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Thermalright does the thermals right.
GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.
- Thread starter Smaug's Smokey Hole
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Just Some Other Guy
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While yes you don't need to match cooler tdp to CPU tdp, going larger when you can is usually a sound choice. Even if for just wanting to be able to run the fans slower while still hitting a desired temp level.
When you can get d15-beating coolers for like $30, or even 360mm aios for $60 there's really no good reason to not go big, unless you don't have space.
When you can get d15-beating coolers for like $30, or even 360mm aios for $60 there's really no good reason to not go big, unless you don't have space.
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- Nov 15, 2021
Right, we're talking about a $60 fan here, not wasting money on a $5000 workstation CPU you don't really need.
In other news, 4090s continue to melt:
In other news, 4090s continue to melt:
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Really I just want to go all out. I have the space, and if it means cooler temps overall, I'm happy with that. I just don't want to worry about a fan not being enough tbh, it's a lot in my head really.
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They do, but it's like a car radiator where the fans keep the liquid frosty.
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Just Some Other Guy
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Errr...well somewhere above ambient, but yeah
This is why the best way to control liquid cooler fan speed is with the liquid temp, not cpu temp. The fans cool the coolant, not the component.
This is usually done by aiming for a specific delta T over ambient air temp. The closer, the better...but then you need more/ louder cooling.
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Makes enough sense. But that's basically why I want a liquid cooler. It's more complicated sure, but it works the same way a car radiator does. If you can cool a engine with the same tech, you can cool a tiny chip. Nice of you explaining the physics tho.Errr...well somewhere above ambient, but yeah
This is why the best way to control liquid cooler fan speed is with the liquid temp, not cpu temp. The fans cool the coolant, not the component.
This is usually done by aiming for a specific delta T over ambient air temp. The closer, the better...but then you need more/ louder cooling.
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Both solutions involve blowing air over metal fins. The big difference with liquid cooling is water is used to move the heat away from the CPU to a cool place so that the fan-fin apparatus works more efficiently.
With air cooling, everything happens inside your computer case, which is significantly warmer than the outside air, so the cooling is less efficient. The reason is that, for a given system with a coefficient of heat transfer h_t, the rate at which you can move heat out of it is:
heat transfer rate = h_t * (T_hot - T_cold)
T_cold for air cooling is the temperature inside your case. T_cold for water cooling is your room temperature. Thus with water cooling, you get a bigger temperature differential and therefore more effective cooling.
Here's an example of datacenter-scale water cooling. But yes, same basic principle as a car radiator - move the heat somewhere cold and do the cooling there.
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Exactly. If I was using the previous i7 I bought, I'd go air cooling, it'd be just fine. I want that level of efficiency even if it brings added complexity. Part of that admittedly is that I'm thinking of having fun with some CPU intensive tasks. Not just games. I want it to run at load for extended periods and remain stable.
Just Some Other Guy
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That's not really why liquid cooling is better for PCs. Hell, a lot of large air coolers can match quite a few AIOs. This is shown during testing as 120mm AIOs are generally useless, and 240s usually get beat.
Assuming you have sufficient air movement in your case, it really shouldn't be that much warmer than the outside air. This is important anyways when your GPU and CPU are air cooled.
Liquid coolers mainly benefit from increased surface area of the radiator(s), and liquid being a more efficient way of transferring heat.
Server rooms are different because they concentrate a lot more heat output than a PC sitting in an office.
Assuming you have sufficient air movement in your case, it really shouldn't be that much warmer than the outside air. This is important anyways when your GPU and CPU are air cooled.
Liquid coolers mainly benefit from increased surface area of the radiator(s), and liquid being a more efficient way of transferring heat.
Server rooms are different because they concentrate a lot more heat output than a PC sitting in an office.
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Modern air coolers use heat pipes, a remarkably effective method of moving heat from the die to the fins.
What liquid coolers benefit from is being able to have a huge surface area thanks to the radiator being decoupled from the motherboard, as well as the large amount of water inside them creating a buffer that can soak a fair amount of heat to dissipate later, meaning the fans are constantly spinning up and down to deal with momentary spikes from boosting during bursty loads.
Just Some Other Guy
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Yep. This is why custom loops are nice. Just add more radiator lol.
*Edit* and to anyone who really cares about cooling, buy big cases. Bigger the better. Though it is funny watching people cram 4090s into sff builds. Saw one where the GPU fans were like an inch away from the PSU shroud (maybe less) and was wondering why it was running hot.
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Leaded Gasoline
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One potential downside to liquid coolers that does not get mentioned enough is that the board VRMs may run significantly hotter due to the lower airflow near the CPU area, make sure to also watch the VRM sensors if you plan to leave your computer at full load for many hours at once.
Just Some Other Guy
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Hmmm. Maybe with a smaller case with less fans.
I have no input as I've only ever owned large cases with lots of fans. I suppose if your setup is already a tad slow I could see that happening.
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Temperatures inside a case can get significantly hotter than the outside air, especially near your heat sinks, and triply especially if you don't have a bunch of ventilation fans, e.g. this simulation. Note the recirculating warm air behind the CPU, which will result in the left side of the heat sink working significantly less effectively than the right side:
Yes, I am currently working with servers that dissipate 4000W with air cooling alone. A $60 water cooler won't do that. They also sound like fucking jet engines, and I spend my day in earmuffs. Ultimately, it takes a tremendous amount of air flow to avoid recirculation zones and hot spots. Much easier to do with water. Probably our next gen hardware will require a water cooling solution like I posted above, again, for the same reasons - air flow alone is prone to recirculation zones and hot spots, which degrade cooling efficiency.
Even if you keep the surface area constant, they have better fin efficiency because the radiator fins are so thin in the direction of the flow. So they also benefit from a lack of geometric constraints.
I don't know that moving heat from a CPU to a radiator is actually more efficient using water than direct contact.
Car radiators, datacenter cooling systems, and liquid PC coolers work on the same principle - move the energy somewhere cool to do your cooling, rather than staying near the hot thing. And funnily enough, air-cooled datacenters look much the same as your PC on a large scale. Cold air comes in a giant box at one end, passes over rows of hot things, and leaves out the other end.
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It operates off convection, which is pretty efficient in terms of boiling and circulating water. A lot of it really just relies on physics, with the fan to help push it along and speed up the cooling process.
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It's more efficient than convection over a constant distance, but we're not talking about a constant distance. You're moving the heat sink far away from the heat source, then using water to move the heat from the source to the sink:
I'm pretty sure that if all other things were equal, the left-hand apparatus would be more efficient than the right-hand apparatus. But all things aren't equal. Moving the heat sink away from the heat source allows your heat sink to operate more efficiently, since the air over there is cooler, and and you can use a flatter, thinner radiator. i.e. the actual situation for a typical PC is more like:
But given a sufficiently wind-tunnel-like box and a big enough heat sink, you can cool anything. Each of these heat sinks in the picture is used for cooling a 750W GPU and its memory:
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- Dec 12, 2022
That bottom pic looks cool and chunky, ngl
As for the cooling, I think that's the right explanation. It's a matter of practicality separating the radiator from the cpu block. Otherwise it would look something like the bottom picture, absolutely fucking massive, moreso than a AiO cooler already is.
On a side note, I want to ask what you thought of 11th gen Intel cores.
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It was not quite as fast as a same-gen Ryzen despite sucking down twice as much energy. Not a good processor for its time, ran quite hot.