Air cooling on high(ish) end cpu experiences please

Yeah but then the thing is with closed back headphones, it eventually leads to sweat behind the ears and the suffocating feeling of the sound in a bucket. Feeling confined/muffled. At least with open back the sound is airy and can hear the dog if he runs into issues with his old age with his legs failing. I can still hear around me.
 
V F said:
Yeah but then the thing is with closed back headphones, it eventually leads to sweat behind the ears and the suffocating feeling of the sound in a bucket. Feeling confined/muffled. At least with open back the sound is airy and can hear the dog if he runs into issues with his old age with his legs failing. I can still hear around me.
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Can't say I've suffered the sweaty bucket ears feeling :)

I get the old dog point though, conversely closed back are good for whinging cats.
 
pastymuncher said:
Hi all, I am considering going back to air cooling after over 15 years of watercooling. The reason I watercooled in the first place is because my computer room was a paif of cupboards knocked into one with no windows so I had to remove the heat from the room. I did this by putting my radiators in a box on the landing windowsill. I am now in the spare bedroom and still use outside air through the radiators by having them in a box on the windowsill. This does involve around 12m of 12mm copper pipe, 10/16mm Mayhems soft tubing, 12mm PETG hard tubing and a pair of D5 pumps. With overclocking giving only minimal gains these days I think my overclocking days are gone so apart from the silence and very low temps there isn't much point of watercooling anymore. With that in mind I am considering going back to air as it is much less hassle. My gpu already came with a excellent air cooler so I only have to worry about the gpu. The whole intention of my current build was to drop something like a 13700k in it a year or two down the line when they start popping up in the MM after people upgrade to the latest socket. What I would love to know is peoples experience of cooling high(ish) end cpu's (not just Intel so 12700k and up, AMD 5800 and up) on air, that's proper air cooling, not AIO's. So if you have the time could you possibly list the following please:-

1. Which CPU and stock or clocked?
2. Which cooler?
3. Peak load temps while gaming and if possible your rooms ambient temp?

I appreciate that not everyone will have the time to reply so a massive thank you to everyone that does.
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Im using a u12a on a 12900k. Winter at 17-19c ambient it can handle 280w, around 30k score CBR23 oced.

In the summer with 30c ambient it can handle around 220watts

Generally speaking I run it undervolted to 180w and the cooler has no problem cooling it 24/7/365.
 
I use a Dark Rock Pro 4 on a 5800X and it does great. I set up a custom "curve" (my BIOS is "At T temp, run at R RPM 4 times). Keeps it cool enough under full CPU load and.full gaming load - my GPU is the heat issue there (GTX 970).

The only reason I'd replace my DRP4 is to get an AIO for aesthetics, not performance.
 
So, I went ahead and did it. I got a Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120SE ARGB for just over £43. This is a fantastic twin tower cooler and for the price is hard to beat. Stripping the loop down and flushing/cleaning everything took just over two days to complete. While I had the blocks and pipework out I took the case 200mm fans and filters out and cleaned them as well as the top deck of the case. The cooler has a pair of brackets that you fit to a backplate and then you fit the cooler and secure it with two screws just like most other large coolers. I expected it to swivel a little but it is fixed solid. Due to my tall DDR4 I had to raise the front fan a little so it sat above the sticks. The cooler itself has cutouts for the memory but it's the front fan that is the problem. I am glad I went for a 120mm cooler and not a 140mm like I was going to as my motherboard is very cramped around the cpu socket and compatability would more than likely have been a problem. I put the GPU's stock cooler back on but changed the pads to Gelid Extreme pads for maximum cooling. The cpu and gpu both have Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut on them. One thing I am not happy with is the cables for the fans. I have both fans plugged into a Y-splitter (came with the cooler) which is plugged into the CPU Fan 1 header. The ARGB wires are plugged one into the other and then to one of the ARG headers on the motherboard. I have tucked a lot of the cables under the motherboard but there is still a lot on view so I am going to cut a new cable management hole (round grommet) inline with the end of the memory slots at the top of the board which should hide most of the wiring.

The first thing I noticed was that my gpu now idles at what used to be it's gaming load temp (34 degrees C) but I guess that was to be expected. Power draw has dropped from 128 to 78w at idle so that's a good thing. Last night I was gaming for a couple of hours and with a ambient temp of 21 degrees C the cpu topped out at 61 degrees C and the gpu at 63 degrees C which is pretty impressive seeing as neither the cpu or gpu coolers ramped up and remained very quiet. With temps that good it's highly likely that I will be sticking with this setup and selling my watercooling stuff although I will need to play some other games to get some further data. I also need to take into account a future upgrade to the cpu although the 13000 series is a pretty poor upgrade from a 12000 series so my next upgrade will most likely be to a different socket.

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2x 200x30mm Bitfenix Spectre Pro fans at the front as intake. 2x 200x25mm Aerocool Lightning at the rear as exhaust. All fans are running at a silent 480rpm. The psu is in the bottom deck along with the wiring and my pumps used to live down there as well. I built myself a modular desk and the PC module is the corner unit (it's a L shaped desk).
 
Glad I found this thread, I have a 7900x and use a dark rock 4 pro cooler. My cinebench score has dropped 13000 since I first built the pc, I'm unsure about the cooler. Though I think it maybe a thermal paste problem and have ordered some MX6 thermal paste

But since getting my 7900x I have been thinking of getting a AIO cooler and with black Friday coming I thought it maybe a good time to get one. If I get one, I want one with a360 radiator.
 
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