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- Feb 3, 2017
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Processor | Ryzen 7800X3D |
---|---|
Motherboard | ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI |
Memory | 2x16GB G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5-6000 CL36 (F5-6000J3636F16GX2-FX5) |
Video Card(s) | INNO3D GeForce RTX™ 4070 Ti SUPER TWIN X2 |
Storage | 2TB Samsung 980 PRO, 4TB WD Black SN850X |
Display(s) | 42" LG C2 OLED, 27" ASUS PG279Q |
Case | Thermaltake Core P5 |
Power Supply | Fractal Design Ion+ Platinum 760W |
Mouse | Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro SE |
Keyboard | Corsair K100 RGB |
VR HMD | HTC Vive Cosmos |
Heat-wise yes. But it is not illogical at all.I am surprised that those who designed the motherboards made the extremely illogical decision to put the M.2 slots directly under the hottest component in the PC case - the GPU.
The location is dictated by need to run the PCIe traces from CPU to the slot. Yes, it can be moved elsewhere - and in some cases has been moved - but this is an extra effort and needs more care to still keep this stable. I bet this is considerably worse with current gen when that first M.2 slot is PCIe 5.0.
Other directions are already more occupied - RAM with more traces and more difficult requirements and VRM which is potentially even worse due to running power from there to CPU plus heat. And standard locations of things do not really allow putting stuff at the top (and mostly there are parts of VRM there as well). Also, M.2 is supposed to use <10W and motherboards mostly have a heatsink over there that is often connected to some larger heatsink.
This is far from trivial question. You are tracking (some) right things but the correlation here is complex and with all the feedbacks it gets worse. If you want to get some understanding into what the effects of parameters are start making some of the things constants. The principle is - everything matters.In my own testing, and in the testing of some other people, I've noticed anomalies where the data we're tracking does not reflect upon the CPU/GPU temperatures, nor does it correlate with the clock speeds.
This means that we're not tracking the right things in HWInfo or whatever. Yet, there are so many options and I do not know what else to consider. I track averages and maxes for (DTS and Enhanced) CPU core temps and CPU package; GPU hot spot, memory junction and temperature; average effective clocks, max CPU/thread usage, and total CPU usage; motherboard and VRM temps, and the fan speeds.
...
Edit: TO CLARIFY: I need to know which sensors to monitor to discover the causal relationship between cooling and performance. None of the above are doing that, nor are the ones I've been watching, nor does watts.
Not claiming to be completely correct and some of it is rant-y but some semi-formulated thoughts.
The physically easier side is the cooling.
You dump x W of heat into it and it gets dissipated through some rads with help of fans and whatnot. For things to be comparable you need to use the same case, same case fans and their configuration. Ambient temperatures obviously matter. Fan speeds matter. In addition to fan speeds AIOs have pumps, their speed matters. Mount the cooler in as similar way as possible - for air coolers whether the air is blown up or towards the back matters. For AIOs where you mount it matters, a lot - mounting AIO at the top is convenient and nice but this will inevitably take warmer air from inside the case compared to another AIO mounted for example to the bottom of the case where it can suck in cooler air from outside.
Here is the first tricky bit - fan and pump speeds matter. As soon as you let these be dynamic, good luck figuring out how the effect correlates to speeds - it is going to be in a curve and possibly per fan or speed domain. Also there might be strange effects from how air moves, when things start to overheat etc. So, to keep things comparable, fix the fan speeds (all fans, including case fans). Measure in a couple predetermined speed points if necessary.
Trickier part today is the consumer side - CPU (or GPU) itself. In part because there are a number of dynamic things and in part because with contemporary hardware you may not have control over that.
Cooler does not care what the frequency is, or voltage, or usage. Cooler takes the watts in and dissipates the heat to the best of its ability, the result is CPU temperature which CPU cares about. Throttling is the obvious and simple one - if cooler cannot dissipate heat dumped into it, CPU temperature will go over threshold and it'll throttle. Other things are trickier. Attainable frequency is related to voltage which as the end result gets the W put out from CPU. frequency-voltage relationship is on a curve. Voltage to W is not usually linear either. So far so good - frequency shouldn't depend on heat directly outside throttling... but does due to secondary effects like heating up VRM due to power conversion waste or simply rising temperature inside the case.
This is assuming you can get the CPU to try and be at a certain frequency and do a fixed amount of work. But, frequencies are dynamic today. Frequencies are lowered if some limit is hit - temperature, various power limits, voltage changes (or voltage reliability changes). Some can be monitored, others less so. Best practical bet is probably something like you already have done - run something heavy and constant like Prime95. Making anything possible in UEFI into constant helps - set fixed frequency that can be held regardless of load, not allow any voltage drifts etc.
And the end result... is that the test does not reflect your actual usage