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

[Admin]

What does it take to cool Intel’s Core i9-13900K, and how much performance do you give up going the cheap air cooler route?

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

 

[-Fran-]

Holy cow, I know you teased this yesterday in the Discord, but great work with this investigation.

There's still a few things I'd like you to check (using the normal ILM*, for instance) and include that data, but overall, this is mighty impressive.

Great work.

Regards.

 

[rluker5]

Holy cow, I know you teased this yesterday in the Discord, but great work with this investigation.

There's still a few things I'd like you to check (using the normal ILS, for instance) and include that data, but overall, this is mighty impressive.

Great work.

Regards.

Don't do it Al, It's a trap!

No way would I take my 13900kf that is a virgin to that ILS and soil it. Sure my 12700k didn't see much difference in temps with my Prime Z690 P ILS, but there was a depression that will always be there at least a little.

But a typical gaming heavy power use test (like uncapped framerate at low resolution in CPU demanding game X with a potent GPU) with the different coolers, showing their clockspeeds and temps with no power limits would be nice. Maybe in a future article. Just to show a real world performance example for the 99%.

Also as a side note, I saw a 200W max power dissipation in CB23 with my 12700k with a Mugen B, 240W with a NH-D15, and 260W on a 13900kf+CB23 with a Cooler Master ML280 in my personal, less controlled use.

 

[-Fran-]

Don't do it Al, It's a trap!

No way would I take my 13900kf that is a virgin to that ILS and soil it. Sure my 12700k didn't see much difference in temps with my Prime Z690 P ILS, but there was a depression that will always be there at least a little.

But a typical gaming heavy power use test (like uncapped framerate at low resolution in CPU demanding game X with a potent GPU) with the different coolers, showing their clockspeeds and temps with no power limits would be nice. Maybe in a future article. Just to show a real world performance example for the 99%.

Also as a side note, I saw a 200W max power dissipation in CB23 with my 12700k with a Mugen B, 240W with a NH-D15, and 260W on a 13900kf+CB23 with a Cooler Master ML280 in my personal, less controlled use.

That is one of the other things I would have liked to see: a gaming test with those same conditions and coolers.

I think the selection of coolers is quite fine, since it's covering what I'd consider the good reasonable range (maybe adding a 240 AIO would be good?) and it demonstrated via CB, that after a certain point, the CPU even if throttling still performs fine-ish. The caveat is the noise, since it's pegged at 100% everything, but still performs close to what you'd like/expect.

Overall, Intel came out better than what I would have expected to be honest, so I'd love to see those additions to this piece and then do the same testing on Ryzen and other Intel models (although I think it's fair to extrapolate from highest SKU).

Regards.

 

[rluker5]

It would be good to see game clocks on Ryzen. I think CPUs have gotten large enough and are turned up fat enough that all of the high end ones reduce their clocks somewhat doing things like CB23 and P95, just like GPUs and furmark. I know Intel clocks and behavior under less than max stress just fine, Ryzen clock behavior under those conditions with different coolers is still a mystery to me. The converse may be true for many Ryzen owners.

 

[baboma]

I would advise against running the 13900K without power limits. Because attempting to cool a CPU that’s using over 300W results in a lot of fan noise and heat output for very little increased performance.

I wholeheartedly agree with this recommendation. While there'll always be people who wants balls-out speed and hang the noise/power, using power limits (for both Intel & AMD) is a much more reasonable approach for the vast majority, and cheaper, if you want to use a budget air cooler.

It's good to see that the 13900K can be cooled to 74C at peak load with a cheap cooler, using a 200W power limit. I hope this puts to rest all the partisan carping about RPL needing expensive high-end AIOs. People always tend to believe the worst in things they don't like.

This said, if a person has enough funds to spring for a ~$600 CPU, it's probably safe to say that it won't be paired with a cheapo cooler. But at least the option is there.

I'm not sure about the wisdom of buying a flagship CPU only to substantially reduce its power (to 125W) for the sake of quietness. If such were the goal, the person should buy a cheaper and lower-powered part to begin with.

Lastly, I would like to see R23 bench numbers for the 125W and 200W power levels, and not just temp.

