Hello,
I want to get a little more aggressive with my overclock on my 1700. Currently I have a H60 120mm AIO and would like to replace it as it gets heat socked easily.
I like the idea of the Noctua because I don’t have to worry about a pump failing.
What do you guys think?
A 240mm AIO is going to cool better and if setup properly, can last for many many years. You can also usually setup a temperature point in your bios to shutoff your system if the cpu temperature was to get too hot, which would prevent against damage in the case of a pump failure. Really the dangers of using an AIO can be subsided by installing the unit correctly, and by setting that temperature shutdown point at a reasonable place.
The Noctua coolers handily beats the Asetek CLCs with a round coldplate.
I’m running a Noctua and my lack of overclocking has nothing to do with temperatures. I just didn’t win the silicone lottery so 3800MHz stable will have to do for me.
The main benefits of an AIO is aesthetic and the way it moves the heat to the outer edge of the case away from the socket area. Large Air coolers like the Noctua can crowd the top card slot. On one of my previous builds, I found that the back of the top graphics card (7970 in crossfire on socket 2011) was heat soaking the CPU cooler. I swapped to an AIO and although louder than the Noctua I had originally fitted it ran cooler. Not because it was more efficient but because the radiated heat from the back of the card was not impacting on the CPU cooler.
So AIO’s look nice and move the heat to the outer edge of the case. They are, however, more expensive, more complex, have more moving parts and most often louder, they will fail sooner than an air cooler like the Noctua. When they do fail they can kill most everything in your PC if the water leaks out.
AIO’s are very fashionable right now, I’m old school and prefer a good air cooler like the Noctua. That’s not to say I have not used AIO’s because I have but only in particular situations, to solve a particular problem.
With Ryzen heat is not your major issue, not once you are talking about AIO’s and Noctua coolers. It’s more about the silicon lottery and stability of power delivery from your motherboard.
So pick your poison, just know why you are making the choices you are making. Either will get the job done, just don’t expect more than few hundred MHz over what you are currently getting.
I think AIOs are a great idea if you can stick the radiator at the front of the case to pull in the fresh cold air, because it doesn’t matter if the slightly warmer air is passing through the system so much then. If you can’t place it at the front, you might as well go Noctua.
The Scythe Fuma would be a solid choice…
The TR4 specific Noctua beats the non-TR4 specific AIO when used on a TR4 processor. That result does NOT extend itself to when your talking about smaller sockets and cpu’s, such as AM4 and R7 1700. An AIO is still a better performer when we are talking about equally sized cold plates, as proven here in an OC3D article and video that compared the Noctua D15S (a bigger and better performing) version of the U12S the OP is talking about, against a selection of 240mm and 280mm AIO’s. Shocker, the AIO’s won.
https://overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/amd_ryzen_5_7_cpu_cooler_round_up/6
OK, here’s the deal…
Noctua NH-D14, NH-U14S or NH-D15 is what you want. U12S is great and all, but it’s 120mil… It can only cool so far…
For 240 AIO I would say Cooler Master. Why? Because they don’t rebrand shit. They make their own stuff. There is Master Liquid Lite 240, I got it for 51Euro. I think you may be able to find it below 50$ in US…
Other than that most other 240s are pretty much rebranded Asetek units.
So there’s that…
240 AIO may get slightly better thermals than D14, but D14 is quieter, have longer lifespan, and the difference really isn’t all that large. May be margin of error?!
Crap my bad, I thought we were talking about the 1900x for some reason.
I’ve got the 1700x with the NH-U12S and it runs quite well at stock (30-40°C at idle, which may seem kinda hot, but it’s adequate, considering when running prime95, it doesn’t go above 64°C) and I’ve heard that at the same clocks the 1700 tends to run slightly cooler than the 1700x.
However, if you’re going to overclock it aggressively, I would recommend you get a beefier cooler. A 240 AIO would be fine, or if you’re worried about pump failure, you could get a Noctua NH-D15. The Thermalight Le Grand Macho RT is a good option as well and it’s cheaper than the D15, but I’ve heard it’s a bit of a pain to install
the dh 14/15>>>>>>>>>>>>>12s and if you cant fit a 14/15 get a 240mm
I love this community!
Thank you all for the input. I liked the idea of the dh12 just to change things up but the best solution seems to be AIO. I have lots of room to install it in the front of the case. @TheCaveman I will watch that video. @psycho_666 I will look into the Cooler Master AIOs.
Thank you again everyone.
The Cooler Master Masterliquid Lite 240 is cheap right now (12 hours left):
It’s not going to be a great performer though…
The tubing is really thin, meaning low water flow. The fans are surprisingly quiet for the 30dba rating… But the aio will not be the best performer…
I don’t want something low quality. I don’t mind spending more as long as it’s for a good reason.
corair h100iv2 is pretty good and has a great warrenty that covers your entire system if it is damaged by the aio. the dh 14 will at times outpreform it IF you can fit it in your system. also their were some other aio’s that scored better on a graph but didnt have as good warrentys, so i suggest the corsair.
heres some cooler roundups
and ryzen doesnt get as hot as kaby lake but it gives you an idea of the relative performance of your options.
I was running an H100iV2 before I built the loop. At 3.95GHz my 1700X never got over 70°C under extreme stress tests, and normal operation (even using highly parallelized operations - CNC toolpath calculation) never cleared 62°C.
I’d probably sell the cooler but this time of year would be pretty bad for it considering all the sales.
At any rate I recommend it, it was a great performer IMO.
Yeah well 3.9Ghz / 4.0Ghz if lucky with a decent motherboard.
But thats pretty much all you will get from the 1700.
An 240mm Aio is probablly going to perform a littlebit better wenn it comes to,
temperatures on an extended period of time.
But it isnt going to bring you much better clockspeeds.