AMD Ryzen 9 7950X Cooling Requirements & Thermal Throttling

[W1zzard]

It's not a "big fail", as the content quality makes up for the typos.
You're welcome!

It still is .. these are such simple obvious errors, yet I missed them. There's lot of other things going on right now, you'll understand tomorrow afternoon

 

[bug]

I picked a few applications that cover the whole spectrum of workloads, this part was easy.

Picking games was harder. I wanted something light that represents MOBA games: CSGO.. I also wanted something that scales across cores: Cyberpunk .. then I wanted Far Cry 6 because it scales very well with CPU perf, and then I felt like I could add one more. Then I realized that things will depends on the resolution, so I tested all of them.

Is your underlying question: what are the app-only averages?

https://imgur.com/uPtqDdG

https://imgur.com/07ivP7b

You did your best, no complaints there. I was just saying, if your workload is gaming or productivity heavy, you will see different results.

Why? Maybe you actually definitely want to run them on air and sacrifice a few percent in perf, but you won't have to worry about maintainability? Which costs a lot of $$ in downtime and support man hours?

Productivity seems to hit 95C so much easier than gaming. I imagine that's quite a bit of noise around an office. If you start sacrificing performance, it's likely you'd be better served by the 7900X instead.

 

[W1zzard]

Productivity

Depends on your definition of productivity. Rendering, yeah 95°C all the time while rendering. MS Office? Always idle. Most other productivity loads will be comparable to gaming I'd think. Wish I had temp data for something lighter like Photoshop, but too busy right now with tomorrow's articles

 

[bug]

Depends on your definition of productivity. Rendering, yeah 95°C all the time while rendering. MS Office? Always idle. Most other productivity loads will be comparable to gaming I'd think. Wish I had temp data for something lighter like Photoshop, but too busy right now with tomorrow's articles

Yeah, rendering, photo editing, programming/compiling.

But don't worry about it, I understand there are more aspects to review about these. All I was saying is, if I had to make purchase decision, I would use my head, on top of the figures presented in the article.

 

[W1zzard]

photo editing, programming/compiling

I don't think these will hit 95°C.. let me setup the 7950X real quick

 

[bug]

I don't think these will hit 95°C.. let me setup the 7950X real quick

If you batch edit your photos (that how I usually do it, before editing them one by one) or do some serious compilation (e.g. compile something like Chrome), I'm pretty sure you will. Then again, even of you do that, you're probably not doing it around the clock.

 

[Bwaze]

Yeah heat is a big issue at my place & no way I'm running anything around 95C, I'd rather lose 10~15% performance & be able to run these 15-20C lower but that's just me!

Temperature of CPU cores does not automatically translate to higher heat output.

Zen 4 has an unfortunate combination of:

- very small dies from which the heat is difficult to conduct, and

- very thick heatspreader - made such for the cooler compatibility with AM4.

So even if you would delid and use direct die water cooling with 20 degrees lower core temeratures, that still translates into about 44W of heat for single core torture test and 235W of all core load (rendering...). Maybe a bit less with cooler CPU due to falling resistance, but the difference is small. And even if you use a rival product, you'll still end up with similar heat output for similar performance.

Of course using CPU with lower power, if you don't need that kind of performance, is completely valid. Even Zen 4 offers lower tier processors. I don't think running most expensive CPU in ECO mode makes any sense whatsoever, unless you really have too much money.

 

[bobmeix]

It still is .. these are such simple obvious errors, yet I missed them. There's lot of other things going on right now, you'll understand tomorrow afternoon

Oh, yes: Intel GPUs...

 

[Dirt Chip]

Then re read it.

If a wraith spire at 20% is fine, and it was.

And that's too noisy for you get a MacBook air simple.


But regardless get used to hot chip's, as above hints so AL confirmed, hot chip's are now the normal, unless you do nothing with it.

20% wraith will give you shit performance so thanks but no.

MacBook air- cool story bro'

Hot chips- no problem. Bad thermal design- no go.

 

[R0H1T]

Of course using CPU with lower power, if you don't need that kind of performance, is completely valid. Even Zen 4 offers lower tier processors. I don't think running most expensive CPU in ECO mode makes any sense whatsoever, unless you really have too much money.

Well eco mode doesn't mean handicapped & technically you can limit it to various levels, not just the 105W or 65W modes. Besides for the 105W(+UV or CO) there's not much of a drop in performance for a lot of applications. As for me personally I'm not getting a 7950x anytime soon, but if I were to buy one right now, at the place I'm staying, I wouldn't run it too much above 75-80C because of the heat.

 

[bug]

20% wraith will give you shit performance and still 100% fan noise- the worse for both worlds so I didn't get it..

It's not going to give you "shit" performance. But if you lose 10%, your 7950X won't be any faster than a 7900X. So maybe just get the 7900X, put some of the difference into a better cooler, end up with slightly better performance and still be left with ~$100 in your pocket.

 

[Palladium]

95C is the least of the problems when the cheapest 7600X + X670 bundle here costs three times of what I paid for my 5600 + B550.

 

[bug]

95C is the least of the problems when the cheapest 7600X + X670 bundle here costs three times of what I paid for my 5600 + B550.

Do you really need to pair the 7600X with X670? I was really phased by Zen3 being paired only with high-end chipsets during its first year, I think releasing X670 together with B650 is a huge step forward. Ok, maybe not forward, but back in line.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

20% wraith will give you shit performance and still 100% fan noise- the worse for both worlds so I didn't get it..

MacBook air- cool story bro'

Hot chips- no problem. Bad thermal design- no go.

Read it again 20% fan on a wraith spire cannot be 100% can it, it's 20, 40% is quite too and less on the limit.

MacBook air gets into the 90s check reviews, obviously when doing work.