 

[Giroro]

I'm not seeing the CB scores and frequency to go with temperatures for the lower power limits. That would have been interesting data.

 

[TerryLaze]

I'm not seeing the CB scores and frequency to go with temperatures for the lower power limits. That would have been interesting data.

For the 200W one nothing would change in clocks and performance since the weakest cooler manages an avg of 198W already.
And the 125W is basically just there to show the reduction in noise (due to the lower temps) as many already said nobody is going to get that CPU to run it at a locked 125W so performance at that point isn't relevant.
Not for comparing cheap coolers.

Starting with the Thermalright SFF cooler, clocks of 4722MHz were maintained consuming 198W on average.

 

[JamesJones44]

That is one of the other things I would have liked to see: a gaming test with those same conditions and coolers.

I think the selection of coolers is quite fine, since it's covering what I'd consider the good reasonable range (maybe adding a 240 AIO would be good?) and it demonstrated via CB, that after a certain point, the CPU even if throttling still performs fine-ish. The caveat is the noise, since it's pegged at 100% everything, but still performs close to what you'd like/expect.

Overall, Intel came out better than what I would have expected to be honest, so I'd love to see those additions to this piece and then do the same testing on Ryzen and other Intel models (although I think it's fair to extrapolate from highest SKU).

Regards.

PCWorld did this a little bit (from a power draw point of view). The results show it's pretty equal to what you had with the 12900k

Edit: Fixed the image preview size (a width of 120 was a little hard to read ).

 

[-Fran-]

PCWorld did this a little bit (from a power draw point of view). The results show it's pretty equal to what you had with the 12900k

Edit: Fixed the image preview size (a width of 120 was a little hard to read ).

It has been done in several places, but in open benches with 360AIOs or custom loop, so not quite the same.

From what I read and understood, Albert tested inside a case with each one of the coolers mentioned. It's quite a different test. Quite harsher as well.

Regards.

 

[TerryLaze]

From what I read and understood, Albert tested inside a case with each one of the coolers mentioned. It's quite a different test. Quite harsher as well.

That depends on many factors, inside a case you can have good airflow so ambient temps, as far as cooling is concerned, would be lower than just the room temp you would have in an open case/testbed scenario.
Also flowing air transfers more heat away from the cooler than static air.

If they use a glass coffin type case with zero airflow then yes, it would be much harsher.

 

[-Fran-]

That depends on many factors, inside a case you can have good airflow so ambient temps, as far as cooling is concerned, would be lower than just the room temp you would have in an open case/testbed scenario.
Also flowing air transfers more heat away from the cooler than static air.

If they use a glass coffin type case with zero airflow then yes, it would be much harsher.

Without going on "whatifsms", I will just trust Albert did not test this inside a closed case with no airflow. That would be kind of stupid.

Some more details would be welcome though.

Regards.

 

[Amdlova]

For now am5 is a joke, I got here a tunic tower 120 3 heat pipe, on a xeon e5 2698v3. When I get a lga1700 I will put it. Not bad for a air-cooler from 2007

 

[Zescion]

To my understanding this is done with no overclocking, but just relying on turbo boost.
If that's correct, is the same behavior to be observed with B660 motherboards, provided a proper power delivery?

 

[dalauder]

Wait...doesn't this mean that a Ryzen 7950X beats an i9-13900K in Cinebench R23 unless you've got the BEST liquid cooling inside of a case with good airflow?
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-ryzen-5-7600x-cpu-review/7

Sounds like you've gotta do further investigation using the same case and cooler on both chips.

Maybe also try an OEM case with average instead of exceptional airflow?

 

[rluker5]

Wait...doesn't this mean that a Ryzen 7950X beats an i9-13900K in Cinebench R23 unless you've got the BEST liquid cooling inside of a case with good airflow?
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-ryzen-5-7600x-cpu-review/7

Maybe? You can OC both chips, seeing as I have no experience with a 7950x I don't know which OCs better. I've broken 40k with a D15 and 40.7k with a 280mm AIO I got on sale for $60 from Newegg. If I tried a little harder I could probably top 41k, but my chip isn't that good, I have the cheapest DDR5 Z690 I could find when Alder came out and I don't care that much. But my cooling is far from the BEST. Kind of far up there for air coolers, but on the lower end for AIO.

