match some AIO coolers... all the reviews I have seen compare stock fans only or 100% max only. I don't think the 100% is realistic... I think a slight fan curve bump is though...


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## Mussels (Nov 11, 2022)

Probably close enough that it comes down to the fan speeds you use


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 11, 2022)

claes said:


> I mean, GN has demonstrated 10* differences in CPU temps but for your review:


 Did you actually read your own source and take a moment to study what the article says about "obstacles", or more specifically, did you note the different results between the different types of obstacles? 

Why is that important here? Because typically, cases that do NOT have filters do NOT have huge gaping, wide open, unrestricted holes through which they push or pull the air through. 

Is there a difference when the fan has no obstacles in its path compared to obstacles? Of course! However, as your article noted, 


> fans do not usually blow into an empty space, but have a filter, grille or radiator in front of or behind them



I assume there are exceptions but I cannot think of any case I have seen designed for use without filters that didn't have some sort of grill similar to the hexagonal grill noted in your article. These grills are there to prevent lawsuits - by keeping little, prying fingers out of the paths of spinning fan blades. They offer little to no dust filtering capability - at least not when clean.

Now, if we note the 31 dBA graphs for the Noctua, as examples, and study the results, we see that fan moves 46.44 m^3/h (cubic meters per hour) of air into empty space. But again, when in use, case fans do NOT blow into empty space. When mounted in a case, they blow through (or draw through) different obstacles. With the hexagonal grill, that number drops significantly to 31.05 m^3/h. But with a decent nylon filter, that value is only a little less at 28.2 m^3/h. 

For sure, there is a difference between no filter (31.05 m^3/h) and filter (28.2 m^3/h). But is that really "significant" as you claimed? Umm, no. Just for visualization purposes, a 10 x 12 x 8 foot room is 960 cubic feet or 27.18 m^3/h.

Now for sure, the difference between empty space (no obstacles) and the grill definitely is significant. But I know of no case or user who runs with spinning fan blades exposed to little fingers like that. And if you think the difference between a typical hexagonal grill and the nylon filter is "significant", then you are entitled to your opinion. But I don't see that as significant. 

I think we also have to be realistic and use some common sense here, and set some guidelines. First, I am talking about my experiences and I always buy quality cases from reputable makers for all my personal and our client builds here. These quality cases use quality fans and quality filters, and they are marketed touting their sound suppression and cooling options. Example, Fractal Design cases. 

I could be wrong but I believe most readers here who buy their own cases, look for those (at least the cooling) qualities too. No case maker worth their salt is going to design, build, and market their cases in that manner, only to have them fail miserably at being capable of providing adequate cooling. 

Do filters impact air flow? Of course!  But in a quality case that uses quality fans properly configured for good air flow, the difference between using filters and non-filtered grills is not that significant. If you need to boost the fan speed a little to compensate for an increase in temps, a quality fan can easily do that while keeping any increase in fan noise negligible.  And if you need to add another quality fan to increase air flow, a quality, properly chosen case, will allow that too. 

I note two quality fans running at slow (quiet) speeds can move a lot more air than one fan running at high speeds. 

*If the case you selected and bought does provide adequate cooling quietly, and/or does not support adding another quiet fan, YOU FAILED to do your homework and bought the wrong case for your needs! *That is not the case's or filter's fault!

And for the record, I don't say this much but, I really hate fan noise.


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## claes (Nov 11, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> I assume there are exceptions but I cannot think of any case I have seen designed for use without filters that didn't have some sort of grill similar to the hexagonal grill noted in your article. These grills are there to prevent lawsuits - by keeping little, prying fingers out of the paths of spinning fan blades. They offer little to no dust filtering capability - at least not when clean.
> 
> Now, if we note the 31 dBA graphs for the Noctua, as examples, and study the results, we see that fan moves 46.44 m^3/h (cubic meters per hour) of air into empty space. But again, when in use, case fans do NOT blow into empty space. When mounted in a case, they blow through (or draw through) different obstacles. With the hexagonal grill, that number drops significantly to 31.05 m^3/h. But with a decent nylon filter, that value is only a little less at 28.2 m^3/h.
> 
> For sure, there is a difference between no filter (31.05 m^3/h) and filter (28.2 m^3/h). But is that really "significant" as you claimed? Umm, no. Just for visualization purposes, a 10 x 12 x 8 foot room is 960 cubic feet or 27.18 m^3/h.


Between the condescension and your laziness I just skimmed past here. You took the results from the noise floor and compared them to one another, which represents a best case scenario (idle), rather than using 100% fan speeds or a higher noise level, ie load, where cooling matters.

A nylon filter is a 20% loss, hexagonal holes are a 23% loss. I must be an idiot for thinking that’s insignificant. Now imagine you have a hex mesh front, and a filter, and whatever other instructions are part of the chassis fan mount. Nbd I guess.

I agree about the quality of the chassis being most significant in impacting a fan’s performance, but most people aren’t running their fans at 800rpm under load, and we’re talking about the best standard 25mm 120mm on the market, with an excellent PQ curve designed to overcome standard impedance.

Which all goes back to the initial question — obstructions in chassis affect how much intake you need to overwhelm the less impeded exhaust fans (typically only hex stamps) to maintain positive pressure.

Edit: to be sure, I hate noise, too, which is why my fans don’t run at idle and don’t surpass 800rpm on load. But I’m in a minority.

Also, the vast majority of “airflow” cases these days come with a stamped mesh front and a nylon filter. I think you are missing out on market changes here.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 11, 2022)

claes said:


> Between the condescension and your laziness


It is sad when you see someone who has such low self-esteem who, in an attempt to make them look superior, are compelled to lash out with puerile personal insults when another poses a different or opposing stance, instead of maturely, and simply debating the technical facts. I pity them.



claes said:


> I just skimmed past here.


But that's not condescension, right? Well, you should have read my post - carefully - because clearly, you missed several points I made. To include where I said filters do indeed impact air flow. There was never any denying that. 

I also said you are entitled to your opinion - but apparently, it's condescending and lazy for others to express theirs when different from yours. 



claes said:


> You took the results from the noise floor and compared them to one another, which represents a best case scenario (idle), rather than using 100% fan speeds or a higher noise level, ie load, where cooling matters.


 

Gee whiz. You accuse me of using one extreme (best case, idle), then you go all the way to the opposite extreme with 100% fan noise! How is that better? That is just as bad, if not worse because NO fan should need to run at 100% (except, maybe in a short burst) because then, they have no cooling capacity left! 

If case fans need to run at 100%, *YOU FAILED* to set up your case cooling properly! 

