After some general views/advice on cooling 5900X

[HangTime]

Bit of weird thread this, maybe in part it's just seeking motivation to get off my backside and sort out a problem, but here goes

Background
Currently, I have a 5900x setup in an old (>20 years) case. It has a very big/heavy air cooler, Alpenhof Olmyp which I bought second hand and has a slightly dodgy bracket, meaning it isn't operating at full efficiency, it also sags a bit (which I've partially rectified with a heath robinson solution, don't ask... but temps are better when I have this applied). For an air cooler, in theory it should be pretty good, it is rated for 340W TDP, massive chunky heatsink sticking out with two giant fans bigger than my case fans etc (I deliberately wanted a high end air cooler to try and stretch the 5900x a bit), but obviously this is compromised the way I have it setup.

Issue
Temps run pretty hot, it has a 6900XT right underneath pumping heat up into it, and my son now has a PC in my office too so ambient temps are only going to increase going into summer. Under load using my tweaked PBO2 settings etc it hits 90C which I understand is the point it will invoke thermal throttling(?).
In short, whilst the system is generally stable it's not great and I feel I could get higher sustained clocks with better cooling.

Options moving forward

1. Reseating the cooler: As I say I got it second hand with a dodgy bracket and I don't think reseating the cooler is a realistic option, I'm not great at this stuff and will probably just make it worse, it's an absolute beast
2. Replace with a 280mm AIO cooler I bought a year or two back but haven't opened, this would be in an existing case. The complication here is I don't have a big modern case, my decent sized cases are pretty oldschool with the PSU at the top, I think mounting the AOI radiator will be hard as there's like 5.25" bays in the way etc. I've never used an AIO before so don't really want to be facing adding complications.
3. Replace with a Hyper H412r cooler. I have one of these still in the box I bought cheap for another project, I think it's only 100W TDP though so not really suitable for a 5900X. Probably a waste of time.
4. Buy a new case and setup the AIO cooler. My head says this is the right option, however I don't really want to invest in a new case (wife already not happy at the amount of towers I have laying around) plus have the hassle of tearing everything down and rebuilding it. Although option 2 would involve a lot of faffing about in the case to get things to fit anyway, so no worse than that.
5. Buy a new air cooler, better than the H412r. Not keen on this option, it would probably be the easiest in terms of faff just swapping out the cooler with everything else in place, but feels like a waste given I have an AIO sat in the box.
6. Do nothing. As mentioned the system is running OK, I could just leave it setup and then in the future when I do an upgrade, sort out the problem at that point

I appreciate it probably looks a bit odd to some to be using a relatively high end CPU alongside a suboptimal cooler and ancient case i.e. imbalanced system. But I've always looked to cut some corners on PC building, that's just how I get mental satisfaction, for better or worse.

 

[HangTime]

What are you using the machine for exactly?

Gaming and general desktop usage.

When you say tweaked PBO2 settings what are you running? I run stock power limits but use curve offset and get pretty decent numbers from 5900x considering.

If you've just pushed the PBO settings higher you probably are making heat and noise with no real world gain.

I would agree with the above about getting an air cooler in the £30-40 range as some have great performance these days.

Could you run cinebench or maybe even a quick cpu-z benchmark and post your results compare.

I think the the settings used are somewhat secondary as I'm more concerned about the cooler itself (i.e. it runs hot at stock), but i've boosted the limits, put +200 boost and applied a crude all core negative offset.
cpu-z bench was around 9500 single core and 635 multicore. Looking at an old post (https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/cpuz-benchmark-all-welcome.18946600/post-35574439 ) I used to get about 10000 / 650 2yrs ago but I think it was more tuned for performance then, I've done bios updates and changed settings etc.
To be honest, I might just chuck it all back to stock and let it manage itself but that feels a bit alien to someone who started out with 'traditional' overclocking in the 90s!

If any of your big cases have decent air intake grills or meshes on the front, where the hard drives would be or maybe even where the 5.25" bays are, I would just take a drill to the rivets holding any cradle steelwork in place and chop them out and suss out how to fix the AIO. Also, post missing crucial detail on whether you have a Dremel or not.

Yeah I already drilled out the HDD cages from my Chieftec Dragon to fit a RTX3090 (don't have that any more). I don't have a dremel and I'm pretty novice when it comes to this stuff, that took me ages to do, I'm not particularly practical.

My 5900x ran at 90C "stock" on water cause the motherboard lied to the boost algorithms and ran it at about 30% more power than it should. This resulted in a whopping 2-5% performance gain.

This seems to happen on some gigabyte motherboards so check it's not happening with your PBO settings.

Interesting, I do have a Gigabyte mobo! What exactly am I looking for to know if this is a problem?

You can still get the AM4 mounting kit for your cooler for £10 Inc delivery.

OK that's maybe worth considering, although some of the wires (not sure on proper name) that go round the heatsink are a bit bent, to be honest fitting the thing was a bit of a faff compared to most coolers I've installed recently, so I'm not keen on messing with it in case I can't get it back on but might be worth trying with something else as a backup solution.

 

[HangTime]

If is a full tower Cheiftec Dragon there should be plenty of room in the top of the case and above PSU to fit that 280mm radiator. I have one myself and before I water cooled I cut a 120mm fan hole on top. I know from experience the top of the case on a Dragon will be too thick to cut with a Dremel, but a jigsaw would blitz it no problem. The idea is you cut a rectangular hole for the radiator, then fit a 280mm rad grill over it to hide the cut lines. Then drill four holes in the case top to secure the grill to the case, and either tap these so you can screw the grill down, or go through so you can put a screw through with a nut. Though really it would be easier to fit it where the HDD cages were. No grill needed and should still be able to cut it with a jig saw and drill some holes for the fan mounts.

I know you say you are not practical, but cutting up and old Cheiftec is the ideal way to give it a go and practice. But if you don't have any tools then option 6 is looking nice.

Thanks, amazed someone would still be using the same case as me! To be honest I don't want to get into proper case modding, I know I'll end up doing a bodge job and regretting it, the fan holes would be misaligned or something so I'd end up with only 2 screws holding it in, slicing my hands open on bare metal etc. I'd rather just buy a new midrange case that's designed for modern setups at that point. I think I'll probably try and fit it at the front of the case (I can just about take a power drill to some rivets), the Dragon doesn't currently have a system inside it so I can have a bit of a play about to see how the rad could fit in without having to tear down my current setup. 20+ years ago I was all over building and optimising computers for overclocking etc but I now have a lot more money (albeit I'm still quite frugal) and a lot less free time!

 

[HangTime]

Update: I got a Peerless Assassin 120. It's a lot smaller than my old cooler, but based on my testing this evening seems to keep the temp under 70C. Thanks for the recommendation.

My next challenge is now I have more thermal headroom how I can get it to draw more power. It seems to top out around 155W despite me having set PPT well over 200W.

 

[HangTime]

I spoke a bit too soon on temps, I removed a negative voltage offset and it's got as high as 76C. But it's pretty good for a cooler that cost £26.90 delivered, the main thing was I wanted to stop it hitting the 90C throttle limit. It was pretty easy to install although the instructions were super unclear about the fan clips, youtube vid helped with that.

The other benefit is it gave me an excuse to move it into a more modern case that I'd been putting off due to the hassle of shifting stuff around, goodbye 24 year old Enlight 7237, hello 22 year old Chieftec Dragon