Question Best airflow case under 110$

[anandhu2]

I am replacing my gigabyte c200 case for better airflow as my Ryzen 5900X processor is thermal throttling. Will also be changing my Deepcool L240 AIO to Arctic Freezer ii 360. The cases i am considering are
Zebronics Zeb 948B Hermes Case(Lian Li o11 copycat),
XPG Starker,
Cooler master td500 mesh
My priorities are of course better airflow and CPU, GPU temps. Also should be able to mount the arctic freezer 360 AIO on front or top(so better mesh at front will be better i guess). Can these cases work with push pull configuration? Is there any other case with better performance within 110$ or 8000 rupees.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

Out of those 3 I would say the Cooler master td500 mesh is the best choice.

 

[anandhu2]

Out of those 3 I would say the Cooler master td500 mesh is the best choice.

zebronics one seems to have more space and area to accomodate fan. Does it help? also can i mount 360 aio on front and not choke everything inside

 

[Phaaze88]

From your other thread: There's no need to replace the Deepcool L240 if it isn't broken. Put that on hold, and now you have more breathing room on finances.
AIOs can't defeat physics; if chassis airflow sucks, they will drop off a cliff.

 

[anandhu2]

From your other thread: There's no need to replace the Deepcool L240 if it isn't broken. Put that on hold, and now you have more breathing room on finances.
AIOs can't defeat physics; if chassis airflow sucks, they will drop off a cliff.

i will be good just replacing the case u think? I kinda planning on Zebronics Hermes as it is exactly like Lian Li o11 which got great room and reviews. Plus nice to look at. I am hoping to get a 35 C idle and under 80 C on full load, that can be achievable with L240?

 

[Phaaze88]

Ignore idle for the most part - that's a reflection of:
chassis/room ambient
voltage
boost curves
silicon lottery
motherboard profiles, such as PBO and LLC
Windows power plan
... and likely a few more things I've failed to remember.

Plus, that target is not happening with how bursty Ryzen 5000 is on low load; a core shoots up to max speed really fast to deal with simple tasks, while the other cores sleep - BAM - easy 40C or more.

Ryzen 5000 was designed to pursue higher boost clocks, even up to 90C, before backing off a bit from the temperature. They are more aggressive than 3000, which stop boosting at 70-80C(I forget which it is).

 

[anandhu2]

Ignore idle for the most part - that's a reflection of:
chassis/room ambient
voltage
boost curves
silicon lottery
motherboard profiles, such as PBO and LLC
Windows power plan
... and likely a few more things I've failed to remember.

Plus, that target is not happening with how bursty Ryzen 5000 is on low load; a core shoots up to max speed really fast to deal with simple tasks, while the other cores sleep - BAM - easy 40C or more.

Ryzen 5000 was designed to pursue higher boost clocks, even up to 90C, before backing off a bit from the temperature. They are more aggressive than 3000, which stop boosting at 70-80C(I forget which it is).

so as long as the temperature doesnt exceed 90C, i am with the L240 AIO i have now right? If case fixes that then i should be ok. I test with the cinebench r23 10mins and my day to day premiere workflow using CPUID. Btw thank you for the reply mann.

 

[anandhu2]

Ignore idle for the most part - that's a reflection of:
chassis/room ambient
voltage
boost curves
silicon lottery
motherboard profiles, such as PBO and LLC
Windows power plan
... and likely a few more things I've failed to remember.

Plus, that target is not happening with how bursty Ryzen 5000 is on low load; a core shoots up to max speed really fast to deal with simple tasks, while the other cores sleep - BAM - easy 40C or more.

Ryzen 5000 was designed to pursue higher boost clocks, even up to 90C, before backing off a bit from the temperature. They are more aggressive than 3000, which stop boosting at 70-80C(I forget which it is).

Also kindly give your thoughts on the Zebronics case i mentioned.

 

[Phaaze88]

so as long as the temperature doesnt exceed 90C, i am with the L240 AIO i have now right?

Yes.