The reality is, most computers run much closer to idle than maxed out most of the time. 

And I never said "insignificant". That is your word. But IMO, 3% is not "_that significant_".


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## claes (Nov 11, 2022)

Check 1000-1200 rpm, ie 33dB-39dB
1000rpm = 33dB
1139rpm = 36dB
1286 = 39dB

Unobstructed:
1000: 54
1139: 60
1286: 67

Nylon:
37 = 32% loss
45 = 25% loss
51 = 24% loss

Hex:
40 = 26% loss
44 = 26% loss
49 = 26% loss

If we’re to use your noise floor example:
787rpm @ 31dB
46 unobstructed
28 nylon, 39% loss
31 hex, 33% loss

The only reason hex is not as much of a problem at 820rpm as nylon is because there’s very little pressure at such a low rpm. When you actually need cooling a nylon filter is not so bad.

Again, the premise of this argument was how to maintain positive pressure, not whatever tangent you’re on about about the meaning of “significant.” Most of the time your intake fans are facing greater obstructions than your exhaust, and so you need to account for those obstructions in addition to the rated CFM.

Have a nice day


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## Count von Schwalbe (Nov 11, 2022)

claes said:


> If we’re to use your noise floor example:
> 787rpm @ 31dB
> 46 unobstructed
> 28 nylon, 39% loss
> 31 hex, 33% loss


What units are these? 46 CFM? 

If so, how are you measuring? I would like to try this myself.


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## claes (Nov 11, 2022)

Please see the hwcooling.net link in my previous post. I was being lazy — they measure in m^3/h and not CFM, I was just referring to the previous discussion about positive/negative pressure and fan area and so on.

TBF, Bill and I are in agreement — fans generally face obstructions, and we both think you need to account for them. I’m just pointing out that it’s not as simple to determine case pressure as intake - exhaust, but (intake/impedance) - (exhaust/impedence). I don’t know where Bill’s disagreement lays as they seem to agree with the premise.

Edit: I get it now — Bill is comparing a typical room to a 50L chassis with 300-1200W of heat inside it. I think the “significance” speaks for itself here.


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## sneekypeet (Nov 11, 2022)

Count von Schwalbe said:


> If so, how are you measuring? I would like to try this myself.


You can grab an anemometer at Amazon.


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## Tech_fanatic (Nov 19, 2022)

Tomgang said:


> Aircooling has all ways been my favoridt cooling type. Cheaper, most reliable and easy to/less maintinense needed compared water cooling. The downside of aircooling is that not every one like a big ass dual tower cooler in there system and aircooling can dissapate less heat than a proper custom water loop, limit overclock in some cases.
> 
> With the rate CPU´s goes in form of power consumption. Aircooling and high-end cpu´s like 13900K and 7950X really pushing the limit for what even the best air cooler can handle with stock power consumption of all ready 300 watt and 230 watt respectivly. Even the zen 4 6 core now has a power of 105 watt compared to my 5600X of 65 watt. Zen 3 is easy to aircool while zen 4 is a nightmare. Specially for the 170 watt rated parts. 5950X rated for 105 watt (in realioty it uses stock 141 watt) while 7950X is 170 watt (in reallity it more like 230 watt). The higher clock speed the latest gen of CPU´s are capable of hitting, has a back side to that. More heat and  power consumption that needs even better cooling. Intel and AMD pushes there cpu all ready at stock now to the limit of what air cooling can handle.
> 
> ...


Thats's a beast of a dual cpu/mb/gfx system in one case (if I've ever seen one). Air-cooling two cpu/mb/gfx combos in one case is one heck of a thing that you have done here. Really awesome


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## Dirt Chip (Nov 19, 2022)

Wonderful post and thank you @An0maly_76 

I'm going with 13900k and nocuta nh-u12a cooling on fractal define 7 case. I know it might be too worm with the stock 2*140+1*140 and after I will do some testing I'm planning to add more 140mm fans to get better airflow.
The case is sitting on the floor so dust filters are on and I'm aming at a very quiet rig.
I have the aero z690 that come with acoustic sensor, so noise monitoring will be easy and accurate.
It will be an interesting experiment.


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## Tomgang (Nov 19, 2022)

Tech_fanatic said:


> Thats's a beast of a dual cpu/mb/gfx system in one case (if I've ever seen one). Air-cooling two cpu/mb/gfx combos in one case is one heck of a thing that you have done here. Really awesome


Thanks. It was from the beginning of this build it was ment to be aircooled. I chose zen 3 for this as it's easy to aircool and I wanted my system to be different from other dual systems. All dual systems I have seen, had one in common. They were all ways water cooled. Either aio or custom loop. So a dual system is rare, but a aircooled dual system is even more rare and I like it like that.

Aircooling this system also puts on some limitations. Specially for the mini-itx. The cooler size for one. But 5600X is a cpu relatively easy to cool at stock, even with a low profile cooler. It limits the oc, but allows a little bit. Also gpu size is a thing to consider, so it doesn't choke the cpu cooler fan. So I am limited to low profile gpu's. So very limited there and the fastest card there is the rtx a2000 That has gaming performance between rtx 3050 and rtx 3060 none TI. All that performance at only 70 watt. So it's powered by pcie alone. Also needed as my psu only has 4 x 8 pins connectors and since rtx 4090 takes them all. A2000 really was the only right choice. Else it would have been gtx 1650 with gddr5 or rx 6400 as alternatives. There has been a lot of things to consider when I designed this build and also I had to make some work arounds my self and modify things. This system is powered by only 1 psu, so you can maybe guess that requires some alternative thinking. But when it was solved. It has worked apselutely great. 

If you want to know more or want more details of my system. I suggest you tjeck out my project build log after others requested I made one.









						Tomgang´s project 2 systems in 1 case. All air cooled.
					

I was asked to make a build log for my new project 2 systems in 1 case. You can see all parts that goes in to this build in the link: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/the-show-off-your-tech-related-purchase-thread.225885/post-4537865  The first image of the mini-itx system up and...




					www.techpowerup.com


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## Dirt Chip (Nov 19, 2022)

In general, water can keep you on acceptable temp longer than air if you didn't build the setup right (also when all is OK but).
But that dosent mean that the answer is 'of coures get water' because if you didnt do the setup right your also losing cooling performance with water.
It just enable you to postpone the problem effects- not eliminating them. So you end up paying more on water, while exposing yourself to new set of problems as discribed later with evidance, just because you dont want to deal with proper arrengment of your case to get good airflow. If you disregard airflow in your case and companstet with overkill AIO cooling, you are more prone to also disregarding other factors concerning cooling (you just don`t want to deal with tham also) so you may avoid one problem but while so create an equal or bigger one.
Also, water don`t come with total freedom of placement- you are restricted with radiator placement relative to the pump. In a wrong setup you end with noise for start and later on with damaged pump.
All in all, if I can get the desired cooling preformance with air I see no reson to go water when factoring all the possible problems of leakage, pump malfunction and debree build up that you neet a lot of effort toclean it even possible.
I think that above all, PR, the need to sell and beauty look of the rig play a big roll when the average user decide to go with water by default.

