Question AIO Cooler Specs

[wm3797]

How will I know if AIO cooler can effectively cool 13th gen i7 or i9 ? The specs don't list their TDP ? What temp should I aim for ?

 

[turtletarget111]

As far as specific temps go, anything below 85 degrees is fine; at 90 degrees your CPU will begin to thermal throttle. Anything below 80 degrees is perfectly adequate, and even lower than that is great.

You really can't go wrong with any particular AIO. Some brands will perform slightly better than others, but what really matters is the size of the radiator. A larger radiator means there is more thermal mass to dissipate heat, and more water in the rad to efficiently draw heat away from the cold plate. Aim for a 360mm rad. Any 360mm AIO will cool any 13th gen processor just fine. Corsair has some of the best performing AIO's on the market, so you could start there in terms of a particular cooler. If you are really trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your chip, you should also buy thermal paste. The paste included on coolers is generally low quality. By far the best performing thermal paste is Thermal Grizzly's Kryonaut Paste. It's expensive, but there is no other paste that comes close.

You could also skip AIO's entirely and go with an air cooler. The Noctua NH-D15 frequently outperforms even the highest end water coolers. If you move your system around a lot, then you will want to stick to an AIO to reduce the stress on the CPU socket, but if you have no preference air cooling is the way to go. There is no maintenance or worry of a pump dying. The only thing that can fail on an air cooler is the fan, which is easily replaceable. Choosing between an air cooler or AIO is a decision you will have to make.

One last thing to note here; if you end up purchasing an AIO make sure you mount the radiator to the front of your case, not the top. Mounting the radiator to the top will allow bubbles to get sucked into the pump. Mounting it on the front ensures the air bubbles remain trapped at the top of the radiator where they cannot get pulled into the pump. Hopefully this helped, take care.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

I've got some agreement and disagreements with above.

Agree:
1) 360mm is the minimum to consider. 420mm might see some additional benefit but cases that accommodate them are fewer.

2) Air-coolers can be an option but it's not worth the hassle IMO. Even the best ones will need ideal case circulation. Also I'm not font of the amount of weight that hangs off the board.

Disagree:
1) Mounting on front. Front or top will have no impact on air bubbles. So long as the radiator In/Out) is at the right height, it's fine. Additionally it depends entirely on your case. If you only have front, top and read openings, the front should be pushing fresh air into the case unhindered by a radiator.

2) Kryonaut on paper does perform best but it has two huge issues. First, it's abrasive, it will scratch your coldplate and IHS. Happened to me and tons of others, you can look it up. Another thing you will find mentioned often is that it dries out extremely quickly, weeks-months and loses it's efficacy. It's not worth the cost or time and effort to reapply that frequently for 1 or 2 degrees.

---

And for application of paste, don't obsess over it. Too much is not good, too little is worse. I do the spread method with a small pea amount to avoid air pockets. My temps have never gone above 80 on my CPU.

Also I personally wouldn't consider the i9 if it's for gaming or unless you use a 420mm rad. The i9 is a space heater with marginal gains in most cases (except benchmarks), my vote is to just get an i7-13700.

Lastly, try and find an AIO that has a refill port. It's nice to have the ability to add or replace fluid if need be.

 

[turtletarget111]

You are right with the mounting, so long as the pump is not at the highest point in the AIO, it will run just fine. I must have gotten some things mixed up there. As far as the kyronaut, I have personally used it for the past two years in a few different systems and have never needed to replace it. Temps are still excellent with no thermal throttling. My CPU's have no scratches whatsoever. If there was any scratching, the issue has supposedly been resolved with the new Kryonaut formula.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

You are right with the mounting, so long as the pump is not at the highest point in the AIO, it will run just fine. I must have gotten some things mixed up there. As far as the kyronaut, I have personally used it for the past two years in a few different systems and have never replaced it. Temps are still excellent with no thermal throttling. My CPU has no scratches whatsoever.

You got it on the loop height.

As for the paste, I forgot a crucial detail, at temps above 80 it starts to fail. If it peaks here or there I'm sure it's fine but if it happens regularly it will dry up fast.

As for scratches, maybe you got a "good"/defective batch? There are tons of posts out there about it scratching the components to hell. I don't doubt your experience, just what I've seen for myself and read online.

 

[turtletarget111]

I do not doubt you either. I did a quick search and found numerous posts claiming 80 degrees is the threshold for scratching and the paste drying out. I have a 5800X with a 240mm rad that never gets above 70 degrees, which is perhaps why I have been so lucky. I know Intel chips run extremely hot and guzzle electricity, so for this particular application it may be best to skip the Kryonaut.

 

[wm3797]

May I ask, how often or common do AIO coolers leak ?

