Help with Ryzen 1800X AIO cooler

[jjjay999]

Hi, so this is my build:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jjjay999/saved/9rPtt6

And the 212 was great in years’ past but isn’t cutting it anymore. I can get a stable 4.125 ghz OC @ 1.41v but it overheats and restarts. I removed the side and front panels and had two quite powerful desk fans (with cheesecloth for a filter) to check this. Without those extreme measures, temps would go up to and stick at about 78-79C for a few seconds’ and the system would restart. (I only did this once.) So, as I’m also looking to upgrade my RAM, I’ve decided on an AIO. On the 212, highest I can go without temps getting crazy (73C or so under load), is 3.75 ghz. Which is a good AIO cooler for a reasonable price? (I’m not saying cheap). I’ll be mounting it on the top, exhausting air out of the top, so a 240 rad is fine. I’ve measured and I have 61mm to my RAM now, but would obviously like some room to connect everything and I don’t want to have to take everything apart just to upgrade my RAM (the biggest problem I have with air coolers’, followed very closely by how heavy they are). I’m dead set on an AIO, an air cooler isn’t an option at all. I’ve found two:

https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16835103234

https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16835181103

Are there any that are better? My budget MAX is about $125, and the Corsair I’ve heard a lot of good about, not sure about the CM. However the CM is AM4 compatible “out of the box”, but the Corsair requires ordering an AM4 adaptor from Corsair. I’m plenty open to other, better, best “bang for the buck” options and really appreciate it. Again though, obviously a custom loop is out of the question (and not even needed. The 1080TI has a +100 core OC and +415 memory OC, and at 99-100% load for an hour each for heaven, valley, and two different FurMark tests, never went over 66C), and I don’t want air, due to weight and RAM clearance. Thank you in advance!!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Generally, there is nothing wrong with these units. Usually they were sent back by people who could either not figure out how to install them, figured out after ordering that their case does not support it or were unhappy about the noise levels of a liquid cooling system which is NOT ever going to be as quiet as an air cooled system. They get factory tested and sent back out for deep discounts.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181122&cm_re=corsair_h115i-_-35-181-122-_-Product

This is about the best AIO cooling deal you will find right now and one of the better performing AIO systems out there.

 

[jjjay999]

Nice! That will fit in my case? And I’ve never had an AIO, but a hyper 212 Evo with both fans running at 100%, 100% of the time is pretty loud.....

 

[Darkbreeze]

Your case supports 280mm top mounted radiators, so yes that case will support that cooler. The 212 EVO is a fairly incapable cooler, all things considered. It's ok for the price and certainly it's better than what comes as a stock option on just about anything out there, but that isn't saying much.

Being as the 1800x is only a 95w TDP processor, it shouldn't take a really fantastic cooler to keep temps in check. Overclocking 8 cores by 600mhz per core though is a different story and is of course going to dramatically increase temps.

You might consider simply using a more capable air cooler as one option, since big air coolers can usually provide as much cooling performance as a AIO cooler up to 280mm, plus they offer some residual cooling to the VRMs and other motherboard components that you will lose once you switch to a water cooled setup as there will be no fans near the motherboard to even marginally help those items stay cool by blowing across them. Memory also tends to suffer with no airflow past them.

Certainly air can work though, because it does in many cases.

Even with a decent AIO cooler I would not suggest going beyond 4Ghz, unless by trial you are able to incrementally verify that you are able to do so with whichever cooler you end up choosing. Personally, I think that if overall system noise is a big consideration for you, you are going to be unhappy with a water cooled system because they are generally louder than air cooled systems once you factor in multiple radiator fans and pump noise, in addition to whatever other case fans you use.

It's also highly recommended that ALL other case fan locations be filled and in use, for any kind of overclocking, since there are considerations beyong just the CPU temperature such as VRM and voltage regular thermals that are probably even more likely to be contributing to your shut down problems than your CPU temps are.

79°C CPU temps are not enough, by itself, to cause the system to restart. More likely is either the fact that something else like the VRMs are overheating OR you are simply not adding enough voltage to make the OC stable, which of course means that you will see higher temps.