Also kindly give your thoughts on the Zebronics case i mentioned.

Lian Li didn't patent the design, so the copycat doesn't matter. It looks good and easy to work with.
Side intake using the L240 - not the side exhaust they have on their product page - top and rear use them for exhaust.

 

[anandhu2]

Ok i have one noob question. Say the cooler is placed on top now exhausting air out with push configuration, if its as intake wouldn't the hot air that being exhausted now be inside the case? or the exhaust fans makes up for it? Whats the pro of having it as intake just to make the heat air travel inside the case? Or the hot air that is exhausted throught the radiator just the hot air inside cabinet?

 

[anandhu2]

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B08T8HFRWK...olid=16CWWSKWG7GM4&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it The Case
Comes with 4 fans. I will be adding 2 more fans which i have currently. Does adding push pull config help. How do i go about placing all these fans? does it benefit from adding a couple more or so? Ideal config is appreciated as i am not good with the installing and all, i will be going to the PC store for installation and i cant carry my PC there all the time as its hard travelling. Hope its clear. Thanks again man

 

[Deleted member 362816]

Ok i have one noob question. Say the cooler is placed on top now exhausting air out with push configuration, if its as intake wouldn't the hot air that being exhausted now be inside the case? or the exhaust fans makes up for it? Whats the pro of having it as intake just to make the heat air travel inside the case? Or the hot air that is exhausted throught the radiator just the hot air inside cabinet?

Rather intake hot air on the AIO vs feeding the GPU hot air from a front mounted AIO, just my 2 cents

 

[Phaaze88]

Say the cooler is placed on top now exhausting air out with push configuration, if its as intake wouldn't the hot air that being exhausted now be inside the case? or the exhaust fans makes up for it?

Modern cpus are really good with power efficiency, whereas gpus look to be doing worse - especially on Nvidia's upper end.
Cpu heat coming inside the PC hasn't been as big a deal, as they've been using less power overall.
Like, 180w from a cpu at full load pales in comparison to these 350w(and seemingly climbing) gpus. The gap gets even more lopsided when the cpu is under lighter loads.

The top intake doesn't work well in scenarios with most open air gpus, because the top intake air ends up 'fighting against' the air the gpu expelled inside the PC.
Turbo/blower gpu coolers like THIS, can work with top air intake because they expel their waste heat out the rear and not inside the PC.

Whats the pro of having it as intake just to make the heat air travel inside the case? Or the hot air that is exhausted throught the radiator just the hot air inside cabinet?

The pro of having the cpu AIO as side/front intake is better cooling efficiency, plus it's a little cheaper to do.
Yes, the air from the rad going to other components is a little warmer - not a big deal, because again, today's cpus have been really good with how much power they use. The components behind the rad will see negligible changes in thermals.
With an open air gpu, the components could see an increase of a few Celsius or more.

Top exhaust, the AIO has to cope with everything below it. To try to get around this, one should over-provision on size.
Also, something I picked up on recently, is the idea to remove the rear exhaust fan, as it's just stealing a fresh source of cooler air that could feed through the top rad instead, alongside the front intake.

 

[punkncat]

Sort of a word of warning about the "mesh" cases. I have utilized the Cooler Master Elite series of mesh cubes for a couple of builds. They have great airflow and work great for that aspect, but in particular on those the front fan was set back in the fascia in such a way that made removing all the dust practically impossible without fully dis-assembling and washing under the sink. It becomes really unattractive in a small matter of time.

 

[anandhu2]

Modern cpus are really good with power efficiency, whereas gpus look to be doing worse - especially on Nvidia's upper end.
Cpu heat coming inside the PC hasn't been as big a deal, as they've been using less power overall.
Like, 180w from a cpu at full load pales in comparison to these 350w(and seemingly climbing) gpus. The gap gets even more lopsided when the cpu is under lighter loads.

The top intake doesn't work well in scenarios with most open air gpus, because the top intake air ends up 'fighting against' the air the gpu expelled inside the PC.
Turbo/blower gpu coolers like THIS, can work with top air intake because they expel their waste heat out the rear and not inside the PC.



