Ryzen 7950X on air..?

[Macro Device]

A client of mine wants to build a Ryzen system, likely 7900X-based but he's trying to find some more scratch and go 7950X. Either way, he wants to cool it with a liquid cooling system, possibly making it a full loop with his GPU (likely to be RTX 4070 Ti Super, not decided yet: he still didn't provide enough data for me to point on an exact GPU so we don't discuss that) but he stays open-minded and I am pretty much sure it's possible to work with 7950X only using conventional air cooling solutions. This will also free some budget for a more advanced storage system.

CPU won't rest, that's for sure. Expected to be 90 to 100 % loaded (sound editors, video editors, image editors, all at the same time) for at least 3 hours a day. CPU Overclocking isn't considered but RAM is likely to be tuned to around 6 GT/s CL34 or faster.

My question is... how low can I go and still recommend him a cooler that won't let him down? Not actually a Ryzen thermal dissipation expert, hard to judge what's what in this case.

Is, for example, ID-Cooling SE-207-XT enough? Room temp is likely to never surpass 75F / 24C, the PC case is horizontal so heat from GPU is mostly irrelevant. Significant noise is acceptable.

 

[Toothless]

Look at TPU reviews for air coolers. The new ones have this awesome performance/power thing that'll help you determine what kind of cooling power you'll need.

The Thermalright EVO one would be a much better choice than the SE-207

 

[evernessince]

In addition to what Toothless has said, you can use this cooler scaling data from TPU to see what kind of performance you can expect by cross referencing it to a review: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-cooling-requirements-thermal-throttling/

 

[damric]

Nothing really wrong with the cooler you chose. Right now Thermalright has some excellent options for cheap that are worth giving a look before you decide.

As far as air cooling vs water, if the usage is going to be constantly high like that, some of the advantage of water is negated as it acts like a nice buffer for transient loads. Horizontal layout will also help an air cooler as well. It will probably operate at 90C unless you reduce that threshold in the BIOS, as they tend to turbo up clocks until the limit.

 

[Macro Device]

Thermalright EVO

I see Phantom Spirit 120 EVO for $60, is that it? Looks pretty much beefy, sexy, even.

 

[Toothless]

I see Phantom Spirit 120 EVO for $60, is that it? Looks pretty much beefy, sexy, even.

That's the one. Look at the review for performance as always before purchasing but that'd be my pick.

 

[yfn_ratchet]

Air-cooled 7950X is certainly possible, especially if you can nab an offset mount for the cooler to get the cold plate centered on the CCDs. If you need something that'll chug forever and that you might want to reuse multiple times, the Noctua NH-D15 G2 is the obvious choice.

Otherwise, you can try for something a little more wallet-friendly and go for something akin to a Thermalright FC140 or Scythe Fuma 3. Big ole beefy tower, about $60ish after tax/shipping. Slap some good thermal paste/PTM7950 on there and call it a day.

 

[phanbuey]

+1 for the phantom spirit evo or FC140 - EVO is currently cooling my 13700K like a champ.

 

[freeagent]

For their current stuff for sure the Evo. That would be my first choice. After that FC140..

 

[PenguinBelly]

A decent dual tower cooler should suffice.

 

[Solaris17]

I have 3x 7950x in servers right now and with copper coolers and a row of fans blasting them they get very warm under load. That’s far from a consumers use case as in case itself; but still good to note since you mentioned this would be under 90-100% load constantly.

Should be noted my intake temps in the DC are about 60-65F.

I’ll see high 70C no problem just booting a node.

Note sure if any of this helps.

 

[Macro Device]

would be under 90-100% load constantly.

3 to 5 hours intermittently a day isn't strictly constantly. I guess this PC will have enough time to cool its chrome.

