[SOLVED] i9 9900KS Cooling

[elderdrake]

Intel just replaced my i9 9700k with a step up to a i9 9900ks (long story but Intel does right by their customers or at least this one in this situation) but reading on the CPU I am worried about my current cooler given the high listed TDP and reported heat output. The CPU arrives tomorrow but I was/am running a H100i Pro RGB ( https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Liquid-Cooling/Digital-Control-and-Monitoring-Liquid-Coolers/Hydro-Series™-H100i-PRO-RGB-Liquid-CPU-Cooler/p/CW-9060033-WW ) and I am worried it may not be able to keep it cool enough.

I do not plan on pushing the CPU hard and I am using a Z390 Gigabyte Auros Master for a mobo in a Cooler Master Silencio 600 case. Ambient room temps are 60'ish degrees and I live in Iowa so basically in a refrigerator when it hits say -40 outside. That said I read up and I know the king is the Noctua NH-D15 but the wife has said no more PC parts after I spent a bit too much on this build, happy wife happy life right? So the question is gents, do you think that cooler will be ok with the combo I have listed here as long as I do not push the CPU? I believe the mobo I have will try to auto OC the damn thing and Gigbytes BIOS is a load of fun to play with /s . Any input would be greatly appreciated because one thing is certain, I do not want to fry a chip this expensive. It is that or wait a month to be safe and next paycheck I pick the NH-D15 up which sucks in two ways, the thing is ugly as can be and is a monster in size leading to case and clearance concerns not to mention I am not a fan (no pun intended) of massive blocks like that putting pressure on the mobo. I know Noctua has incredible mounts to mitigate this but still does not rule out someone bumping the PC and it warping the board, or at least that is what my fevered nightmare situation is playing out in my head as I had a V8 cooler do that to me a long time ago.

 

[Zoel.fahmi]

It'll be fine
Just downclock if you're worried

 

[Darkbreeze]

It's an i9, not an i7.

Temperatures should always be listed in Celsius when referring to computer hardware. So 60°F is actually around 15.5°C, and that is below what any modern core temperature would idle at anyhow so it's largely irrelevant to either idle or full load temps, except that being relatively low you won't have to worry about a high ambient pushing your load temps up.

All you can do is try it, but I suspect you will find that your Corsair 240mm cooler is not sufficient for the 9900ks which generally requires a good 280/320mm or open loop cooler, or very high end air cooling. If it runs too hot, then you can simply downclock the CPU ratio to about 4.6Ghz maximum all core boost until you can get a better cooler. And too hot, means anything above 80°C when running Prime95 Small FFT (NOT "Smallest" FFT, just "Small FFT") with AVX and AVX2 disabled.

If you are hitting anywhere near 80°C under normal circumstances, like gaming or running applications, then you are definitely lacking for cooling, because you SHOULD be able to run Prime and stay under 80°C if you have sufficient cooling.

 

[elderdrake]

It's an i9, not an i7.

Temperatures should always be listed in Celsius when referring to computer hardware. So 60°F is actually around 15.5°C, and that is below what any modern core temperature would idle at anyhow so it's largely irrelevant to either idle or full load temps, except that being relatively low you won't have to worry about a high ambient pushing your load temps up.

All you can do is try it, but I suspect you will find that your Corsair 240mm cooler is not sufficient for the 9900ks which generally requires a good 280/320mm or open loop cooler, or very high end air cooling. If it runs too hot, then you can simply downclock the CPU ratio to about 4.6Ghz maximum all core boost until you can get a better cooler. And too hot, means anything above 80°C when running Prime95 Small FFT (NOT "Smallest" FFT, just "Small FFT") with AVX and AVX2 disabled.

If you are hitting anywhere near 80°C under normal circumstances, like gaming or running applications, then you are definitely lacking for cooling, because you SHOULD be able to run Prime and stay under 80°C if you have sufficient cooling.

Appreciate the reply and amended post as I am replying here after a 16 hour shift so yeah, a bit exhausted here and my apologies for not listing Celsius temps instead of Fahrenheit.

Fairly certain that from what I have read the majority of people running this CPU are not able to keep the chip anywhere near below 80° C sustained on a Prime test without a beefy nice Noctua or larger AIO. That said I am worried about my AIO just not being enough and truth be told I will probably move to an air cooler soon given that I have never liked the idea of a pump going out and not hearing it, or software monitors not catching it, and thermal shutdown happens as just happened with a colleague of mine resulting in a completely fried CPU. So I will give it a go tomorrow and test it for a bit and then reply back to this thread with my results in case anyone has a similar situation akin to mine and also questions their ability to keep it cool.