I don`t oppose to water cooling in principle and I might do on myself if I will ever go with a high-end Threadripper or equal highly multi threaded system, but in only small number of cases you are really need to go water. This number is far smaller than what we see in the market and is pummep by the need to sell above all. It's not the consumer preferred choice ifcalculated objectively.

Plus- one area where I see the opposit situastion- that is choosing air when water is far better- is with the +350w GPU`s.
For some reson many go with water on a 100-200w CPU but go with air on 400-600w GPU. Makes no sense. The is even more pronunce when factoring the obscene size of current air cooled 4090 gpu`s. Water will save tone of space, will enabel much more clear and unobstructed airflow route, will enable more safe (read un-bent) and clean cable routing and in not few cases will save you from needing to upgrade to a bigger case that can accommodate those heumangus, overly sized, monsters.

So, invest you budget in water where you really need it and not only where it looks cool and in accordance to popular current fashion.


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## Mussels (Nov 24, 2022)

Ah damn i made a huge post in the zen thread that belongs here too

This was on how people make the common mistake of simplifying what cooler they're getting "CM 212" and going by the reputation and results of an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PRODUCT.

Below are the half a dozen baseplates the 212 variants have used over the years, and the pure heatpipe versions suck horribly on modern high heat density CPU's since you can get unlucky with a big air pocket or stripe of Alu right over the top of your CPU cores



Mussels said:


> (I left this open in my browser for like 8 hours, lol)
> 
> The Hyper 212 from 2007:
> A solid slab of copper under the heatpipes.
> ...


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 24, 2022)

Half dozen? It would be easy to keep track of a half dozen. I wish it were that easy. 

Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Bing images


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 24, 2022)

ATX cases with mounts fwd, aft, top, bottom.

Intakes are fwd and bottom, exhausts are aft and top.

Use High static pressure fans as intakes when there are obstructions, use high flow fans as exhausts.


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## Mussels (Nov 28, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> Half dozen? It would be easy to keep track of a half dozen. I wish it were that easy.
> 
> Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - Bing images


half a dozen baseplates, the fans and colours vary a lot more


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 28, 2022)

Yeah, because clearly, blue cools better than red! 

But yeah, you are right about fans. And not just size but the number of fans too.


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## Pictus (Nov 28, 2022)

Dirt Chip said:


> Wonderful post and thank you @An0maly_76
> 
> I'm going with 13900k and nocuta nh-u12a cooling on fractal define 7 case. I know it might be too worm with the stock 2*140+1*140 and after I will do some testing I'm planning to add more 140mm fans to get better airflow.
> The case is sitting on the floor so dust filters are on and I'm aming at a very quiet rig.
> ...



The Noctua NH-D15 has more mass and surface to exchange the heat, works better with high wattage CPUs.








						Noctua NH-U12A Review
					

Noctua delivers top-tier air cooling performance in a compact design with the release of the NH-U12A. Sporting two of their latest NF-A12x25 PWM fans, what this cooler lacks in regards to RGB LEDs, it makes up for with brown and tan Noctua styling and a premium build quality that is second to none.




					www.techpowerup.com
				





			https://tpucdn.com/review/noctua-nh-u12a/images/temp_oc_aida64_fpu.png
		















To avoid the CPU to bent









A case with good airflow, at the 12:52 look at the Noise-Normalized Thermals.









IF you want better 140mm fans









IF you want better 120mm fans


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## Assimilator (Nov 28, 2022)

What most air-cooling aficionados overlook is that liquid cooling allows gives you a lot more control over your entire cooling setup, by virtue of the fact that the radiator can be located far away from the source.

I personally prefer liquid simply because I've never been comfortable with hanging big heavy blocks of metal off a motherboard.


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## Pictus (Nov 28, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> What most air-cooling aficionados overlook is that liquid cooling allows gives you a lot more control over your entire cooling setup, by virtue of the fact that the radiator can be located far away from the source.


For power hungry CPUs I prefer custom water cooler and place the radiator/pump into another room or outside.


Assimilator said:


> I personally prefer liquid simply because I've never been comfortable with hanging big heavy blocks of metal off a motherboard.


That is why my case(CM HAF XB EVO) is horizontal.


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## freeagent (Nov 28, 2022)

I like the cost, the simplicity. If I want to change my cpu or GPU, or anything for that matter there are no loops to drain, no big disassembly, no planning, just do. I can see the appeal of a custom loop, but I see no appeal in AIO.


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## sLowEnd (Nov 28, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> I personally prefer liquid simply because I've never been comfortable with hanging big heavy blocks of metal off a motherboard.



Some pretty heavy copper coolers like the TRUE Copper (1900g *without* fan) worked alright, and as far as I know, no popular air cooler these days is anywhere near that heavy. Even big dual towers like the NH-D15 (1320g with fan) or the Deepcool Assassin III (1464g with fan) don't approach that kind of mass. It can be an issue for shipping, but good enough packing material can mitigate risk there too.


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## freeagent (Nov 28, 2022)

Thermalright FC140 is 1000g without fans, it is a beast. I haven’t tried my TRUE from 2007 on my 5900X because TRUE 2022 got decimated. PA120 also gets destroyed by a tuned 5900X at full load, but at stock it’s fine. Those smaller coolers are good for 6/8 cores but lose their grip on the higher core count CPUs if you tune them with generous power limits.


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## Mussels (Nov 29, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> What most air-cooling aficionados overlook is that liquid cooling allows gives you a lot more control over your entire cooling setup, by virtue of the fact that the radiator can be located far away from the source.
> 
> I personally prefer liquid simply because I've never been comfortable with hanging big heavy blocks of metal off a motherboard.


This is why I prefer low wattage hardware, TBH.
And when i can't have low wattage hardware, I tweak the shit out of it for max efficiency.


