Adequate cooling for 14700K

Nevakonaza

Nevakonaza

Nevakonaza

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Hey,

Building a 14700K based system, Wondering what i should go with for CPU cooling.

The case i have is a NZXT H5 Flow which allows for a 240mm Rad at the top. ( i want to keep front open for fans/airflow)
Or if i went Air cooling a max of 165mm in hight.

I've been looking at AIOs but a lot don't seem to state their capable TDP rating which baffles me if they will be able to handle a 14700K or not.

Ideally i don't want the CPU to be held back in terms of it been able to boost.

One AIO i did like the look of is the "EK-Nucleus AIO CR240 Dark" but not sure if it will be enough.

appreciate any feedback :)
 
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look at reviews if there are any for coolers you are looking at, they often do large extravagant tests with thousands worth of kit and 15 or so coolers pitted against each other.

i feel that these real tests are better than a manufacturers TDP claim anyway
 
Nevakonaza said:
Ideally i don't want the CPU to be held back in terms of it been able to boost.
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It depends in large part on what exactly you're doing with the CPU. If you're only gaming, then modest air cooling or AIOs can cope with it just fine. Anything that can deal with around 150 watts of heat can cool a 14700K under modest load.

If you're doing heavily multithreaded work in a long run (e.g. an hour or two), or trying to win in multithreaded benchmarks then your requirements will be rather different.

The cheapest cooler that is widely recommended is the peerless assassin or phantom spirit, but if you run "out of the box" settings then since most motherboards let them run power unlimited and overclocked, these coolers won't be happy bunnies and your CPU will throttle.
 
Ive got the 360 ek nucleus aio and it struggled to keep the temperatures down with my 14700k. High 90’s when rendering video and running cinebench, fine for gaming, although it did go high when building shaders.

You may have to adjust the power limits. Ive droped them down to 180w and all good now.
 
Air is borderline with a 14700K and only the latest versions of the top end air coolers will run them without throttling in stuff like Cinebench MT - I have to turn my case and CPU fans right up with a Dark Rock Pro 4 or I lose about 0.5% performance to thermal throttling and that is with a good case for air flow.
 
Thanks for the replies all, I was looking into a lot of air coolers (mainly dual tower) but all of them had an issue here or there whether it be ram clearance or a few mm too high and wouldn't fit in my case.

I ended up ordering a Artic Liquid Freezer 3 due to it having a larger Radiator, But il be changing the stock fans for better Noctua NF-P12 Redux, They're quieter than the stock and have better Pressure specs.

Hopefully, It'll be enough. :)
 
To be honest after doing a load of testing the performance difference is very small between decent cooling and overkill cooling on 14th gen CPUS. For instance i seem to recall that using a NH-U14S with the temps hitting 95 Degrees while running Cinebench throttling test was only a couple of percent less than using a 420 Arctic Freezer 3 and running much lower temps.

These newer CPUS are designed to peak at much higher temps which gives the false impression that they are significantly overheating(By previous standards). Even when they throttle for very short periods the performance doesn't really take much of a hit at all. You can even tune the CPU by undervolting which can often yield more benefits than overkill cooling.
 
ZXSpectrum said:
To be honest after doing a load of testing the performance difference is very small between decent cooling and overkill cooling on 14th gen CPUS. For instance i seem to recall that using a NH-U14S with the temps hitting 95 Degrees while running Cinebench throttling test was only a couple of percent less than using a 420 Arctic Freezer 3 and running much lower temps.

These newer CPUS are designed to peak at much higher temps which gives the false impression that they are significantly overheating(By previous standards). Even when they throttle for very short periods the performance doesn't really take much of a hit at all. You can even tune the CPU by undervolting which can often yield more benefits than overkill cooling.
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I suppose with the manufacturing process getting even smaller too (10-5nm and smaller in the future) the heat is a lot more concentrated in a smaller spot.
I have a feeling coolers will need to adapt/change soon, in that case if even the highest end coolers are not really keeping temps at bay, even if it doesn't effect performance too much 95c is still too hot for my liking! and has to have negative impact on the lifespan of the CPU in the long run or a lot of degradation maybe.
 
Nevakonaza said:
even if it doesn't effect performance too much 95c is still too hot for my liking! and has to have negative impact on the lifespan of the CPU in the long run or a lot of degradation maybe.
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Realistically, unless you're running long-run workloads it is unlikely the CPU will be running anywhere that hot under normal usage and if you are running long-run workloads with a i7-K or i9-K it just makes sense to undervolt and/or power limit them to something more realistic (e.g. ~200 or less), because the excess power usage is unnecessary and inefficient.

I see it a lot where someone optimises their cooling through something heavy like Cinebench and while this used to make sense, because if your cooling can cope with intensive benchmarks it'll be just fine for everything else, it arguably doesn't make sense for these CPUs anymore, because the average consumer workload is nothing like Cinebench and you can end up buying a much beefier cooler with much higher fan speeds than are necessary.
 
Nevakonaza said:
I suppose with the manufacturing process getting even smaller too (10-5nm and smaller in the future) the heat is a lot more concentrated in a smaller spot.
I have a feeling coolers will need to adapt/change soon, in that case if even the highest end coolers are not really keeping temps at bay, even if it doesn't effect performance too much 95c is still too hot for my liking! and has to have negative impact on the lifespan of the CPU in the long run or a lot of degradation maybe.
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An air cooler will heat up to max temps much quicker than an AIO, from memory you are looking at 1 minute for an air cooler vs 5 minutes for a 360 AIO. So an AIO is a better bet for 'bursty' workloads like gaming for hotter running CPUs as the chances of them reaching throttling point can be significantly less.
 
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Depends what kind of noise level you’re happy with. Intel run hot and pump out a lot of heat and as result these chips require a lot of attending to. The airflow through the case, CPU cooler and graphics card all need to be considered too.
 
What jigger said. Having good case airflow so CPU and GPU coolers are supplied with air within a couple degrees of room temp is critical. Every degree warmer air entering cooler is transfers to same degrees hotter CPU / GPU is (at same load and fan speed). This is especially true with air coolers.
 
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