Design good or bad, I will hope AMD know more than you, they certainly tested it more than you or me.

And it's AMD that is bound to their warranty and liable so my bet is they're right.

 

[r9]

95C is the new 65C - That's just terrible.

 

[Dirt Chip]

Read it again 20% fan on a wraith spire cannot be 100% can it, it's 20, 40% is quite too and less on the limit.

MacBook air gets into the 90s check reviews, obviously when doing work.

Design good or bad, I will hope AMD know more than you, they certainly tested it more than you or me.

And it's AMD that is bound to their warranty and liable so my bet is they're right.

You are right, I fix it regarding the 20%. It is just bad preformance that I can accept on such expensive cpu.

MacBook air is a bad joke compere to the system I'm planning. We can rule this option out thank you.

And by bad design I don't mean it will melfunction in any sort, I'm sure those cpu's will work just fine for many years.
Bad thermal design is hitting max temp under almost any load *without* giving a clear and easy way (if any) to offset noise. This is while any other platform out there can offset noise in a straightforward easy way with no preformance succrefice.

 

[Bwaze]

"Noise is the new silence!"

There, fixed.

;-)

 

[R0H1T]

Bad thermal design is hitting max temp under almost any load *without* giving a clear and easy way (if any) to offset noise.

This is a design choice, to compete with Intel who've been doing this for at least 2-3 gens, however it not a bad thermal design. Lower your "TDP" & undervolt, it's relatively easy & efficient though most of all get a decent cooler.

This is while any other platform out there can offset noise in a straightforward easy way with no preformance succrefice.

I'm sure you know that's not true. Without repeating the same stuff a 100 times I'll just say that if you want the latest & greatest in PC, with much less noise, you will need to sweat it out a bit!

 

[Bwaze]

Do the B650 and X670 motherboards allow fan curves based on other temperatures (like it was sugested) than just CPU temp?

 

[MarsM4N]

I don't understand AMD. They should have used the 65w ECO mode as standard & the 105w as OC mode.
Bet there are more folks unhappy with high temps & high power consumption than a tiny little less performance.

Btw. you can enable now the ECO mode with one click in the Ryzen Master Software. No need to go into the BIOS.
Up to 8 threads there is like no performance drop, after that it falls. But who knows, maybe AMD will do some changes to adress it.

A little preview for TLDR (TLDW?):
It looks like Eco mode basically lowers your TDP class from 105 W to 65 W, your temperature by a lot, and your performance by 5-10%.
View attachment 264135

Now I'm sure that if I end up buying a Zen 4 CPU at some point (the B650 motherboard lineup looks pretty grim at the moment, but we'll see), I'll definitely run it in Eco mode.

15.204 (105w AiO) vs 14.982 (65w AiO) = minus 1.5% (-222). Nowhere near minus 5-10%.
I'll take that all day for 40w less power consumption & 16c less heat.

 

[mb194dc]

It's a puff piece. Yes 95c will ensure your processor at least lasts the warranty period...

Such high temperatures are going to reduce longevity. Like the old Apple battery wear slowdown. Probably intentional.

The problem with reviews these days is a brutally honest assessment likely means trouble.

No reason for anyone past a tiny minority of use cases to bother with AM5 over 4. My guess is the same will be true of the Intel release.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

The very thick IHS is only to make sure AM4 cooler compatibility. If we didn't have it, people would cry for having to swap coolers. Kind of a lose-lose situation.

But only for coolers that dont use a backplate. So anything that isnt a low end air cooler or some liquid coolers STILL isnt compatible.

Great decision, clearly working well!

 

[bug]

15.204 (105w AiO) vs 14.982 (65w AiO) = minus 1.5% (-222). Nowhere near minus 5-10%.
I'll take that all day for 40w less power consumption & 16c less heat.

That's nice and everything, but the baseline for 7900X and 7950X is not 105W, it's 170W.

That said, top-end CPUs have always been pushed. Remember back when Intel actually wrote "Extreme Edition" on them?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It's a puff piece. Yes 95c will ensure your processor at least lasts the warranty period...

Such high temperatures are going to reduce longevity. Like the old Apple battery wear slowdown. Probably intentional.

The problem with reviews these days is a brutally honest assessment likely means trouble.

No reason for anyone past a tiny minority of use cases to bother with AM5 over 4. My guess is the same will be true of the Intel release.

Laptops regularly run at over 90c without issue for years on end. Same for mac minis and the vast majority of business desktops and laptops, the majority of which have long service lives.

Do you have any evidence to back up your theory?

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

You are right, I fix it regarding the 20%. It is just bad preformance that I can accept on such expensive cpu.

MacBook air is a bad joke compere to the system I'm planning. We can rule this option out thank you.

And by bad design I don't mean it will melfunction in any sort, I'm sure those cpu's will work just fine for many years.
Bad thermal design is hitting max temp under almost any load *without* giving a clear and easy way (if any) to offset noise. This is while any other platform out there can offset noise in a straightforward easy way with no preformance succrefice.

There are loads of options.

Just set a fan curve based on load, interior case temps, I would use water temperature personally in my rig.

Or just set a noise optimised top end and leave it to AMD to give you the max performance for your setup in that profile.

Or go old school and have it ramp when loaded with a job.

Calm the hype though they struggle to get to 95 while idle and only poor cooling solutions will hit 95 while heavily gaming.

At Am4 over 5 asshat.

I use my 5900X to it's max with two 360 rads noise optimised at about 1000Rpm fan rpm and under heavy load it sits at 80 for days until the work runs out, same as my 3800X did and the 2600X before it and the FX before it and the q6600 on air before it.

Alllllll did at least 5 years, or will do, and at five years there use is less than effective relative to a new platform so need upgrading anyway.