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## Assimilator (Nov 29, 2022)

sLowEnd said:


> Some pretty heavy copper coolers like the TRUE Copper (1900g *without* fan) worked alright, and as far as I know, no popular air cooler these days is anywhere near that heavy. Even big dual towers like the NH-D15 (1320g with fan) or the Deepcool Assassin III (1464g with fan) don't approach that kind of mass. It can be an issue for shipping, but good enough packing material can mitigate risk there too.


I know, I know. Like I said, it's a personal aversion on my part, not anything based in facts.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 29, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> What most air-cooling aficionados overlook is that liquid cooling allows gives you a lot more control over your entire cooling setup, by virtue of the fact that the radiator can be located far away from the source.


It is not overlooked. It is just not relevant to those who prefer air cooling. 

You suggest and imply there is some advantage to having some flexibility in radiator placement. NO WAY! The very fact you must (1) find a place to put the radiator and (2) route the hoses so they minimize impact on case cooling/air flow are HUGE disadvantages to liquid cooling. 



Assimilator said:


> I personally prefer liquid simply because I've never been comfortable with hanging big heavy blocks of metal off a motherboard.


A little bit of homework before buying, and after-assembly care mitigates any problems there. 

A decently designed motherboard will have multiple mounting points around the socket to distribute those forces. A decently designed case will have multiple corresponding mounting points to absorb those forces. And of course, a decently designed cooler will come with a proper backplate to distribute those forces too. 

Then after assembly, the user just needs to take a little care when moving and/or transporting the computer. If shipping/transporting the computer across town or beyond, lay the computer on its side, or simply remove the cooler until you reach your destination. 

If lugging the computer outdoors to clean, you don't want to bounce the computer off the floor. But then I would not want to do that with liquid cooling either.


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## sLowEnd (Nov 30, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> You suggest and imply there is some advantage to having some flexibility in radiator placement. NO WAY! The very fact you must (1) find a place to put the radiator and (2) route the hoses so they minimize impact on case cooling/air flow are HUGE disadvantages to liquid cooling.



There actually is an advantage in some cases. Some ITX cases are pretty constrained around the CPU area, but have space for a radiator.

A few examples:









						H210 | Minimalist Gaming PC Case
					

Build the Extraordinary with NZXT. Upgrade your gaming setup with an NZXT gaming PC. Loaded with the latest components and featuring sleek designs, our computers provide unmatched performance and reliability.




					nzxt.com
				









						SM570 | Sliger
					

Sliger Designs is a manufacturing company based in the United States specializing in computer cases and systems.




					www.sliger.com


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## Mussels (Nov 30, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> You suggest and imply there is some advantage to having some flexibility in radiator placement. NO WAY! The very fact you must (1) find a place to put the radiator and (2) route the hoses so they minimize impact on case cooling/air flow are HUGE disadvantages to liquid cooling.



It's a lot easier to install a custom loop than it is an AIO, in a small case.
Choosing the size of the rad is part of it, but the simple fact that you get to choose where the pump goes and get the hose lengths exactly as you want them...

Even just the ability to turn my 3090 into a single slot GPU that's half the length is a massive plus on the custom water side.


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## Dirt Chip (Nov 30, 2022)

What I don't understand about water cooling is the discrepancy of going with AIO for 105-250W CPU while using air on 300-600W GPU.
You see many examples of that sort.
I know that it is much easier to go water with the CPU, but if your much more power hungry GPU (that is stress out more than the CPU in gaming) is fine with air- why going water on the CPU in the first place?


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## Mussels (Nov 30, 2022)

Dirt Chip said:


> What I don't understand about water cooling is the discrepancy of going with AIO for 105-250W CPU while using air on 300-600W GPU.
> You see many examples of that sort.
> I know that it is much easier to go water with the CPU, but if your much more power hungry GPU (that is stress out more than the CPU in gaming) is fine with air- why going water on the CPU in the first place?


That ones easy - because modern GPU's require stupidly complicated heatsinks with full coverage blocks, where 3+ years ago you were fine with just a GPU block and some passive heatsinks
I'd rather have a water-cooled GPU and an air-cooled CPU (my sons system was set up this way until the AIO on the G12 died)

I think since then, it's the higher CPU wattages that pushed people that way - a 250W CPU does indeed heat up everything inside a case, so venting it directly out was beneficial


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## sLowEnd (Nov 30, 2022)

Dirt Chip said:


> What I don't understand about water cooling is the discrepancy of going with AIO for 105-250W CPU while using air on 300-600W GPU.
> You see many examples of that sort.
> I know that it is much easier to go water with the CPU, but if your much more power hungry GPU (that is stress out more than the CPU in gaming) is fine with air- why going water on the CPU in the first place?


Probably a part of it is because tubes look cool. If the popularity of RGB is anything to go by, aesthetics do matter to a lot of people.


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 30, 2022)

sLowEnd said:


> There actually is an advantage in some cases. Some ITX cases


Ummm, I was responding to the issue made by Assimilator being uncomfortable having a big, heavy air cooler hanging off a motherboard, and thus the need to find a place to put a radiator. 

And to his specific issue, I made the point of saying doing our homework and carefully selecting the case will mitigate that problem. 

You simply illustrated my point by carefully selecting a case that resolves that issue. That said, your ITX example offers just one place for the radiator. I would hardly call that flexible.


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## Dirt Chip (Nov 30, 2022)

sLowEnd said:


> Probably a part of it is because tubes look cool. If the popularity of RGB is anything to go by, aesthetics do matter to a lot of people.


Yep, my thoughts exactly.
Bigger crowd today expose himself, some unknowingly, to the potential problems of AIO in the name of "It looks cool" without any real thermal need.
To which its own I guess, but as long as you are aware to all pros and cons of your chosen product.


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## freeagent (Nov 30, 2022)

Having 1000g of metal plus the fans to go with it hanging off your board isn’t really a big deal.. just don’t drop it


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## Icon Charlie (Nov 30, 2022)

Coming from a person with 34 years of experience in this field, who has been trained in air flow management, it seems everyone is missing some points in building a rig.

*1. Every component is different.*  Even if they are the same type of component, this includes cases you must take them as being different if you re trying to be as efficient as possible in your airflow cooling management. 

I've had to swap out same brand cooling fans because I was getting an unusual result in a certain part of a case. 

*2.  Every build is different.*  Even buying the same components for multiple rigs can get you different results in cooling.  I've seen this happen too often to state otherwise.

