[SOLVED] Air-cooling or liquid-cooling for an i9-10900K ?

[Prasad007]

Is Liquid Cooler , NZXT Kraken Z63 280mm better or Air Cooler , Noctua NH-U12A better or any Liquid Cooling better for INTEL i9 10900K Processor ?

 

[jay32267]

Is Liquid Cooler , NZXT Kraken Z63 280mm better or Air Cooler , Noctua NH-U12A better or any Liquid Cooling better for INTEL i9 10900K Processor ?

I'm using a NOCTUA NH-U14S on an i9-10900x and it works fine. Temps go to around 70C on max load from what I recall.
The NH-U14S is good up to 220w TDP.
The i9-10900x and i9-10900k are rated at 165w TDP.

 

[Dean0919]

Air cooling for various reasons.

 

[geofelt]

Define "better"

What is the make/model of your case?
Regardless of the cooler, any case must be able to feed the cooling radiator with sufficient fresh air to let the cooler do it's job.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling. The difference is where the heat exchange takes place.
Two 120/140mm front intakes will be sufficient.

There are only two situations where I think a liquid cooler would be more appropriate.

1. If there is insufficient headroom to install an air cooler.
2. You are a hobbyist seeking record overclocks and can use a 360 aio or custom setup.

Otherwise:

a) A twin tower air cooler like a noctua NH-D15s in a good case will cool about as well as a 280 aio cooler.
b) Air will usually cost less.
c) Liquid coolers do not last forever. In time air will permeate the cooling tubes rendering the cooler ineffective and need be replaced.
d) Aio coolers do not supply any cooling to the motherboard vrm parts. That is important for high end processors like I9's
e) AIO mounting involves tradeoffs. If the radiator is mounted in front, the cpu is cooled well, but the graphics card and motherboard get the heated air. Iv the radiator is mounted on top, the radiator gets warmed case air and the cpu will not be cooled as well.
f) Air will usually be quieter, particularly the noctua units.
g) While uncommon, liquid leaks can happen with disastrous consequences. Air will never leak.

 

[Prasad007]

Define "better"

What is the make/model of your case?
Regardless of the cooler, any case must be able to feed the cooling radiator with sufficient fresh air to let the cooler do it's job.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling. The difference is where the heat exchange takes place.
Two 120/140mm front intakes will be sufficient.

There are only two situations where I think a liquid cooler would be more appropriate.

1. If there is insufficient headroom to install an air cooler.
2. You are a hobbyist seeking record overclocks and can use a 360 aio or custom setup.

Otherwise:

a) A twin tower air cooler like a noctua NH-D15s in a good case will cool about as well as a 280 aio cooler.
b) Air will usually cost less.
c) Liquid coolers do not last forever. In time air will permeate the cooling tubes rendering the cooler ineffective and need be replaced.
d) Aio coolers do not supply any cooling to the motherboard vrm parts. That is important for high end processors like I9's
e) AIO mounting involves tradeoffs. If the radiator is mounted in front, the cpu is cooled well, but the graphics card and motherboard get the heated air. Iv the radiator is mounted on top, the radiator gets warmed case air and the cpu will not be cooled as well.
f) Air will usually be quieter, particularly the noctua units.
g) While uncommon, liquid leaks can happen with disastrous consequences. Air will never leak.

I want to get a new PC with i9 10900k . so wanted to ask about Air or Liquid cooling , If possible can you say what PC config is good for a 3D Artist

 

[Phaaze88]

The 165w TDP is at base clock only.
The TDP for Turbo boost is 1.5x the base TDP, so ~250w.

For your peace of mind, I would also suggest air, unless you're ok with the idea of the inevitable following:
A few years(+/-) down the road, you start up your PC only to find you're having temperature issues, because the pump inevitably fails, forcing you to purchase a brand new one.
A hybrid cooler requires you to have a backup on hand, preferably an air cooler, so you don't incur downtime until you get the replacement.
This makes them more expensive than they initially appear.

 

[geofelt]

I am not familiar with 3d artist.
A google search turned up this article which may be of interest to you:

Best Workstation Computer for 3D Modeling and Rendering

Best Computers & Workstations in different Tier Builds for 3D Modeling and Rendering, CPU Rendering & GPU Rendering

www.cgdirector.com

What is your budget?
Is there a reason why you are particularly interested in i9-10900K?
To my mind, if buying new, one should opt for the latest generation.
That would be Intel i7 -11700k or i9-11900K.
Both have 8 cores and 16 threads.
The advantage is that the performance per core is on the order of 19% better vs the 10th gen i9-10900K.
If you need many threads, then the i9-10900K is a bit better with 10 cores and 20 threads.
AMD may be a good option, particularly if you need many threads.
The performance per core of the 5000 series processors is comparable to Intel
The 5950x has 32 threads, but it is a $1000 class processor.