Overclocking opens up a can of worms when you are trying to report impartially though, so I suspect the people at Tom's wouldn't want to go down that route.

 

[JamesJones44]

Wait...doesn't this mean that a Ryzen 7950X beats an i9-13900K in Cinebench R23 unless you've got the BEST liquid cooling inside of a case with good airflow?
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-ryzen-5-7600x-cpu-review/7

Sounds like you've gotta do further investigation using the same case and cooler on both chips.

Maybe also try an OEM case with average instead of exceptional airflow?

Depends on the power envelope and your cooling. With Cinebench the 13900k starts to beat the 7950x when it's allowed to go above a PL2 of 205 watts. Assuming you can cool it above 205 watts then the 13900k wins. If you can't then it loses.

Image source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/135...ive-into-13900k-power-use-and-efficiency.html

 

[bit_user]

Among low-profile coolers, how good is the Thermalright AXP120? It has 6 heat pipes, but they're not direct-touch.

I like downdraft coolers, for their benefits in cooling the VRMs, RAM, and chipset. I have typically used a 140 mm Scythe Big Shuriken II and fit a Noctua oversized 150 mm fan, with decent results. That said, I haven't tried to cool anything newer than a Haswell like this.

 

[bit_user]

There's still a few things I'd like you to check (using the normal ILM*, for instance)

Are you talking about one of those liquid metal heat gaskets?

 

[-Fran-]

Are you talking about one of those liquid metal heat gaskets?

Albert tested with an aftermarket ILM, so the CPU doesn't bend.

Regards.

 

[bit_user]

Albert tested with an aftermarket ILM, so the CPU doesn't bend.

I still have no idea what "ILM" means. The article only mentions "Thermalright’s LGA1700 contact frame".

I haven't been following the socket-bending saga, because I was hoping it would be resolved by the time I needed to care (i.e. if/when I build a Raptor Lake system).

 

[-Fran-]

I still have no idea what "ILM" means. The article only mentions "Thermalright’s LGA1700 contact frame".

I haven't been following the socket-bending saga, because I was hoping it would be resolved by the time I needed to care (i.e. if/when I build a Raptor Lake system).

ILM: Independent Loading Mechanism. The thingy that locks the CPU to the socket.

Apologies, I thought it was a known acronym.

Regards.

 

[TerryLaze]

ILM: Independent Loading Mechanism. The thingy that locks the CPU to the socket.

Apologies, I thought it was a known acronym.

Regards.

The cheapest cooler goes to 74 degrees in this test and the test of the ILM at 200w showed 74 goin down to 68 that's 8% so 74 would go to like 80.
Which would still give you 20 degrees overhead for either boosting it more or for quieter operation.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermalright-lga1700-bcf-contact-frame

 

[TJ Hooker]

Wait...doesn't this mean that a Ryzen 7950X beats an i9-13900K in Cinebench R23 unless you've got the BEST liquid cooling inside of a case with good airflow?
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-7950x-ryzen-5-7600x-cpu-review/7

The 13900K with a ~$60 air cooler (Deepcool AG620) still (slightly) beats the 7950X (which is using a ~$150, 280mm liquid cooler in the TH review). Even with the $20 air cooler it only loses by 2-3%.

 

[Albert.Thomas]

That is one of the other things I would have liked to see: a gaming test with those same conditions and coolers.

Gaming is a workload that's fairly easy to cool, you could subsitute the 125w numbers for games for the most part.

There's still a few things I'd like you to check (using the normal ILM*, for instance) and include that data, but overall, this is mighty impressive.

I've tested using both the default ILM and the Thermalright contact frame, and on this motherboard it actually doesn't make a difference at all. See: Thermalright LGA1700-BCF Contact Frame Review : Can it tame Raptor Lake’s heat?

Lastly, I would like to see R23 bench numbers for the 125W and 200W power levels, and not just temp.

Like this?

I didn't include the numbers for 125w and 200w for the different coolers because there won't be much variation at the same power limits. You'll see slightly higher numbers with the better coolers, but barely so.