Better CPU cooling is of course a good place to start but you need to also not forget to provide plenty of intake and exhaust cooling to assist the rest of the system like the GPU card, motherboard, hard drive/ssd or actually EVEN the CPU cooler or top mounted radiator in having as much cool ambient air as possible so they can all do the jobs they need to do without suffering from all the heat created by your overclock voltage as well.

 

[jjjay999]

Yeah, not sure if the 100% on /100% of the time was clear with two fans on the 212 Evo. It sounds like an airplane right now, and i hear nothing but the CPU cooler fans, and very quietly the front server fans, even with the intakes set to high (the two side have a high and low switch), and the GPU at a constant 99-100% load. The restart is because of the heat, as ryzen has a max of 75C, as I stated in my original post it worked fine with desk fans blowing into the case (three) at 4.125 ghz/1.41v and didn’t restart at all. Prime95 was running for a bit more than a half hour. Temps steadied at 74C. Noise isn’t a concern if that didn’t come across and on my part list, I have four aftermarket fans’ I’ve added as intakes, the two original as exhaust fans and even 3 40mm server fans in the bottom front optical bay slot as intakes to cool the RAM. So removing one exhaust fan and putting a rad at the top blowing out will “fill all the fan slots”. The two Kingwin’s are at the front (intake), two Antec’s are on the side (intake). Not sure if you saw where I said (paraphrased) no air cooler. Liquid or liquid is all I’m getting. Or liquid. Thank you though for answering the question about the 280 rad fitting though.

Lastly, is the refurb h115i the best within my budget? Thanks!

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, max working temperature, also known as TJmax, is 95°C on Ryzen processors.


Tjmax: "Tj Max" (Temperature Junction Maximum) or “Throttle” temperature.

CPU should throttle itself at this temperature to keep heat damage from occuring or becoming worse. Once TJmax has been reached, incremental damage is already occuring but the system itself should NOT shut down, it should ONLY throttle the cores until thermal compliance is observed.

As you can see here:

And as is expressed in this article from the 1800x review and testing done by Tom's hardware staffer Paul Alcorn.

We prefer overclocking from the motherboard firmware, though. Using simple multiplier and voltage adjustments, we achieved a Prime95-stable 4 GHz clock rate at 1.425V using Asus' Crosshair V Hero (that was with load-line calibration set to Auto). The highest temperature we saw was 82°C during our stress test.

Of course, if you're using a cooling solution less capable than our Corsair H100i v2 at its maximum fan/pump settings, overheating could become a problem. AMD predicts that most customers should see somewhere between 3.9 and 4.1 GHz across all cores, and suggests you stick with a 1.35V ceiling if you want your chip to last. Although core voltages in excess of 1.45V are considered sustainable, they'll have a more pronounced effect on longevity.

Clearly temperatures up to 82°C during stress testing do not have indications of a thermal reset, and nor should your system at 79°C unless you have a lack of cooling across the motherboard or through the case that is causing a VRM overheating situation. With that Crosshair board you should be pretty stable on a 4Ghz overclock however anything is possible if there is not enough airflow. Personally I think your resets are due to instability from a lack of voltage, indicating you may need to lower your target frequency in order to accomodate an increased voltage until stress testing stability is maintained.

Also, kind of doubtful those desk fans were doing anything really, for the CPU, but they might have offered some help to the VRMs or voltage regulator.

Any temperature under 85°C while stress testing using Prime95 v26.6 should be acceptable, obviously lower is better and I'd prefer to see 80°C or less on pretty much ANY system regardless of generation or platform. Use only version 26.6 of Prime95 when stress testing. There are some other tools that can be used as well but that is the preferred method.

Regardless of architecture. P95 v26.6 works equally well across all platforms. Steady-state is the key. How can anyone extrapolate accurate Core temperatures from workloads that fluctuate like a bad day on the Stock Market?

I'm aware of 5 utilities with steady-state workloads. In order of load level they are:

(1) P95 v26.6 - Small FFT's
(2) HeavyLoad - Stress CPU
(3) FurMark - CPU Burner
(4) Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool - CPU Load
(5) AIDA64 - Tools - System Stability Test - Stress CPU

AIDA64's Stress CPU fails to load any overcloked / ovevolted CPU to get anywhere TDP, and is therefore useless, except for giving naive users a sense of false security because their temps are so low.