*3.  YOU MUST KNOW all of the strengths and weakness of all of your components that you use in your build. * The perfect example is my MSI X570 A-PRO motherboard and how almost every major tuber craped on it because of hot MOSFED issues.  Well yes that will happen if you are going to drop in a R9 5950 and overclock it.  That is not what this motherboard is made for and I saw it's potential. For $125.00 out the door, you can beat that price. It now has a 5900OEM (before that a 3600) with its ram and Video card undervolted.  It runs very cool and for my CPU cooler is... wait for it.... a Hyper T2... Yup a Hyper T2 instead of a big hunk of metal in the case.  

I rig this rig 16 hours a day 7 days a week coming on 3 years. I am not beating my rig to death by overheating and saving my money by not buying expensive water cooling setups.  These savings will be rolled over to my next setup or an upgrade on my video card. 

Now all of my data on this rig has been posted previously, but I just did a quick shot with MWM on my temps as of this posting. Again 2 Artic 140mm fans side case. 1 120mm fan in the back.  The PSU has been flipped to provide  extra pushing out of air from the case and the Hyper T2 fan has been rotated 90 degrees to help pull air from the outside. 






 4.  Again as stated before. *To get the best cooling possible you MUST  take the time and patience to fine tune your rig to achieve the best results. *  This means knowing all to components outcomings, knowing which type of fan/case/cooling setup  to be used and finally taking the time to to swap out parts to make the rig to run as cool as possible.  It takes a long, long, time to fine tune your rig.  And yes I do use a small fogger to track my air flow.  If I get lazy then it is a"Punk" (a fire starter on a stick is called a punk) and eye balled the smoke with a flashlight.  To fine tune this the first time it took me 2.5 hours which is why not many people do this anymore.

They just buy the components, slap it together and call it a day. 


Now concerning the Water/Air thing.  That's your choice and I can't tell you what you want in your rig.

_*However from my  perspective and the dozen or so water cooling rigs that I had to clean, you will never EVER see me with a water based set up, because IMHO water set ups deteriorate over time... in certain cases of neglect badly.  You must do general maintenance every year to get the best performance from water cooling. Air cooling... heh replace a fan if it goes bad in 5 or so years and blow out your case of dust every 3 months, which you have to do with a water based cooling method anyhow. *_

 Again regardless if you go water or air.  IMHO,... If you do not take the time to fine tune your air flow/cooling management, you are just asking for problems down the road.


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## Arco (Nov 30, 2022)

But, But, more fans must mean more airflow!


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 30, 2022)

Icon Charlie said:


> Coming from a person with 34 years of experience in this field, who has been trained in air flow management, it seems everyone is missing some points in building a rig.


Well, I won't hold your obvious youth and minimal experience against you!

I also think you should go back and read what has been said, and follow the conversations because clearly, not everyone. 

I will also comment about your claim, 


Icon Charlie said:


> IMHO water set ups deteriorate over time...


That's not an opinion. That's just a fact - though it applies to air cooling setups, and just about everything else too. 

One of my problems with some water users is they are very diligent in performing inspections in a timely manner - at first. But after a year or two or three of never finding anything wrong, the time between inspections get longer and longer just when they should become more frequent. When new, fittings typically are nice and tight and hoses are soft and flexible. But over time, fittings can work loose and hoses become brittle.


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## dgianstefani (Nov 30, 2022)

Dirt Chip said:


> What I don't understand about water cooling is the discrepancy of going with AIO for 105-250W CPU while using air on 300-600W GPU.
> You see many examples of that sort.
> I know that it is much easier to go water with the CPU, but if your much more power hungry GPU (that is stress out more than the CPU in gaming) is fine with air- why going water on the CPU in the first place?


GPU dies are much larger than CPU dies. 

The bottleneck isn't thermal load, it's thermal density. 

Air cooled CPUs run a lot hotter than air cooled GPU's for this reason. 

Liquid cooled beats both, because you can't beat fast flowing coolant for quickly pulling heat away from a small contact surface.


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## Shrek (Nov 30, 2022)

Does anyone have any figures for VRM temperatures with CPU air cooling and then with water cooling? I am concerned that water cooling may result in higher VRM temperatures due to a loss of air flow.

As far as GPUs go, I use an air cooled GT-1030 without dedicated fans, and it seems fine.

One thing that seems risky is to replace a power supply fan with anything but an identical fan.


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## freeagent (Nov 30, 2022)

Icon Charlie said:


> Coming from a person with 34 years of experience in this field, who has been trained in air flow management, it seems everyone is missing some points in building a rig.
> 
> *1. Every component is different.*  Even if they are the same type of component, this includes cases you must take them as being different if you re trying to be as efficient as possible in your airflow cooling management.
> 
> ...


You should be using HWinfo64 if you are using Ryzen. 5900X is very easy to cool when it is at stock settings.


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## Dirt Chip (Nov 30, 2022)

dgianstefani said:


> GPU dies are much larger than CPU dies.
> 
> The bottleneck isn't thermal load, it's v.
> 
> ...


But good air cooler can achieve about the same (to slightly higher) temps as average AIO (say 240-280mm) and beat the weak ones on CPU`s.
So it is true that the temps on CPU is higher than GPU (and I take your word that it`s the thermal density doing, sound resendable), but that`s effects both water and air the about same and offer no real insight as to why favoring AIO.
Moreover, in the places where average AIO do get a few degrees lower over good air it usually doesn't translate to any meaningful (if any) performance difference, especially if gaming is the main use.


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## freeagent (Nov 30, 2022)

A good CPU cooler can only be good if it has a steady supply of fresh air. Just like an AIO, they benefit greatly from fresh air.


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## Shrek (Nov 30, 2022)

But what if the water CPU cooler blocks of the air supply to the VRMs?


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## Icon Charlie (Nov 30, 2022)

Arco said:


> But, But, more fans must mean more airflow!


hahahaha  Thanks...  This made my day.   I also made a grammar Error  which is " I Rig my Rig".... heh I'll keep that there though as I find that kind of funny too.


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## Assimilator (Nov 30, 2022)

Shrek said:


> Does anyone have any figures for VRM temperatures with CPU air cooling and then with water cooling? I am concerned that water cooling may result in higher VRM temperatures due to a loss of air flow.


Get one of the Arctic AIOs with a fan on the CPU block.



Shrek said:


> But what if the water CPU cooler blocks of the air supply to the VRMs?


How would it do that?


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## Shrek (Nov 30, 2022)

Assimilator said:


> How would it do that?



By no longer having a fan in the CPU area


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## Space Lynx (Nov 30, 2022)

Just going to throw this out there, my Vetroo V5 with two fans in push/pull has seriously impressed me. Keep in mind I am using LGA 1700 Contact Frame, which probably helps 5-10 celsius.

