AMD Threadripper 2950x & Noctua Cooler - High Temps

[AN-DR]

I’m looking for advice on how to best cool a stock AMD Threadripper 2950x when married with the Noctua NH-U14s-TR4-SP3 CPU cooler – I’ve seen a few posts online covering the issue, but I’ve yet to find a suitable solution to the CPU running hot.

• AMD Threadripper 2950x
• Noctua NH-U14s-TR4-SP3 CPU Cooler + additional Noctua NF-A15 140mm CPU Fan
• Asrock Taichi x399 Motherboard
• 32GB Corsair Vengence LPX 3200 MHz RAM (4×8GB)
• Fractal Design R6 with 3 stock chassis fans
• EVGA G3 1000w PSU – 80 Plus Gold
• Nvidia GTX 750 Ti
• Samsung 970 EVO M.2 /Samsung SSD 840 PRO / SanDisk Ultra II SSD + HDD's + DVD Drive

All the readings below are taken from AMD Ryzen Master using the standard ‘Auto’ settings.

• Temperature
  • Idle temperature on boot is approximately 24, spiking to 30 degrees (ambient room temperature is between 19 and 22 degrees).
  • After 10 minutes sat idle, the temperature may slowly rise to around 45, spiking upwards of 55 degrees at times.
  • Under full load the temperature reaches around 60 degrees fairly quickly and continues to slowly creep up by one degree every few minutes. Once the temp hit’s 63 – 65 degrees I’ll stop it as it shows little evidence that it will stop rising.
    
• Peak Speed
  • Peak Speed consistently bounces around between 2.200 GHz and 4.150 GHz.
    
• CPU Voltage
  • The CPU Voltage consistently bounces around between 0.7625 and 1.3600.
    

The thermal paste was originally applied using the video on Noctua’s website as a guide, but the temperature issues were noticeable. As such I removed the cooler, cleaned all components and reapplied thermal paste fully covering the CPU in a thin even paste and a small blob for each CPU die and the issue persists.

I’ve also moved my HDD’s so they sit at the bottom of the case ensuring a good flow from the chassis fans on the front of the case through to the CPU cooler.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[AN-DR]

Thanks for the replies.

4K8KW10, I'd imagine I'll move to a water-cooler at some point in the future, but wasn't expecting to reach these temperatures under little to no load using the Noctua with additional CPU fan.

Space Monkey, I too noticed the temperature would reduce after closing and reopening the Ryzen Master software, this perhaps indicates incorrect temepratures been displayed by the software. I've just watched Ryzen Master report a temperature reading of 45 degrees, after closing and immediately reopening it's sat at 25 degrees. Are you or anyone else aware of alternatives that accurately reports temperature readings for the 2950x?

Unseul, I believe the maximum operating temperature of the 2950x is 68 degrees after which it will start shutting down or reducing the clock speed on it's cores. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll take another look at the case fans on the front and back. If the CPU cooler has two fans, is it best practice to set both up as intakes pushing air into the cooler or the front as an intake and the back as an exhaust?

 

[AN-DR]

Vince, those boost figures are what it achieves when idle, under load it will reach 4.4 GHz.

Unseul, yes, that's how the fans are set-up; two intakes on the front of the case, intake on the front side of the cooler, exhaust on the back side of the cooler and case. Motherboard temperature is reported as 23 degrees, give or take and doesn't increase as is the issue with the CPU. I think I'll have another go at applying thermal paste and opting for a more aggressive fan speed set-up, I've not looked into fan speeds in too much detail at the moment as the motherboard reports an incorrect temperature for the CPU (it doesn't take into account the offset that needs to be accounted for).

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[AN-DR]

Unseul, Fractal Design Define R6 with the 3 default Fractal Design Dynamic X2 GP-14 140 mm fans (2 x intake, 1 exhaust) - this has now changed though. I've built a fair few workstations with it's predecessor, the Define R5, and never noticed any issues with the standard fans, though they have all had Corsair H100i V2 water coolers. With that been said, taking a look at them in more detail does make me wonder if I should consider alternative case fans moving forwards.

Kei, thanks for sharing your experience. In my case, the computer will be used as a workstation from time to time and may run under consistent full load.

DarrenM343, I'm not using the precision boost override, the CPU is set to it's standard auto settings (3.5 GHz + boost). There were a few reasons I initially opted for the Noctua cooler over water cooling; noise (this will just be a standard PC when not used as a workstation), reliability, having a cooler specifically that covered the full CPU and finally cost, at this time at least.

doyll, thanks for the detailed suggestion. Taking everything into account you and others mentioned in the thread, I've gone down the following route at the moment; replaced one of the front intake fans with a Noctua NF-A14 (max. rpm of 2000), the replaced fan will now act as an intake at the bottom of the case. The CPU Fan 1, CPU Optional Fan and 3 x stock chassis fans have been connected to the Fractal Design fan hub, with the remaining Noctua NF-A14 connected directly to the motherboard via Chassis Fan 1 (with quite an aggressive fan curve).

Idle temperatures now appear to be more consistent at around 24 degrees with fans running at approximately 700rpm, and whilst the temperature will spike occasionally it does fall back to the level it started at. It's likely I'll replace the other stock front intake after the break as the airflow difference within the case is significant.

I've not had chance to look at any full load runs in detail, when I've got chance I'll report back with the figures.

Thanks again for all the suggestions, it's appreciated.