YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

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chriscambridge
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YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

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damienh
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by damienh »

That is indeed a rather large cooler!
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by UBT - Timbo »

Hi both

What strikes me as being quite crazy, is that many moons ago, when CPU's such as the Pentium 4 (3.06 GHz version) used a 90-130nm process, the actual cross sectional area of the CPU was quite small, they were quite inefficient (the core needing say 1.5V), running at about 3 GHz and with TDP around 80-130W, the fan-based coolers were pretty small but usually ran at high-ish speeds.

Now, say 20 years later, we have CPU's based on sub-10nm processes, with larger cross-sectional areas, are far more efficient, (operating at lower core voltages) and still running at around the same 3 GHz mark, with TDPs of 25-165W and yet the coolers have grown massively.

regards
Tim
chriscambridge
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by chriscambridge »

That is indeed a rather large cooler!
Its not often a air cooler outperforms AIO, hence why I thought id post these reviews.
with TDPs of 25-165W
The Default TDP of the 3990x is 280W+
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by UBT - Timbo »

chriscambridge wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:23 pm The Default TDP of the 3990x is 280W+
Hi Chris

Ah - you got me there, as I'm not an avid follower of AMD devices.

280W is indeed an awfully high figure. One wonders what is actually better: 1x 3990 at 280W or 8x Core i7 7700T each with 8 vCores running at 2.9 GHz and TDP of 35W each. I guess it depends what one is trying to do with the CPU !! :-)

regards
Tim
chriscambridge
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by chriscambridge »

Yeah I guess there are pros and cons for each.
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by damienh »

Small overclocks also very rapidly increase that 280w number
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by damienh »

UBT - Timbo wrote: Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:58 pm One wonders what is actually better: 1x 3990 at 280W or 8x Core i7 7700T each with 8 vCores running at 2.9 GHz and TDP of 35W each.
This is actually not the right comparison: the 7700T is 4c/8t whereas the 3990x is 64c/128t (i.e. 128 vCores). You're therefore looking at 16x 7700Ts, amounting to 560w when operating at their BASE frequency of 2.9GHz. The 3990x is a hugely efficient processor and generally performs very far above 2.9GHz, even while staying within its 280w power limit.
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by damienh »

I bought one of these Coolermaster Wraith Rippers for a system I built on an open bench chassis. It actually works a lot better than I had expected and pretty neatly tames the stock 280w. I haven't enabled the RGB outside of testing, but can say that it's pretty nice and would look good inside a windowed case.

Image

It is a bit more expensive and also less effective than the Noctua NH-U14S, so definitely a bit more style over substance. Effective nonetheless, and I'm pretty happy with it so far.
chriscambridge
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by chriscambridge »

That video review said that the Wraith couldnt really handle the 3990X, or maybe that was when overclocked.
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by damienh »

chriscambridge wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 3:54 pm That video review said that the Wraith couldnt really handle the 3990X, or maybe that was when overclocked.
Yeah, maybe it's because he was looking for high performance (i.e. overclocked) solutions. I do have some full custom water loops for that kind of thing but, given all of my issues, I've moved away from overclocking these chips for 24/7 running.

This open-bench host is the 64 vCore 3970x and that chip shares the same 280w power draw as the larger 128 vCore 3990x. That results in a difference in processor frequency, but it's not a huge difference given rapidly diminishing returns as frequency increases. I am actually running it at just 200w usually, which is still ~50% more power per core than a 3990x at 280w.

In any case, at full 280w load, I see it hovering around 68-70 degrees in a warm(ish) room, open bench. The clocks look to be comparable to when I had that chip in a custom water loop too, so no noticeable impact really, not at stock at least.

Still, I believe that many of these other coolers are superior, particularly on a price-performance basis. I just liked the look of this one and thought that it would be fine at stock, which was my target. I am thinking of replacing the internal fan with my favourite fan - the Noctua NF-A12x25.
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by damienh »

Looking more closely at that video, the target power draw for his manual overclock is about 410w PPT (CPU package power target), so well above stock.
chriscambridge
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Re: YT Review: TR 3990X Cooling

Post by chriscambridge »

I never manually O/C, the only thing I do is let the BIOS do any auto overclocking.
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