Cooler Master Wraith Ripper

Guggsy

Guggsy

Guggsy

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30 Nov 2016
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28
Can somebody please advise me on what Air cooler will fit on my X399 Aorus Xtreme MB. I brought a CM Wraith Ripper for my Ryzen 2950x, but now I have found out the WR is so big that it blocks off the 1st PCIe slot where my GPU is supposed to go. Which means I have to move my GPU down to the 3rd PCIex16 slot. Which air cooler do people recommend to use on the X399 board for the Threadripper and will NOT cover the 1st PCIe slot. I do not want to install a watercooler, as I prefer air cooled.
 
I think the problem with it not fitting is due to Gigabyte sticking the top pci-e slot right up against the memory slots and not leaving a gap so that a decent sized cooler can fit. Some top end boards from other manufacturers have the same problem. I checked reviews for your board to see what cooling they had used and every single one used a AIO for cpu cooling. I imagine that any decent cooler that is beefy enough to cool Threadripper is going to have the same problem with your board. Maybe someone who is using your board with a air cooler can recommend one that fits. Luckily for you the third pci-e slot is your secons pci-e 3.0 16x slot so your gpu will have the same performance as it would in the top slot. At the moment though the only options that I can see is to run as you are now using the Wraith Ripper cooler and the gpu in the third pci-e slot or buy a 360mm AIO watercooler which you don't really want to do.
 
Cheers buddy for the advise. I have looked into this further and Deepcool fryzen or the Noctua NH-U12S TR4 SP3 (120mm fan) or the Noctua NH-U9 TR4 SP3 (92mm fan) seem to be compatible with the X399 Aorus Xtreme MB. Or I stick with the Wraith Ripper and hope I manage to slot in the Daughter board of the Creative labs ZxR underneath the WR where the GPU would have been as this does not require the PCIe slot. Then slot in the Main creative lab board underneath the daughter board in the PCIe 1x1. I also wanted to slot in my PCI USB hub 3.0 from my old desktop to the new one. The reason I do not want a AIO water cooler is because, if for what ever reason the water cooler developed a leak, it could potentially render my PC as useless. Also what is the lifespan of a water cooler. How long do the water blocks last that sit on the CPU. Do the AIO water coolers come with coolant already in them, or do I have to put coolant in it? I have never built a PC which is water cooled.

 
Lets tackle the AIO first. Yes they come already filled. The whole idea of a AIO is water cooling that is ready to go straight out of the box. The water blocks should last a long time and it will probably be the case of something better has come along way before the block comes to the end of it's life. I have been using custom watercooling for what must be 14 years now. My first block lasted me 10 years before I upgraded it to a modern block. The old block was taken apart and cleaned up and it was as good as it was the day I bought it. I then sold it on so it had a new life with the person who bought it. I know it's different to a AIO but in the 14 years I have been watercooling I have only had two leaks. The first was my own fault and was the very first time I set it up. What happened was that I fitted a tapered barb into a straight whole in a perspex reservoir and then overtightened it which spilt the perspex. Luckily I noticed it straight away as I was filling the loop so no damage was done. The second time was a few years ago when a pair of new EK blocks had the O rings fail. Again I was lucky as it was barely a drip a day and I spotted it fairly quickly so drained the loop down, stripped the blocks and replaced the O rings and all was good again. I will never touch a EK product again though. None of this should happen to a AIO though as it's a self contained unit with minimal maintenance requirements.

The usual cause of failure with a AIO is pump failure and you can prevent any damage from that happening by setting a alarm in the bios by selecting the channel the pump is connected to and setting a alarm to go off should the pump rpm fall below a set level. As for lifespan we have people on here who have been running the same AIO for many years. There is the occasional instance that have seen a pump not to work straight from the box but it's no more chance of that happening than any other component arriving dead.

