I’m building around a 7950X and planned to air cool everything, but it doesn’t seem like current coolers can keep up (e.g. Noctua NH-D15). And even if they’ll be OK, my instinct is that the fan noise might start to be an issue (even in a case like the torrent).
Is it time to move to AIOs and custom loops? What are you planning to use?
(Note: It seems like the BeQuiet Pure Loop 360 is a good option on the cheaper side of things, especially if you want to wait for the market to catch up a bit).
What are you using your computer for? Will you constantly be hitting all cores at 100% for hours at a time? Or will you generally be browsing the internet, playing games, etc? The CPU is only going to hit 95C if you’re hitting those cores at 100%.
Benchmarks seem to show that turn on Eco mode, at almost half the power usage you keep nearly 90% of the multi core performance while keeping 100% of the single core performance. Ryzen 9 7950X: Power Consumption & ECO Mode Tests - YouTube
So here’s my thought. If you have a D15 already, then try it out and if it gets too hot turn on Eco mode. If you’re buying a new system go for a good AIO and take full advantage of that performance. I’d also ask yourself whether you’d want to buy a (rumored) 7950X3D in 6-12 months. You’ll have cheaper motherboards, cheaper RAM, and hopefully more performance. Plus maybe some more data on if your D15 is losing you performance.
It’s a completely new system - main use case is work (software dev, multiple vms, containers, etc), but I’ll definitely use it for gaming (VFIO and native) as well. I’m upgrading from an ITX Ncase M1 (i7-7700K / 1080ti) that turned into my work machine when I started to work from home fulltime. It’s definitely showing it’s age, but still surprisingly competent.
I do dabble in some large codebases that will take advantage of all the cores, but my day-to-day is more bursty…
AMD does say you can hit up to 90c and you are totally fine but I think current coolers should be able to handle it no problem. Otherwise we would have seen a whole new line cooler products long before sale day.
I do like the Be Quiet Dark Rock 4 cooler I am using on my 3950X. She is quiet.
Side note, does anyone know what the longevity of AIOs are like these days? I’m still on the side of air cooling. No leaks, no permeation, less critical failure modes.
Would you trust an AIO running constantly for 2-3 years on a 7950X?
Just set your max fan speed to whatever max noise level you are comfortable with and the cpu will give you as much performance as it can inside that noise limit.
The target temperature for AMD’s precision boost algorithm has always been TjMax for Zen2/Zen3 and now Zen4. TjMax is 95C in boxed versions across the three generations as far as I’m aware.
What’s new in Zen4 is that due to improvement in microarchitecture & manufacturing process node, TjMax is way easier to hit (which is good because in a sense the processor works to its highest potential).
Also ‘new’ in Zen4 is the worry that the processor might be easier to be thermal throttling, and hence tampering performance.
Now there is good evidence posted on Reddit that thermal throttling is pretty much not an issue. Between a ‘very poor’ cooler and a ‘very beefy’ cooler, the performance difference in Cinebench is less than 9% on 7950X, less than 7% on 7900X, less than 4% on 7700X, and less than 2.5% on 7600X.
Separately, a decent German publisher found that 60% of stock power limit retains 95% of top performance across a bunch of workloads.
So what cooler used to work for Zen2/3, should continue to work well for Zen4. There is little need to go exotic on cooling, contrary to the perception in initial public reactions.
First off, thank you all for participating in this thread!
I decided to go with the aforementioned be quiet! Pure Loop 360 for my initial build with the 7950x. It’s known to fit the new socket and cheap enough that if something comes along that’s significantly better, I wont mind shelling out some extra cash. Who knows, maybe this AIO will be the gateway drug custom loops!? [doubtful]
I’ll probably end up tuning the power delivery a bit to achieve my goals? But, we’ll see what the perf/heat/dB characteristics are first.
I’ll post an update once I get everything in and running… just need to find a main board and some decent memory
Re: Zen 3.
Tjmax is 95C for R5 5600X, R7 and R9 5xx0X had tjmax 90C. And you start noticing boost dropping of from about 60C, more noticable around 73-75C. Many wl will top out around 80-85C with decent cooling.
Apparently you’re right. These X-suffix SKUs either have 95 or 90 as TjMax.
There was a brief discussion in another thread about the reliability of constantly reaching TjMax. This uncovered little fact of different TjMax with chiplet-based Ryzen does show TSMC & AMD take silicon reliability seriously & ‘with sophisticated modelling’.
Zen2 is similar. Voltage/freq starts hopping up/down when Tctl >= ~80C. If you apply a few 10s of mV, the throttle will delay a bit to a higher temperature point. I believe on AM4 current delivery reaches limits first before temperature.
The three limiting criteria: temperature, current, power in precision boost algorithm remains the same since Zen2. So I would say many Tech tubers got it wrong declaring AMD changes boost algorithm, and Zen4 starts a new norm…
I would get an AIO that can adjust fan speed based on liquid temp instead of CPU temp, as the PC remains dead quiet for occasional spikes, even a couple minutes of 100% utilization. I looked around for Pure Loop 360 info but didn’t see anything about it having that ability. My EVGA CLC 360 has that ability but I can’t recommend it unless you have 3x 120mm fans to replace the noisy ones that are included… Although it is only $89 on EVGA’s website so not too bad of a price. I’m pretty sure it’s going to work on the 7950x because I saw a video of someone using the 280mm version on a 7950x. (YouTube video: “Most X670 motherboard VRMs are MASSIVE OVERKILL”)
I also work from home doing development on a VM and it’s why I have a 7950x on the way. I can’t even consider Intel CPUs until VMware workstation supports P cores and E cores at the same time.
A more general question: are there motherboards or 3rd party HW solution available out there that allow you to adjust fan speeds based on dGPU temp or even better decision based on a combination of multiple sensors such as VRM, CPU, dGPU(s) ?
I can see software based solution certainly can do to some extent. If so, are such software already made for Linux?
I think HW or UEFI based solution has the advantage of being cross platforms as well as working well for VFIO’ed host machine.
I don’t know. Perhaps what I’m dreaming is really in the domain of OEM systems with tight & nice integration.