 

[Hankieroseman]

A client of mine wants to build a Ryzen system, likely 7900X-based but he's trying to find some more scratch and go 7950X. Either way, he wants to cool it with a liquid cooling system, possibly making it a full loop with his GPU (likely to be RTX 4070 Ti Super, not decided yet: he still didn't provide enough data for me to point on an exact GPU so we don't discuss that) but he stays open-minded and I am pretty much sure it's possible to work with 7950X only using conventional air cooling solutions. This will also free some budget for a more advanced storage system.

CPU won't rest, that's for sure. Expected to be 90 to 100 % loaded (sound editors, video editors, image editors, all at the same time) for at least 3 hours a day. CPU Overclocking isn't considered but RAM is likely to be tuned to around 6 GT/s CL34 or faster.

My question is... how low can I go and still recommend him a cooler that won't let him down? Not actually a Ryzen thermal dissipation expert, hard to judge what's what in this case.

Is, for example, ID-Cooling SE-207-XT enough? Room temp is likely to never surpass 75F / 24C, the PC case is horizontal so heat from GPU is mostly irrelevant. Significant noise is acceptable.

Noctua has a next gen, G2 version of NH-D15, albeit expensive. ID-Cooling has one that is good and cheap $30. Used a D15 Chromax on a 5950X the last 4 years.

 

[A Computer Guy]

A client of mine wants to build a Ryzen system, likely 7900X-based but he's trying to find some more scratch and go 7950X. Either way, he wants to cool it with a liquid cooling system, possibly making it a full loop with his GPU (likely to be RTX 4070 Ti Super, not decided yet: he still didn't provide enough data for me to point on an exact GPU so we don't discuss that) but he stays open-minded and I am pretty much sure it's possible to work with 7950X only using conventional air cooling solutions. This will also free some budget for a more advanced storage system.

CPU won't rest, that's for sure. Expected to be 90 to 100 % loaded (sound editors, video editors, image editors, all at the same time) for at least 3 hours a day. CPU Overclocking isn't considered but RAM is likely to be tuned to around 6 GT/s CL34 or faster.

My question is... how low can I go and still recommend him a cooler that won't let him down? Not actually a Ryzen thermal dissipation expert, hard to judge what's what in this case.

Is, for example, ID-Cooling SE-207-XT enough? Room temp is likely to never surpass 75F / 24C, the PC case is horizontal so heat from GPU is mostly irrelevant. Significant noise is acceptable.

If you go for liquid if you can snag an old EK velocity block for $20 (used) and Thermal Grizzly AM4/AM5 Offset adaptor for $10 on Amazon that combo seems to work well. Motherboard socket compatibility might be an issue so it's dependent on the socket that the vendor decided to use for the motherboard. I couldn't get the full 7mm offset for mine but 5mm was enough.

 

[Vya Domus]

But why air, I understand a custom loop will be far more expensive but an Artic Liquid Freezer II 360 is not that much more expensive that a good air cooler, is there a specific reason you don't want AIOs ?

 

[yfn_ratchet]

But why air, I understand a custom loop will be far more expensive but an Artic Liquid Freezer II 360 is not that much more expensive that a good air cooler, is there a specific reason you don't want AIOs ?

Were I to guess: ease of service, general longevity, price (even $20 makes a difference for re-investing in the build), and the situation of parts. Going horizontal on an AIO is a tad tough since all best-practices for avoiding evaporation/bubbling-related issues kind of fly out the window lest you want a nice big tubing arch in your build.

 

[Macro Device]

on Amazon

They don't ship to Russia and if I manage to work it around I will spend another 50 to 100 USD just for logistics, also losing a whole lot of time in the process.

But why air

It is MUCH cheaper here in Russia. Good liquid cooling systems cost at least $200. I can use a 70 USD air cooler just as much. Also much easier to install and much less can go wrong because I'm very experienced with air and not experienced with liquid. I am open for experiments but not when it's a client's $3000 machine. I'd rather do it with something I don't mind losing.

 

[freeagent]

Thermalright makes a damn good AIO.. pay attention to what fans it comes with though.