Any of these products can generate a lot of heat.
No doubt a good cooler can get the last ounce of performance out of them.
How good do you need to be?

Depending on what you do, it may turn out that more ram, a strong graphics card, or fast ssd is more important than the particular cpu/cooling selection

 

[Prasad007]

I am not familiar with 3d artist.
A google search turned up this article which may be of interest to you:

Best Workstation Computer for 3D Modeling and Rendering

Best Computers & Workstations in different Tier Builds for 3D Modeling and Rendering, CPU Rendering & GPU Rendering

www.cgdirector.com

What is your budget?
Is there a reason why you are particularly interested in i9-10900K?
To my mind, if buying new, one should opt for the latest generation.
That would be Intel i7 -11700k or i9-11900K.
Both have 8 cores and 16 threads.
The advantage is that the performance per core is on the order of 19% better vs the 10th gen i9-10900K.
If you need many threads, then the i9-10900K is a bit better with 10 cores and 20 threads.
AMD may be a good option, particularly if you need many threads.
The performance per core of the 5000 series processors is comparable to Intel
The 5950x has 32 threads, but it is a $1000 class processor.

Any of these products can generate a lot of heat.
No doubt a good cooler can get the last ounce of performance out of them.
How good do you need to be?

Depending on what you do, it may turn out that more ram, a strong graphics card, or fast ssd is more important than the particular cpu/cooling selection

IS Intel i7 -11700k better than i9-10900K for 3d rendering .

 

[geofelt]

IS Intel i7 -11700k better than i9-10900K for 3d rendering .

I would think so.
I7-11700K with 16 threads has a passmark rating of 25178.
That is when all 16 threads are fully utilized like it can be with a rendering app.
The single thread rating is 3471 which is more applicable to modeling.

By comparison, the i9-10900K has 4 more threads, but they are slower.
The i9-10900K rating is 23957 and the single thread rating is 3166.

 

[sonofjesse]

I use the fuma 2 on the 10850k and its like 29C at idle a real kitten.

I like air coolers personally cheaper, don't leak/go bad. Most you will have to do is a simple repaste in 15 years lol

 

[mdd1963]

Not sure even a Noctua NH-D15 will tame a 10900K at full Intel-spec turbo speeds of 5.0 GHz beyond 60 seconds , but, XTU should allow easy tweaking to whatever sustained all-core clocks can be handled within a reasonable core voltage...

 

[geofelt]

Not sure even a Noctua NH-D15 will tame a 10900K at full Intel-spec turbo speeds of 5.0 GHz beyond 60 seconds , but, XTU should allow easy tweaking to whatever sustained all-core clocks can be handled within a reasonable core voltage...

I use a NH-D15s with a i9-11900KF.
I just leave the turbo mechanism do its thing. No heat issues at all.
A simple cpu stress test seems to run at 4.98 with no problem.
I have no doubt that a i9-10900K would give similar results.

I7-11700K would do better from the heat point of view.
It will not turbo up quite as high as the 11900K but the cost is quite a bit loser.
I also tested with a i7-11700K and NH-D15s and the results were similar.
The max turbo was not quite as high.

If you ask why I changed, the 11700K was the best I could find initially.
Subsequently I found a 11900KF available for a decent price, and I had planned on using the 11700K for an upgrade to my Son's pc.

 

[revodo]

Here's the TL;DR version.

Heatsinks
Back in the day, passive heatsinks were enough for a lot of chips. Not anymore. Nowadays they're almost always included in one of the other types of cooling.

Air Cooling
Make blades. Move blades. Air moves. Heat gets caught up and transported away from poor chip that is dying of heatstroke.

Liquid Cooling
This is basically how your car is cooled. It works. It works well, but requires more maintenance, prone to leaks, etc.

Phase Change Cooling
What your refrigerator uses. Massive setup for the area that's actually cooled. PC cooling on a computer is highly effective, but extremely limited and targeted. Also expensive as hell and the unit itself is huge.

Liquid Nitrogen
Yup, Terminator 2 stuff. Ungodly cooling capabilities, but highly volatile and dangerous, and requires a lot of refueling. Also can damage the CPU.

And that's pretty much it. We haven't really come up with an alternative cooling method that's highly effective, safe, and reasonably priced for the consumer market. Not that liquid nitrogen is, but I felt the need to throw that in there since a lot of enthusiasts play around with it.