Question Choosing a water cooler for a Ryzen 9800X3D (AM5) ?

Od86x

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Jan 5, 2020
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Hi guys!

I ordered a Ryzen 9800X3D CPU, its my first AMD CPU ever.
Which water cooler under $120 is good for it, Arctic Freezer III, Cooler Master Atmos or something else ?
Btw, what cooler is the best/easiest to mount for AM5 as Gamer Nexus stated that Arctic Freezer III was very hard to mount.

Any experience or advice please ?
 
What is the make/model of your case?
What is the fan arrangement?
Liquid cooling is essentially air cooling, the difference is where the radiator heat exchange takes place.
How much cooling do you need?
A good air cooler will perform about as well as a 280 aio with a lot less hassle.
Are you planning on an aggressive cpu overclock?
If not, consider air.
Noctua maintains a list of suitable air coolers fro various processors.
Here is the list for the 9800X3d:
https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/AMD-Ryzen-7-9800X3D-1842
 
I am looking water cooler. I already has Noctua NH D14 huge cooler. Taking so much space. I bought back in 2014 being used with 4790k and now used with 10700k. I have old Cooler Master case HAF XM owned same since 2014. Time to retire. It's all closed metal case.

Looking to buy PC case Montech AIR 903 or Phanteks XT Pro Ultra. Haven't decided yet.
I ordered Asus Tuf X870 plus Wi Fi motherboard. And

G.SKILL Flare X5 Series ram CL30 6000.​

 
No I never overclocked. I don't like that idea at all.
I want more free space of case . I do belive my old Cooler will handle new cpu . But I just want more cleaner look and tired of that big brick .
I have 4070ti 12gb GPU. But planned to buy RTX 5080 or Ti version in late summer.
 
It would be prudent to study the specs for each of the cases. For example, the Phanteks case specs indicate a maximum thickness of 60mm for the top radiator mounting but the Arctic specs indicate a thickness of 65.5mm for the radiator plus fans. So that might be a tight fit.
 
Choose one that allows you to monitor your liquid temperature. It's so ridiculous to have a liquid cooler that doesn't even let you set your fan curve with the liquid temp. That's the most important feature on a AIO. People who don't understand that just don't know how liquid cooling works. And I don't think the artic freezer allows that. And it has the note "frequently returned item" on Amazon, so I would avoid that.

I personally like Corsair H150i coolers, but they are expensive (you need to pay to get good stuff and it's even more true for AIOs).
 
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What water cooler is good under 120$ ?
none.
That is a price for a good all metal water block and maybe a reservoir.
If I was going to make a water cool system, I would get a nice water block:
https://a.co/d/3SGgRwE
a reservoir.
https://a.co/d/7E2K0Br
a flow indicator
https://a.co/d/5uWGOd1
A pump
https://a.co/d/ib8dMu8

sharkbite connectors that look like this:
https://a.co/d/iGXsvLn

Pex type C tubing

A decent radiator:
https://a.co/d/avxtrOn


But I would have it all manufactured in the USA instead of buying any of that Chinese crap
 
Last edited:
none.
That is a price for a good all metal water block and maybe a reservoir.
If I was going to make a water cool system, I would get a nice water block:
https://a.co/d/3SGgRwE
a reservoir.
https://a.co/d/7E2K0Br
a flow indicator
https://a.co/d/5uWGOd1
A pump
https://a.co/d/ib8dMu8

sharkbite connectors that look like this:
https://a.co/d/iGXsvLn

Pex type C tubing

A decent radiator:
https://a.co/d/avxtrOn


But I would have it all manufactured in the USA instead of buying any of that Chinese crap
Thank you!
 
none.
That is a price for a good all metal water block and maybe a reservoir.
If I was going to make a water cool system, I would get a nice water block:
https://a.co/d/3SGgRwE
a reservoir.
https://a.co/d/7E2K0Br
a flow indicator
https://a.co/d/5uWGOd1
A pump
https://a.co/d/ib8dMu8

sharkbite connectors that look like this:
https://a.co/d/iGXsvLn

Pex type C tubing

A decent radiator:
https://a.co/d/avxtrOn


But I would have it all manufactured in the USA instead of buying any of that Chinese crap
Even experienced builders can struggle with custom loops. This is not something trivial to do and if it's not done properly you can do a huge mess and seriously damage your expensive hardware. And it's overkill for most people. That should not be recommended to someone who ask for advice about AIO on a support forum.
 
This is not something trivial to do
Of course not. It takes a lot of planning, testing the cooling system out of the machine first before installing it.

AIO is the cheap solution they came up with so it would slowly kill off the parts as well as itself.

I've done extreme cooling before, overclocking processors back in 2005 to 4Ghz for research purposes. So I've seen some pretty weird custom cooling especially with peltier junctions + liquid cooling.

PEX C is the tubing to use for several reasons, one its resistant to all coolants you can possibly use plus it dissipates heat in the process. That is why you will see it used instead of plated copper tubing in large scale systems:

iu
 
AIO is the cheap solution they came up with so it would slowly kill off the parts as well as itself.
AIO is a great solution to allow people to use liquid cooling easily without risking to destroy their computer by building complicated custom loops. And it certainly doesn't kill off anything (I have been using them for 8 years without any issues). And good for you if have been building custom loops since 2005, but that just confirms what I said: don't recommend that to random people on forums, it's irresponsible and they might ruin their hardware because of you. Or at least give them the warnings when you do that instead of just saying "AIO is bad, build a custom loop".