Again thank you for the replies and OP amended to not idiotically ask for help on a 7th gen instead of 9th gen CPU.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The 9700k IS an i7. The 9900k and ks are i9's. Just to be clear. Nothing idiotic about it, in fact it's lame that they felt the need to call it an i9 instead of just an i7 when it's not even an HEDT processor, which is where the i9 designation really belongs.

Anyhow, I'm not a fan of water cooling either, to be honest.

This is something you might consider, and you can find used NH-D14 coolers on Ebay for around 20-50 dollars quite often. If you are using rather tall memory modules to where clearance would be a problem, then you will want to look at something else like the D15, although there are a good many other coolers out there that with heatsinks that are just as good as the D15. It's the fans that really make the difference.

Noctua NH-D14 Redux: Modern Fans On An Old Heatsink - Overclockers

Various combinations of fans were tried on the NH-D14, especially the NF-A15 and the NF-A14. We found a winner.

www.overclockers.com

Any of these would probably do fine.

Noctua NH-D14 (Replace stock fans with NF-A14 industrialPPC 2000rpm)
Noctua NH-D15/D15 SE-AM4
Noctua NH-D14 (With original fans)
Thermalright Silver arrow IB-E Extreme
Phanteks PH-TC14PE (BK,BL, OR or RD)
Cryorig R1 Ultimate or Universal
Thermalright Legrand Macho RT
Deepcool Assassin III

 

[elderdrake]

Thank you for the insight Darkbreeze, very informative replies. Just got the CPU today and wow, satin bag and crazy case for it.

Ran Prime for not even 30 minutes and I was hitting 80C and I did not want to stress test it more so I loaded up some demanding games and kept HWiNFO up and logging. After a couple hours I never went over 60C but I still do not feel exactly safe and the mobo did indeed auto OC the chip to 5.0 mhz.

So the wife is giving in and we will be picking up an air cooler soon'ish but I was hoping to find something that is not so much a damn eye sore. I see the DH-15 has a black variant so I may go with that. I looked at the list you provided and some of those look nice as well. Sucks to have a nice RGB setup with my RAM, mobo, glass side, and to have that monster in the case but I would rather extend the life of this CPU rather than look fantastic. Working family man so I can not exactly afford to put rigs like this together often.

Thank you again for the replies and once again the community here helps another tinkerer on their journey, much appreciated.

 

[mdd1963]

5 GHz is not an 'auto-OC', those are the specs of the KS...

If your temps are too high for you cooling solution, you could easily (especially easy with Intel's XTU) impose lower multiplier turbos (i., 47X instead of 50X) when all cores active...which would effectively be running it at true factory 9900K specs, with 1 or 2 cores at 5 GHz, 3-4 cores at 4.9 GHz, etc...

 

[Darkbreeze]

So yeah, as mentioned the 5Ghz is the standard all core boost for the KS.

If you were able to run Prime95 on Small FFT with AVX/AVX2 disabled, for 15 minutes, with NO workers dropping out (Might need to run HWinfo simultaneously so you can monitor each core to verify that they are all continuously at 100% usage. ANY deviation from 100% usage on a core indicates an abnormality or error), and did not exceed 80°C according to HWinfo (NOT HWmonitor, Open hardware monitor, Speccy or bundled utilities) or Core Temp, then you are thermally compliant. Of course, just because you are thermally compliant now, while it's winter and you have low ambient temps, does not mean you will during the summer when the ambient temperatures are much higher so you should account for that by retesting once there is a significant change to ambient temperatures in the room.

Regardless, as far as choice of CPU goes, this would be a very good choice that isn't an "eye sore" as you put it. It tests out with a very high recommendation, probably has a better heatsink design than the D15 and if you later added two NF-A14 2000RPM iPPC industrial PWM fans to it, would probably outperform both the D15 and modern fan equipped D14, although I can't verify that with any assurances since I don't have one to test it on. Still, it's a great choice, and is actually available, unlike the black D15 which is apparently sold out everywhere at the moment. Even without adding the Noctua fans to this, it's a fantastic choice.

Tweaktown review of the Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT


PCPartPicker Part List

CPU Cooler: Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT 73.6 CFM CPU Cooler ($79.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $79.98
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