The pro of having the cpu AIO as side/front intake is better cooling efficiency, plus it's a little cheaper to do.
Yes, the air from the rad going to other components is a little warmer - not a big deal, because again, today's cpus have been really good with how much power they use. The components behind the rad will see negligible changes in thermals.
With an open air gpu, the components could see an increase of a few Celsius or more.

Top exhaust, the AIO has to cope with everything below it. To try to get around this, one should over-provision on size.
Also, something I picked up on recently, is the idea to remove the rear exhaust fan, as it's just stealing a fresh source of cooler air that could feed through the top rad instead, alongside the front intake.

I will be re reading it and understand more. Thanks for your help in both the threads.

 

[anandhu2]

Sort of a word of warning about the "mesh" cases. I have utilized the Cooler Master Elite series of mesh cubes for a couple of builds. They have great airflow and work great for that aspect, but in particular on those the front fan was set back in the fascia in such a way that made removing all the dust practically impossible without fully dis-assembling and washing under the sink. It becomes really unattractive in a small matter of time.

Have you ever used Lian li o11 dynamic case? I am thinking of a similar case

 

[punkncat]

Have you ever used Lian li o11 dynamic case? I am thinking of a similar case

My main rig is currently in the o11 d mini. It's got it's plusses and minus. It is an astounding case from a cosmetic view, it has the capability to have loads of airflow. I have mine maxed out and filters removed. The downside is that in addition to seeing all your hardware, you see all your cable management, and every speck of dust.

Edit to add- If you are interested, my review and thoughts on said case here:

Review - Lian Li 011D Mini-X regular guy review (ongoing) | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

 

[anandhu2]

My main rig is currently in the o11 d mini. It's got it's plusses and minus. It is an astounding case from a cosmetic view, it has the capability to have loads of airflow. I have mine maxed out and filters removed. The downside is that in addition to seeing all your hardware, you see all your cable management, and every speck of dust.

Edit to add- If you are interested, my review and thoughts on said case here:

Review - Lian Li 011D Mini-X regular guy review (ongoing) | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

That's really thorough there. Which cooler are u using and may i see a picture?

 

[punkncat]

That's really thorough there. Which cooler are u using and may i see a picture?

I don't have a current picture and imgur has changed their use rules where they ask you to whitelist against ad block and, well, no.

Currently the system is set up with (5) Artic P12 (I think) all on intake. I have a Noctua 120 on the back as exhaust and have a Deep Cool Castle 240 mounted in the top as exhaust. I would have preferred the rad be on the intake mounts toward the front of the case but with the Z590I (ITX) mobo that I am using the lines for the AIO weren't long enough to mount any other way. I am still (currently) running a GTX 1080 and have the 11600K installed for now. In game temps typically run ~ 75 on the GPU and low to mid 60's on the CPU. I have all the fans set to "smart" operation and it is generally pretty quiet if a bit rangy from time to time as the CPU loads up.

 

[Karadjgne]

Fans have gotten better, aio rads are still the same, pretty minimal resistance because of wide fin spacing and thinner 30mm thickness. So push/pull adds complexity and noise for all of @ 2-3°C difference. Push/pull is basically of only any usefullness to a full custom loop using higher fpi and thicker rads with far more resistance to airflow.

Ryzen aren't Intel. Throw out any preconceived notions of temps, especially at idle. An intel at idle lowers voltage/speed on all cores, but all cores remain active. When applying multiple services/processes, they get split up amongst all the cores, so each core gets a very minor load. Minor loads = minor temp raise.

Ryzen at idle puts all cores except 1 to inactive, asleep, so the entire load of service/processes gets dumped on just 1 core. That = a major load =much higher idle temp, but that temp is on 1 core, not the whole cpu. You see an idle of 50°, it's really not, it's an idle closer to 30° for 11 cores and a 50°C hottest core. An intel would see 32-34°C across all cores, only showing hottest core of 34° which constantly changes depending on when the temp was read and which core hit that temp.