I was going to go Noctua, this Vetroo was only meant to be a backup cooler... but honestly not sure I will upgrade it. I get 60 celsius in Witcher 3 at 1440p max settings 165 fps 165hz.... 

I mean, don't really need to upgrade that... I am sure some games are more demanding on CPU, but even then I expect 70-75 max... synthetic testing hits mid 80's, but its synthetic for a reason, I won't ever see that in a game.


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## ShrimpBrime (Nov 30, 2022)

Space Lynx said:


> Just going to throw this out there, my Vetroo V5 with two fans in push/pull has seriously impressed me. Keep in mind I am using LGA 1700 Contact Frame, which probably helps 5-10 celsius.
> 
> I was going to go Noctua, this Vetroo was only meant to be a backup cooler... but honestly not sure I will upgrade it. I get 60 celsius in Witcher 3 at 1440p max settings 165 fps 165hz....
> 
> I mean, don't really need to upgrade that... I am sure some games are more demanding on CPU, but even then I expect 70-75 max... synthetic testing hits mid 80's, but its synthetic for a reason, I won't ever see that in a game.


That's the deal!

Is the cooler good for you or good for your CPU?? 
Pretty sure that's what stress testing is about. 
Well halfway though stress testing is also a good indicator of stability which thermal productivity has a major influence upon.

7 pages of rubbish. I've yet to find a place to fit in.


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## Space Lynx (Nov 30, 2022)

ShrimpBrime said:


> That's the deal!
> 
> Is the cooler good for you or good for your CPU??
> Pretty sure that's what stress testing is about.
> ...



It's good for a 13600kf. I wouldn't use it on a higher chip though. Under most brutal prime95 load I could throw at it, it hit 97 celsius... that was its max... I have it set to 102 celsius limit in bios.

That's extreme though... I mean I won't ever see more than 60 celsius in most games I play. so eh


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 1, 2022)

Space Lynx said:


> It's good for a 13600kf. I wouldn't use it on a higher chip though. Under most brutal prime95 load I could throw at it, it hit 97 celsius... that was its max... I have it set to 102 celsius limit in bios.
> 
> That's extreme though... I mean I won't ever see more than 60 celsius in most games I play. so eh


Yes, sorry for the late reply.

You could just record the wattage in game, and come up with an average output yes. Most bigger coolers can handle average loads surely. But not entirely what my point was really.

You, you don't mind 97c and stretching past 100c Tjunction set by the manufacturer. But does the cpu?

Why is AMD for example, using 70c as a high temp alert (first 4 ryzen generations). This with a default system commands 100% cpu fan duty cycle.
Essentially, they can't count on the cooler because there is no awareness to ambient temperatures.

At one time, manufacturer would list a Tcase temp max. Intel would state 72c and this is an off die temperature, at the ihs plate.

Today we have package temp. For your Intel 13600K is the Tcase temperature, the temp at the IHS plate.

So if you are reading me the 97c core temp, it's usually cooler than the accumulated Tcase temp which seems to run a bit hotter. At least that's what I experience with 12th gen chips, I imagine 13th gen isn't much different in this temp reading aspect.

But really, 97c for Me is a little on the upper end warm side. And I mean package (Tcase) temp, not core temp. It throttles at 100c and that's uncomfortable. Once the package temp hits that 100c with it, the cpu throttles really really hard.

But none of this corresponds with the title of the thread "myths" though. So this reply might be off topic and please excuse me from that.


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## Bill_Bright (Dec 1, 2022)

Space Lynx said:


> I have it set to 102 celsius limit in bios.
> 
> That's extreme though... I mean I won't ever see more than 60 celsius in most games I play. so eh


I think setting and leaving the limit set that high is a mistake. Temporarily setting it that high while you are benchmarking/stress testing is fine and makes sense because one has to assume you are sitting there, keeping a watchful eye on your temps.

But leaving it there while you go off and perform other tasks, and especially engrossing games, leads to you being distracted and no longer paying close attention to your temps. Should something go wrong, and your temps start climbing unnoticed well above your normal maximums of 60°C, and then suddenly spike into a dangerous/destructive range - not good. 

Since you typically never see above 60°C, I would urge you to set the threshold setting in the BIOS setup menu to a "comfortable" (relatively speaking) and safe 70 or 80°C. This will surely give your most taxing games plenty of headroom, but still [hopefully] alert you before it is too late, and [again hopefully] prevent unwanted consequences should something really go awry.


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## Space Lynx (Dec 1, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> I think setting and leaving the limit set that high is a mistake. Temporarily setting it that high while you are benchmarking/stress testing is fine and makes sense because one has to assume you are sitting there, keeping a watchful eye on your temps.
> 
> But leaving it there while you go off and perform other tasks, and especially engrossing games, leads to you being distracted and no longer paying close attention to your temps. Should something go wrong, and your temps start climbing unnoticed well above your normal maximums of 60°C, and then suddenly spike into a dangerous/destructive range - not good.
> 
> Since you typically never see above 60°C, I would urge you to set the threshold setting in the BIOS setup menu to a "comfortable" (relatively speaking) and safe 70 or 80°C. This will surely give your most taxing games plenty of headroom, but still [hopefully] alert you before it is too late, and [again hopefully] prevent unwanted consequences should something really go awry.



pretty sure intel's default is 95 celsius? or even 100, not sure. this idea is not bad though, i may set it to 90. I don't think anything bad can happen, cause if I hear my fans ramping up when its idle or im just browsing the web, I will investigate the cause quickly.  every game I have thrown at it doesn't even ramp up the fan yet. only synthetic benching, so the noise alone would alert me... also I am in my room all the time... so eh I am not too worried.

I'd be worried if I had water cooling with leaks and all, but since i am rocking air, it will be fine.



ShrimpBrime said:


> Yes, sorry for the late reply.
> 
> You could just record the wattage in game, and come up with an average output yes. Most bigger coolers can handle average loads surely. But not entirely what my point was really.
> 
> ...



I mean this was only with prime95... I will never see those temps in anything else... so eh... not going to worry about it.


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## Bill_Bright (Dec 1, 2022)

Space Lynx said:


> I don't think anything bad can happen, cause if I hear my fans ramping up


This assumes everything is, and always will work properly. I don't assume that. Also, temps can skyrocket long before fans have time to ramp up to speed. 



Space Lynx said:


> since i am rocking air, it will be fine.


 Right. Because fan bearings never seize - until they do. And when they do, BIOS monitoring circuits for fan RPMs and CPU over-temps never fail - until they do.

I hope you have current backups.