 

[A Computer Guy]

They don't ship to Russia and if I manage to work it around I will spend another 50 to 100 USD just for logistics, also losing a whole lot of time in the process.

It is MUCH cheaper here in Russia. Good liquid cooling systems cost at least $200. I can use a 70 USD air cooler just as much. Also much easier to install and much less can go wrong because I'm very experienced with air and not experienced with liquid. I am open for experiments but not when it's a client's $3000 machine. I'd rather do it with something I don't mind losing.

Oops sorry I forgot your location.

 

[Macro Device]

Oops sorry

's okay, man, I sometimes lose track of my coordinates as well.

 

[freeagent]

Sorry, I just assumed if you could get brand X there that you would have access to all that they sell.

Pardon my ignorance

 

[AleXXX666]

Noctua NH-D15S I suppose - not very overpriced being a dual tower but single fan (the 2nd fan isn't that much to efficiency anyway!)
You could try to find D14 - maybe there are still sold somewhere??

be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 or same older model - 4 if you find

DeepCool ASSASSIN 4S, DeepCool AS500 Plus

 

[9087125]

If your asking how long will it run without problems like degradation, know one can say. There is no data and science Im aware of on this topic, modern day CPUs run hot and are not like the ones from the past where you could guarantee 10years of heavy use. Still, applying the known science of materials, semiconductors, electronics engineering etc would suggest stock it should last in that environment for at least 3-4years. If not there would have to be something wrong. For me i would go water cooled (a really good one) but had no room so i brought a spare cpu just in case. if that helps.

As far as practical goes, the stock 7950X on the Noctua NH-U12A chroma black performs flawlessly and makes Intel systems look like an embarrassing joke. This cpu never draws more than ~200watts. and its the multitasking queen. It doesn't matter what the ambient is, under heavy benchmarking the cpu sits at ~95C. Going over 25C ambient is going out of its comfort zone, at 30C it sits at ~98C and it's output is reduced to 95%. In cinabench this cooler gets 93% of what the best 360 rad coolers get. In hard path tracing gaming 2.5K resolution on 4080super, the cpu temps sit at ~84C in 30C ambient. Dont overclock the ram, it makes no real diff, just risk instability and bs problems. I keep mine stock at 4800MT/s, overclocking is doing what it was never designed to do, if it was, then why dont they enable it out of the box? what is far more important is fast single threaded perf, ssd perf.

With CPU air coolers the bottleneck is always at the interface of the cooler and cpu, large metal mass, surface area, large fans, fan speeds etc dont really matter a whole lot. So any basic case with an 120mm exhaust fan right behind or above it should keep it happy. Id recommend Noctua as they specialize in coolers and getting a good designed cooler is important. I have no idea about other brands, just know noctua are a reputable brand. With the cpu air cooler you want the widest base to minimize power density, the thinnest metal to minimize thermal resistance , more pipes might give a slight increase in perf but again cooler manufacturing is key, have no idea about paste tbh, im under the working assumption that it will need re-pasting every so often. Ive never used a PC where the cpu sits at 90C for hours on end.

Finally as far as photo editing goes, they are very single threaded and require absence ghz, even the 7950x feels like a slug tbh when doing high end photography. 60MP editing is quite taxing.

 

[Macro Device]

Dont overclock the ram, it makes no real diff

In gaming, it does. And my client wants to play vidya on this machine.

If your asking how long will it run without problems like degradation

No, I'm asking if air cooling can allow unleashing the CPU's potential. Like, if we lose more than 5 percent speed because of throttling then it's a cancer idea.

Id recommend Noctua

Noctua coolers are embarrassingly expensive where I live. Budget models are sold for what can buy you a premium device from most other vendors.

 

[Solaris17]

Noctua coolers are embarrassingly expensive where I live. Budget models are sold for what can buy you a premium device from most other vendors

You mention expense a lot in this thread. How about you give us a list of what you have to pick from instead of having us name stars?