 

[turtletarget111]

It's extremely rare that they leak large amounts of fluid like you might imagine. Over time, however, small amounts of water will be replaced by air through permeation. Meaning water can pass through them over time. The amount that is leaked is minisclue; what usually dies on the AIO first is the pump. The lifespan of the average pump depends on how hard you have it running and how long. I have had the same AIO for a little over four years and it still runs flawlessly. The issue people take with water coolers is once the pump dies, you have to throw the whole assembly away. There is no way to replace a dead pump. Corsiar's AIOs generally come with a 5 year warranty, so if you go with them, that's at least 5 guaranteed years of operation.

 

[Karadjgne]

May I ask, how often or common do AIO coolers leak ?

That depends. Everything has a failure rate, but there's no way to accurately assess real failures except for those reported or rma'd.

Also must take into consideration the numbers. Last I saw, Corsair had a 0.1% failure rate for aios, according to what was rma'd. There's also an unknown number of failures where ppl simply tossed the aio in the trash and got something different, and never said a word. But, that's also offset by the sheer amount of rma's that had nothing to do with a leak, like the pump was bad or it didn't fit, or they got freaked by a video or even hooked it up wrong but returned it anyway after being told they leak.

0.1% seems like a minute number, but consider the amount of sales Corsair has, and Corsair is the largest supplier/seller worldwide of aios and has multiple different models. If they sold 10M AIO's around the world last year, thats 10,000 units returned. That number sounds a lot larger than 0.1%. But most are thinking about that 10,000 possible leak situations, and forget about the 9,990,000 perfectly happy customers with no leaks, no dead pumps, works just as they intended.

If Fractal Design sold 500,000 aios, that's just 500 units returned, but add all the units from all the companies (not counting cheap Chinese knockoffs) and you might be looking at worldwide returns in excess of 30,000 units, but that's compared to the 30Million actually sold.

Can aios leak? Yep, they can. And 90% ish of the ones that do were not caused by factory quality or manufacturing defects, they are caused by the installer.

Ppl worry about leaks far too much, they are essentially harmless in almost all cases, the coolant used is non-conductive, if it was conductive then nobody would build custom loops because those are almost guaranteed to leak during initial startup. It's a fluke if you can put a loop together and not have a leak, anywhere, no matter how carefully it's built.

Can aircoolers leak? Yep, they leak too, even Noctua. Warped bases, fans that don't work, fins not soldered well, aircoolers have their own failures as well, but nothing scares ppl like liquid in an expensive pc where it's entirely possible to get drips on the single most expensive component that sits directly under the pump, your gpu.

For decent cooling, you want 2x the actual cpu power (not TDP) used. For adequate cooling, 1.5x. A 120mm AIO is roughly 150w. 240mm is 250w, 280mm is 300w, 360mm is 350w and a 420mm is 400w. Roughly. There are no exact measurements because it's a liquid transport and liquids become more or less efficient depending on coolant temp.

Considering that a 13900k/KS can hit 300w+, a 360mm is a minimum recommended, even a NH-D15 can't tame that beast if actually pushed to that wattage, but that's rare with the amount of cores and Intels turbo mechanisms. So a NH-D15 can work ok just for gaming, you aren't using all the P-cores and all the E-cores simultaneously. But I'd not use it for stuff like folding@home or heavy rendering projects, I'd use a 360/420mm instead, or preferably a well designed custom loop that'll hit @ 500w or better in capacity.

Also got to figure boosts in all that. If the 13900k can hit 80° on a 5.2GHz turbo, it's going to supercede that boost and hit 5.3GHz instead, raising the temp to 90°, just because it feels like it can. So you may get 90° with a NH-D15, and also 90° with a 360mm AIO, the difference being the NH-D15 cpu is at 5.2GHz and the 360mm is at 5.35GHz instead. The temp isn't always a reflection of the ability of the cooler, but temp combined with speed, is.

 

[wm3797]

Regarding i7 13700K, i9 13900K with 360mm AIO coolers, what minimum wattage PSU do yous recommend

 

[geofelt]

Regarding i7 13700K, i9 13900K with 360mm AIO coolers, what minimum wattage PSU do yous recommend

The wattage you need is more related to the gpu than the cpu.
Here is a handy chart:

PSU REQUIREMENTS - RealHardTechX

PSU REQUIREMENTS - RealHardTechX

www.realhardtechx.com

If you are seeking record overclocks then a top cooler is what you need.

But for normal operations the need is not as great as you might think.

Here is one article testing 13900K with less than top end coolers:

Core i9-13900K Cooling Guide: Testing Intel's Flagship With Budget Air and Big AIOs

The Core i9-13900K can push even the most capable liquid coolers to their limits, but you don’t lose that much performance if you go with budget-priced air cooling.

www.tomshardware.com

Or, in video form:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNFgswzTvyc


One Intel engineer is quoted as saying"if you are not running at 100c. you are leaving performance on the table:

 

[wm3797]

But for normal operations the need is not as great as you might think.

O I see. Do 360 AIOs consume a lot of watts ??

 

[geofelt]

O I see. Do 360 AIOs consume a lot of watts ??

The power used by a 360 aio is minimal.
Three 120mm fans and the pump might consume perhaps 25w; not a big consideration.