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## Space Lynx (Dec 1, 2022)

ya I got backups, and I have 7 fans... not all 7 will fail at once. I will hear the ramp up if anything weird happens. thanks for your concern though


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 1, 2022)

That's how myths are


Space Lynx said:


> I'd be worried if I had water cooling with leaks and all, but since i am rocking air, it will be fine.
> 
> I mean this was only with prime95... I will never see those temps in anything else... so eh... not going to worry about it.


Let the myths be born!
Not worried about your personal preference. It's OK and valid because that belongs to you!!

________________________________________________________________________
I seriously could rip this thread to a lot of different aspects. 
Just the original post is easy to tear up, just view the first few responses. 

Step 6 is good. Watch package temps, no mention of core temps though.
What about VRMs, board temps or I/O (chipset), memory modules??

The rest of it is to adjust fan rpm. "some fans 600-900 rpm, some 1600 rpm.
No mention of ambient temps, all the possible cases and fan layouts.
Cpu fan rpm adjustments only..... I'm sure there are fans between above and below stated RPMs.
The RPM means nothing to me. What about fan pitch, depth, placement, count ect ect...

"No air cooler can handle 300w...." 
This statement depends on a fist full of missing data.

MYTH #1 – “My processor requires liquid cooling”
"This simply is not true in 99.99% of cases"

I'll call this one  right out, manufacturers have RECOMMENDED liquid cooling for their products.

"I never see those temps in anything else, so eh....." 

lol, no. There's just a lot of wrong or perhaps misleading information here. And missing information too.


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## Space Lynx (Dec 1, 2022)

ShrimpBrime said:


> Step 6 is good. Watch package temps, no mention of core temps though.
> What about VRMs, board temps or I/O (chipset), memory modules??



my mobo has so much metal on it, the VRM's need a sweater, maybe I will knit them one someday.


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 1, 2022)

Space Lynx said:


> my mobo has so much metal on it, the VRM's need a sweater, maybe I will knit them one someday.


Mine too actually. 
Because the ambient temp in my work space is roughly 5c.
Look some actual useful data! This would take a 250w cooler and probably make it 300w capable!


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## Mussels (Dec 2, 2022)

Bill_Bright said:


> This assumes everything is, and always will work properly. I don't assume that. Also, temps can skyrocket long before fans have time to ramp up to speed.


Yep heat can literally go up in 1 millisecond on ryzen (cant be too much slower on intel) which how fast they power on/off cores - and the default fan curves on my asus boards change fan speeds every 3 seconds

In 3 seconds the case air wont heat up too much, but if that was controlling a water pump or the fan on a smaller heatsink it's simply too slow



ShrimpBrime said:


> "No air cooler can handle 300w...."


I like this quote, because noctua have something super useful to say on this front
summarised its "fuck TDP ratings, get something that works well with your CPU design"

Noctua’s Standardised Performance Rating (NSPR) and compatibility classification for CPU coolers


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## dgianstefani (Dec 2, 2022)

Mussels said:


> In 3 seconds the case air wont heat up too much, but if that was controlling a water pump or the fan on a smaller heatsink it's simply too slow


It doesn't matter, with water you have a thermal buffer to absorb changes. The fan or pump speed rarely or never needs to change.


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 2, 2022)

Mussels said:


> Yep heat can literally go up in 1 millisecond on ryzen (cant be too much slower on intel) which how fast they power on/off cores - and the default fan curves on my asus boards change fan speeds every 3 seconds
> 
> In 3 seconds the case air wont heat up too much, but if that was controlling a water pump or the fan on a smaller heatsink it's simply too slow
> 
> ...



They left out some critical details, but I get the point.

One of the details that is left out is that by design, air coolers are generally more efficient when already warmed up vs going from cold to warm.
Another is the failed mention that everyone has a different ambient temp, and different type of case or flow, perhaps lack there of. 

Either way, X amount of BTU must be moved. Another angle I take when performing talks about coolers. converting the  wattage to BTU rather than repeating watts this and watts that. Can the cooler move 1200BTU/hr? 

Thermal density. 
This one is interesting to throw into the mix. Die size and solder or pasted plates. 
Either way, you are dissipating X amount of BTU at X given point.

Well the plate and coolers are 2D in BTU movement. Straight up. And down, but the focus is mainly shedding the BTU up, through solder, a plate (of any given size) then through some paste, the cooler and so forth. We cannot cool the cpu from any other direction. One direction only.

And one of the last things, I often noticed through cooler talks is the lack to mention time.
As mentioned above, BTU/hr. 
OK, thermal dissipation by time. How long does it take for your 250w to travel from die to air??
I suppose this depends on a lot of variables. 

But I do agree TDP ratings have always been a skew since the birth of "BOOST". 

CPU manufacturer goal is to make a fast CPU. 
Inherently, processors have gained wattage through the years.
The cooler designs have remained similar because the surface area has remained similar. 

The idea in the past for overclocking is to REDUCE temps, not run the chip at it's peak output wattage.
This would help reduce leakage and accelerate stability. Unfortunately, those days are gone for most people.
I for one still try and follow this tradition as best as possible. Simply because I have specific goals.


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## Count von Schwalbe (Dec 2, 2022)

ShrimpBrime said:


> And one of the last things, I often noticed through cooler talks is the lack to mention time.
> As mentioned above, BTU/hr.
> OK, thermal dissipation by time. How long does it take for your 250w to travel from die to air??
> I suppose this depends on a lot of variables.


The thing is, BTU/hr and W are the same type of unit. Being as they are a rate rather than an amount, time does not come into play - they are by default assumed to be constant as a worst-case scenario.


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 2, 2022)

Count von Schwalbe said:


> The thing is, BTU/hr and W are the same type of unit. Being as they are a rate rather than an amount, time does not come into play - they are by default assumed to be constant as a worst-case scenario.


Converted, you can get an idea of the rate of dissipation.

300w = 1025 BTU in one HOUR. (roughly)

Or we all just go around and say, my CPU dissipates 300w. This figure means nothing to me unless I can find a cooler than can move that much thermal energy in a short amount of time.

That's why copper, not aluminum. 

Coolers aren't usually "rated" over copper's capability of (roughly) 235 BTU/hr.

Just can't make the metal "copper" dissipate heat faster than that. It's just not possible.

I guess in reality, we battle the material's capability more so than the design in which the material is implemented. 

See below the quote? T = time.


> In imperial units, thermal conductivity is measured in *BTU/(h⋅ft⋅°F*). The dimension of thermal conductivity is M1L1T−3Θ−1, expressed in terms of the dimensions mass (M), length (L), time (T), and temperature (Θ).


