What's the best cooling for i9-7900X? And another question...

[jad.madani.email]

Hello experts,

I have 2 questions if I may.

1- If I lost my mind and decided to squeeze my pocket to get the mighty i9-7900X, what's the best cooling system would you recommend? I heard quite a few times about an extreme difficulty in keeping this monster cool. Is this true?

2- Would you advise me to go for its counterpart from AMD, the Threadripper 1950X? (given that I had a super bad experience with AMD 7 years ago with a high-performance machine that had two GUPs and Crossfire. The machine was miserably unstable! But do you think this has changed?).

Thanks in advance for the answers!

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

Noctua NH-D15 is one of the best coolers.

AMD had some issues with stability in the past. I think they've gotten away from that now.

What are you planning on doing with this system?

 

[jad.madani.email]

Thanks for the answer. My main tasks are:
1- Extensive use of Cinema 4D, Maya and After Effects.
2- Gaming with screen recording.
I will be doing both equally.

 

[mdd1963]

"Best" for massive OCs is going to be some custom $450+water block rig with monster radiator, etc...

For stock clocks, and perhaps light OC work, the NH-D15 might do, but, I have my doubts as to it keeping up if run under the punishing 250-275 watt heat inputs the 7900X is capable of when OC'd....

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

"Best" for massive OCs is going to be some custom $450+water block rig with monster radiator, etc...

For stock clocks, and perhaps light OC work, the NH-D15 might do, but, I have my doubts as to it keeping up if run under the punishing 250-275 watt heat inputs the 7900X is capable of when OC'd....

I didn't realize it was that bad.. maybe 320mm AiO? They said they had to use the H110i with fans on full speed to keep it cool at 4.6GHz. https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/intel-core-i9-7900x-skylake-x-10c20t-cpu-indepth-analysis/2/

Probably easier to just run it at stock and not worry. It will still be faster in IPC than Ryzen.

 

[mdd1963]

The Ryzen 1700 OC'd to 3.9 GHz is still pretty darn fast in games, and gives ~70-80% of the 7900's speed/performance in video editing/rendering, etc., and, does it for $700 less CPU cost and $300 lesss in MB cost....enough money saved for two GTX1080's in SLI for 'free'...or a GTX1080Ti with a 500 GB 960 EVO to spare.....

 

[mdd1963]

If my office was paying for it all, I'd likely take the 7900, however... (Weird how that price/performance ratio works, is it not?)

 

[jad.madani.email]

Thank you all for your answers!

@mdd1963:
I agree on saving on CUP against more GUP power but I'm not a big fan of OC because it comes with load of care taking duties while I want to focus on creating contents. I'm not a hardware geek and if my CPU burns I might not even notice!

I will start ordering in two weeks (second half of Sep). Until then I am not dismissing any choice. For example experts elsewhere say the Threadripper 1920X is the second best CPU, especially that investing in its new socket opens door for upgrading in the future.

 

[mdd1963]

It's hard to fathom anticipating casually needing to upgrade a CPU again just 18 months after installing an $800 or $1000 CPU, but if you feel that is a possibility, it's there, I guess...; the rumors of RYzen 2 are already heating up, with improved IPC and perhaps another 800 MHz helping VERY nicely.