Ryzens are happiest in 60-70° range. Above that they start lowering boosts by 50-100MHz on a core by core basis, not all cores the way Intel does it. So at 70 you might see 4.9GHz, but that's only on cores 1-9 with 10-12 at 4.85GHz and 90 you'll see 4.9GHz on 1-3, 4.85GHz on 4-8 and 4.8GHz on 9-12. If looking at individual speeds. When looking at single speed all you'd see on either would be 4.9GHz as that's the primary/master core speed. If gaming and only using 8 threads, many of those cores would be closer to 4.2GHz doing window/background tasking.

Figure out exactly what you are looking at before deciding what needs fixing, because most of the time a single reported temp or speed is wrong, it's just the hottest/fastest core and not representative of the cpu as a whole.

 

[anandhu2]

Fans have gotten better, aio rads are still the same, pretty minimal resistance because of wide fin spacing and thinner 30mm thickness. So push/pull adds complexity and noise for all of @ 2-3°C difference. Push/pull is basically of only any usefullness to a full custom loop using higher fpi and thicker rads with far more resistance to airflow.

Ryzen aren't Intel. Throw out any preconceived notions of temps, especially at idle. An intel at idle lowers voltage/speed on all cores, but all cores remain active. When applying multiple services/processes, they get split up amongst all the cores, so each core gets a very minor load. Minor loads = minor temp raise.

Ryzen at idle puts all cores except 1 to inactive, asleep, so the entire load of service/processes gets dumped on just 1 core. That = a major load =much higher idle temp, but that temp is on 1 core, not the whole cpu. You see an idle of 50°, it's really not, it's an idle closer to 30° for 11 cores and a 50°C hottest core. An intel would see 32-34°C across all cores, only showing hottest core of 34° which constantly changes depending on when the temp was read and which core hit that temp.

Ryzens are happiest in 60-70° range. Above that they start lowering boosts by 50-100MHz on a core by core basis, not all cores the way Intel does it. So at 70 you might see 4.9GHz, but that's only on cores 1-9 with 10-12 at 4.85GHz and 90 you'll see 4.9GHz on 1-3, 4.85GHz on 4-8 and 4.8GHz on 9-12. If looking at individual speeds. When looking at single speed all you'd see on either would be 4.9GHz as that's the primary/master core speed. If gaming and only using 8 threads, many of those cores would be closer to 4.2GHz doing window/background tasking.

Figure out exactly what you are looking at before deciding what needs fixing, because most of the time a single reported temp or speed is wrong, it's just the hottest/fastest core and not representative of the cpu as a whole.

Thanks mann for the clear explanation. I could see the individual clock speed using CPUID the temperature that always rises is CCD#0 which is 91,93C max temps. Next PACKAGE which is 85C or something. Then CCD#1 84.5C or something. Rest lower than that.

 

[Karadjgne]

For a good, clear picture of exactly how the individual cores stand, use Prime95 Small fft (not smallest) with AVX tech disabled. That's a clean, consistent 100% load on all cores simultaneously with no varience. There will be cores that are slightly different temps, that's entirely normal because of differences in the silicon, but at least you'd get to see the swing. Should run less than 10°C total between hottest and coldest core.

From there you can extrapolate the median value and consider that as your max 100% load temp. So if hottest was 90, coldest was 80, your average temp would be 85. If all the cores were around that except hottest, it might be silicon varience, might be a bad paste/tim job, might be off-center pressure on the cooler plate. Little bit of detective work will decide that.

But also have to balance that vrs individual boosts (HWInfo64 sensors only) as that hottest might also be running higher voltage or higher boost vrs the others.

There's so many variables, a 5° difference is honestly the same thing. Ppl go nuts with coolers, saying X is better because it's 2° lower temp or Y paste is better because it's 3° lower etc, when realistically loads in almost anything run have such massive swings from 10% to 100% depending on the game scene, that a few °C either way is moot.