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## Count von Schwalbe (Dec 2, 2022)

Otherwise known as:


> *398 W/m•K*


Watts per meter per degree Kelvin delta. 


ShrimpBrime said:


> copper's capability of (roughly) 235 BTU/hr.


I consider this to leave out several pertinent pieces of information. 

That assumes 1 degree (F) difference and 1 foot thickness. 

Most coolers operate in much different conditions.


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 2, 2022)

Count von Schwalbe said:


> Otherwise known as:
> 
> Watts per meter per degree Kelvin delta.
> 
> ...


Well I am just generalizing the idea that you can't magically make copper faster at dissipating heat. 

Thus a cooler's capability could never be over it's material rated thermal movement through time.

And we haven't even talked about the thermal pastes and the effect this has increasing the thermal movement time. Now you're at the mercy of filling a space. 

Of course there's a handful of data missing. I'm not going to measure eveyone's cooler, the amount of mass of the cooler and then ambient temps, then measure all the fuckin fans out there and there's CFM rated capability and so forth. It'd be one hell of a long list.

But either way, at least you are aware and acknowledge TIME is part of the equation, the original reason why I quoted you.


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## Mussels (Dec 3, 2022)

ShrimpBrime said:


> you can't magically make copper faster at dissipating heat.


sure you can! by using it in thin layers with slight imperfections, stacked together and blowing air over them


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 3, 2022)

Mussels said:


> sure you can! by using it in thin layers with slight imperfections, stacked together and blowing air over them


Or design the IHS plate and cooler with Silver instead. But that would be one expensive cooler.


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## freeagent (Dec 3, 2022)

ShrimpBrime said:


> Or design the IHS plate and cooler with Silver instead. But that would be one expensive cooler


A little OT sorry... I had an old Harmon/Kardon with a Champagne face (not silver lol) from the late 70s or early 80s when I was in my 20s. Thing weighed liked 65lbs no shit. Anywhoo, the cables in the output stage were silver. The amp had soo much muscle. I brought it to my friends once because his dad had some big Cerwins.. and his dad was gone for a few days. That amp was the perfect match! We were in the basement and pictures were falling off the walls upstairs because of the seismic bass being produced, Quite violent, had to take the glass in the coffee table out because it was trying to flop around 

His mom was screaming at the top of her lungs and we had no idea, good times 

She told me to take that fucking amp home and never bring it back lol. Sorry you mentioned silver, and I flashed back.

My Friday ramble sorry


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## Shrek (Dec 3, 2022)

Mussels said:


> sure you can! by using it in thin layers with slight imperfections, stacked together and blowing air over them



I've always wondered about the influence of surface roughness in inducting turbulent flow and so enhancing heat transfer.


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## freeagent (Dec 3, 2022)

I like turbulence, it's good for scrubbing heat away 

But now I can't really OC, so I am enjoying the quiet


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## Mussels (Dec 3, 2022)

Shrek said:


> I've always wondered about the influence of surface roughness in inducting turbulent flow and so enhancing heat transfer.


Any and all increase to surface area helps cooling, but you cant have it so rough that it stops air flowing to the next bits after it. Every bump has an area of reduced airflow behind it, so they gotta be small - golfball style, but even smaller. If you look at the popular coolers that work well, they do various tricks like this, even just angling the fins slightly so the airflow ricochets back and forth in the channel its in

The TRUE120 shows this well, with its "no you didnt drop it, and no that corner isn't melting" look




Their frost tower 120 shows this in an evolution that ups manufacturing costs, but absolutely makes the best of that airflow getting it bouncing all over the place, without excess resistance or noise


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## Shrek (Dec 3, 2022)

I was thinking sandblasting, but don't know how effective that would be.


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## Count von Schwalbe (Dec 3, 2022)

If you inspect a higher-quality (read: commercial -grade) HVAC condenser, you will see that the coil fins often have little sections bent back and forth to reduce laminar flow without dead zones.


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 3, 2022)

freeagent said:


> A little OT sorry... I had an old Harmon/Kardon with a Champagne face (not silver lol) from the late 70s or early 80s when I was in my 20s. Thing weighed liked 65lbs no shit. Anywhoo, the cables in the output stage were silver. The amp had soo much muscle. I brought it to my friends once because his dad had some big Cerwins.. and his dad was gone for a few days. That amp was the perfect match! We were in the basement and pictures were falling off the walls upstairs because of the seismic bass being produced, Quite violent, had to take the glass in the coffee table out because it was trying to flop around
> 
> His mom was screaming at the top of her lungs and we had no idea, good times
> 
> ...


Nice! Had Technics back in the day, but rocking Sherwood these days pushing some AVIDs. Decent little set up, rocks loud enough I think. 
Had a studio amp at one time. Was also a Harmon Kardon. 16 channels of muscles. The heat sinks, which I still have are bigger than an ITX case.

Back OT, I actually have a few silver plates I made from Silver coins. Can't tell because thermal paste is weak transfer therms. This is probably one of the main downfalls of any cooling system unless those like liquid metal for use.



Mussels said:


> Any and all increase to surface area helps cooling, but you cant have it so rough that it stops air flowing to the next bits after it. Every bump has an area of reduced airflow behind it, so they gotta be small - golfball style, but even smaller. If you look at the popular coolers that work well, they do various tricks like this, even just angling the fins slightly so the airflow ricochets back and forth in the channel its in
> 
> The TRUE120 shows this well, with its "no you didnt drop it, and no that corner isn't melting" look
> View attachment 272779
> ...


Just like the little fins in water blocks. There's been several designs for extra surface area, and that's right where we want to be. One of the reasons I like full copper water blocks. Sure, you can dissipate heat inside, but throw a spot fan on the outside for additional thermal release on the outer surface area. 

But none of that changes thermal properties of the material. We've just mastered using it in design we see fit. 

Like coating all that copper with nickel plating so it looks good. lol. With 1/3 (roughly) the thermal conductivity of the copper under it..... lol


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## Count von Schwalbe (Dec 3, 2022)

ShrimpBrime said:


> Like coating all that copper with nickel plating so it looks good. lol. With 1/3 (roughly) the thermal conductivity of the copper under it..... lol


Also helps with corrosion. 

Anyways, plating runs around .002 thick, so I doubt it is significant.


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## ShrimpBrime (Dec 3, 2022)

Count von Schwalbe said:


> Also helps with corrosion.
> 
> Anyways, plating runs around .002 thick, so I doubt it is significant.


You're probably right. But it's just an air cooler....

Morgan silver dollar, lapped. Great for lid-less chips.


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