HeavyLoad is the closest alternative. Temps and watts are within 3% of Small FFT's.

 

[jjjay999]

Then why every single time it reset (this happened before the latest bios/oc), did the mobo come back with “CPU temperature error!”?

As well as, if you’re fast enough and press F1 after getting that message, you can go to the monitor tab and check all of the temp sensors’. The only temp that was high/red every time was the CPU temp.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What are you looking at to get your thermal readings? What utility are you using? Are you sure it's showing you core temps rather than package temps? Also, for AMD systems it's highly recommended to not even use "temps" at all, but instead use distance to tjmax readings. You can download CoreTemp here:

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/supportlist.html


CoreTemp supports all of the following AMD processors, and is far more accurate and less likely to have erroneous sensor readings than most of the utilities out there including many of the ones that come WITH various motherboards and other hardware.

All Ryzen/Epyc series.
All FX series.
All APU series.
All Phenom / Phenom II series.
All Athlon II series.
All Turion II series.
All Athlon64 series.
All Athlon64 X2 series.
All Athlon64 FX series.
All Turion64 series.
All Turion64 X2 series.
All Sempron series. (K8 and up based)
All Opteron processors.
Single Core Opterons starting with SH-C0 revision and up. (K8 based)

Install and open CoreTemp. (Uncheck "Build your kingdom with Goodgame Empire" and "Install additional language packs" during the installation. Open CoreTemp. Click on the Options tab. Select settings. Go to the advanced tab and check next to "Display the distance to tjmax in temperature fields".

Click OK. Now you should be seeing true distance to tjmax for all cores. Hyperthreads will not show up and that's ok because they are relatively unimportant for thermal purposes.

Run whatever you were running before that caused you to shut down and keep an eye on distance to tjmax. Ultimately you do not want to see readings get within about 30° of tjmax under normal operation. For the purpose of stress testing though, anything that gets no closer than about 10°C of tjmax under 100% load on all cores is probably within max safe limits. Under normal operation you should not see throttling begin until there is zero distance to tjmax, at least, this is how it has worked on all previous architectures I am familiar with and I've read nothing that leads me to believe this behavior has changed for Ryzen. Once throttling begins core temperatures should instantly begin to decline, but so too will clock speeds, which is how thermal overheating is controlled.

If your system is shutting OFF at or before tjmax is reached, then there is some other problem and it COULD possibly be a setting in the bios. You might want to check there that there is no setting to shut down the system at a temperature which is below tjmax.

 

[jjjay999]

The bios. No software or tools. The bios.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The bios. No software or tools. The bios.

Was there a point to this comment or were just wanting to say The bios? You certainly can't mean to NOT use an appropriate windows utility for determining thermal compliance since there is no way to achieve full load thermal readings while in the bios.

Whatever it is you're trying to get across, just come right out and say it. If you know something we don't, we're all ears.

 

[jjjay999]

Read everything I’ve said. Carefully. You can’t get prime95 temp readings’ in the bios. Yes I use monitoring software. HW and Zen. However, if you’d have read (I guess I’ll spell it out one more time), you’d have understood that I said when my pc restarted and the bios prompted me to press F1 because of the cpu over temp, It would take me INTO the bios, to check the temp tab that’s IN the bios and NO temps BUT the cpu were ever “too hot”. I looked up ALL the temps max thermals and ALL but the CPU were waaaaaaay below MAX. As in, most were 40% under or more. Under load. Because the BIOS will hold those temps just long enough so when you click/arrow key to them, it will show you the temps that your PC had (for a few seconds’) been at when the BIOS CAUSED THE RESTART BECAUSE WHATEVER TEMP WAS TOO HIGH, in this case those ARE MY CPU TEMPS. Got it now? It’s nothing but the cpu. Which is all this thread is about. Is wanting a good cooler for my cpu. Not arguing and you treating me like an idiot piece of <mod edit>. I have great airflow and fans and cooling. If you’d have read my GPU temps with a massive overclock and the temps for it, you’d know this. All other temps, under load are perfectly fine in every monitoring software I’ve used BUT THE CPU. Got it now? Thank you

<Moderator Warning: Watch your language in these forums>

 

[Darkbreeze]

Good luck. I'm done trying to help you.