So you look for averages, as that's more representative of the cpu as a whole and don't concentrate so much on specific numbers.

 

[anandhu2]

Update : I changed my case to Zebronics Hermes(Lian Li o11 dynamic). Still progress wasnt there. So i switched to Arctic Freezer ii 360 AIO(non rgb)[offset mounting i think], no help. AIO fan only had one cable which is connected to CPU FAN on mothrboard .
My current setup is 3 fans on bottom as intake, 3 on side as intake. One on the rear as exhaust. AIO mounted on top as exhaust. All 120mm fans. 4 fans came with Zebronics cabinet. 3 montech rgb fans. Fans on AIO is artic's.
My present issue is this spike of temp once in a while. I use HWmonitor to monitor temps. Especially on premiere when i apply some basic editing on 1080p(like stabilization and all) there can be seen max temps at 91 deg C, 93 deg C etc. It doesnt stay that way for long but on full load it does come as close to 86C or something. Idle temperature is around 45C to 55C. Most temperature spike is seen at CCD#0 (which is mostly 10 deg C higher than package temp).
on 10mins cinebench r23 runs i get scores of 16000 now. Also upon observation i found when temp hits a particular point above 86C or something the 4200Mhz clock speed drops to 546 Mhz and then the temperature also gets dropped. For cinebench temperature doesnt spike above 88C though its just premiere and lightroom that does that. Voltages (VID) stays around 1.4V , Maximum being 1.49 V.
I did try to mount the AIO on the sides with radiator wire on the bottom as seen in videos yet theres no change in temperature, I didnt mount it as intake because I dont wanna heat up GPU and motherboard, also I read somewhere in the thread heat moves up so no point in having another intake . Also tried with less fans, more space, tried open case but nothing major. I am not a pro in PC building. So for doing major changes i have to take it to computer shop guys. I dunno whats causing all these problems or is it the HWmonitor itself or are these spikes normal as AIO takes time. When these spikes happens, thermal throttling kicks in right? Honestly i did expect a massive change in Temps but was disappointed. I looked for PBO settings in motherboard as well but i can only access if i overclock my PC(a similar message popped up). I would have added a picture but i dunno how to do that yet. Any help is appreciated. Thank you

 

[Karadjgne]

Voltages are too high. 1.49 is most likely when running single thread, light loads, but 1.4v under all core is too high. And that's where all the heat is coming from.

I'd suggest using a negative offset for VID in bios. I'd start with 0.05v or however your particular bios sets that. Full load voltages should be closer to 1.325v-1.375v and single thread loads at 1.4v-1.425.

You have cores. Inside those cores is the thermal strip sensors. So from the sensor is a small amount of silicon the generated heat has to travel through. Then the Tim, then the IHS, then the thermal paste, then the cold plate and finally get absorbed by the coolant. Heat travels fast through metal, but not that fast, not nearly as fast as a core can generate the heat. Which is why you get spike temps, cores registering heat rise before it can move out.

 

[anandhu2]

Voltages are too high. 1.49 is most likely when running single thread, light loads, but 1.4v under all core is too high. And that's where all the heat is coming from.

I'd suggest using a negative offset for VID in bios. I'd start with 0.05v or however your particular bios sets that. Full load voltages should be closer to 1.325v-1.375v and single thread loads at 1.4v-1.425.

You have cores. Inside those cores is the thermal strip sensors. So from the sensor is a small amount of silicon the generated heat has to travel through. Then the Tim, then the IHS, then the thermal paste, then the cold plate and finally get absorbed by the coolant. Heat travels fast through metal, but not that fast, not nearly as fast as a core can generate the heat. Which is why you get spike temps, cores registering heat rise before it can move out.

Will that affect my performance? i mean reducing voltages. Is it some error that my voltage is this high because i never overclocked. Could something be wrong with my motherboard or cpu? Motherboard is b450 steel legend(updated firmware to make it support 5000 series processor).
Thank you