If you choose a good one from a reputable company such as Corsair, BeQuiet, EVGA or Alphacool you should have good aftersales support should things go wrong and they should replace any damaged components on a case by case basis. Avoid Raijintek at all costs. They had a disaster with a awful AIO called the Trident a couple of years ago. Basically it wasn't fit for purpose and the tanks cracked. The result was coolant everywhere and many people had dead components because of it. Their customer support was abysmal and people had to jump through the hoops to get anywhere with them before they accepted responsibility. Even then many had to wait many months for compensation and some didn't get any at all. It was the worst customer support I had seen from any manufacturer. Luckily they are the exception and the others are pretty good at sorting things out should things go horribly wrong. Make sure you get a AIO that fully supports Threadripper and not one that just comes with the correct mounting kit. A fully supporting kit should have the baseplate of the block fully cover the cpu unlike one that just has a mounting kit to support the socket. That type usually just covers the centre of the cpu and leaves quite a bit of the outside of the cpu visible. Threadripper is a hot power hungry beast and you want the best cooling you can get. What you choose largely depends on what case you have and what size radiators it can take although as your motherboard is extended ATX I imagine you have a decent sized case?


Using the CM Wraith Ripper. Personally if you are happy with the temps you are getting with the WR then I would try to wok around that rather than spending another huge chunk of money on a good AIO. If your ZXR daughterboard doesn't require a actual pci-e slot then as you say, it may fit in the case's top pci slot. If it still touches the cooler you could fit it in your cases second pci space down so it would be overhanging the top M2 heatsink and then maybe fit the actual ZXR in the second pci-e slot (pci-e x8_1. You would have to check your manual though to make sure it doesn't affect the speed of your gpu's slot). You then have the option of fitting your USB hub in either the pci-e x1 slot or the bottom pci-e slot (pci-e x8_2). You did mean pci-e USB hub and not PCI didn't you? If it's PCI it won't fit because your board only has pci-e slots. Hopefully this should all fit and get you up and running without having to spend even more money.

If nobody has already said it, welcome to the forums. :)
 
A quick bit of scaling shows near side of top 16x PCIe socket to be about 72.78mm from center of CPU socket. Thermalright Silver Arrow TR4 is probably the best TR4 cooler out right now and it's fins reach 68mm from center CPU toward PCIe sockets.

There are some others, but without knowing what TR CPU you are using, your case CPU clearance and RAM height I can't say if they will fit and / or if they they have enough cooling ability.

As for AIOs, there are 2 distinct kinds; AIOs that are not CLCs and AIOs that are CLCs CLCs are a sub-group of AIO and in my opinion none of them are any good. They are build as cheaply as humanly possible to last just long enough for most users to move on to new system and/or long enough they are not going to hassle with warranty replacement. That is approximately 2 years, less is removing lots of heat, longer when not removing much heat. The AIOs that are not CLC and are better built as also more expensive and while much better than CLCs are still not near as good as a decent custom loop.

Basically it all comes down to a good air cooler in a case with good airflow is the best price to performance option.
 
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Ok to clear things up further. I have brought all my components apart from my GPU, which will be 2080 TI as to which one i will go with, it will probably be Asus. Just waiting for issues to be cleared as I know a lot of them were failing. If you look on the Overclockers website there are none in stock. I think they must have pulled them due to the issues people are having. I also will be buying a new sound card, as I mentioned before I will be going with Creative labs ZxR.
So what I have brought is:

Be quiet Dark Base pro 900 Rev 2
Corsair RM1000i
16x2 3200 corsair ddr4 lpx vengeance
1tb ssd
8tb Seagate hdd
Ryzen threadripper 2950x
Gigabyte Aorus X399 Xtreme
CM Wraith Ripper CPU Cooler

So that will be the rig I am building. When I brought the cooler I assumed it would fit. it was only today when I was watching a build on Youtube, using the Wraith ripper it mentioned the fact that it partially covers the top PCIe slot.

As Pastymuncher mentioned earlier, allThreadripper fans are quiet big and are likely to block the PCIe slot. The best way to go would be AIO water cooler for CPU. Going the water cooled way means RAM slots aren't covered, No worries about PCIe slots being covered. What I was thinking is if I can make do with what I already have brought, as Pastymunchers says see how it goes. I will look into Be QuietAIO cpu cooler, unless you can recommend me a good one. If I manage to fit everything in,and my temperatures are ok I will stick with the Wraith Ripper until I Upgrade to a 2990x. Which won't be for a good while. If I do have issues fitting everything in to the PCIe slots then I will have to go with a very good water cooled AIO cpu cooler.

Thanks guys for your help. much appreciated.
 
Silver Arrow TR4 will not block nearest PCIe socket. Test results by [H]ardForum on 2950X and 2990WX have it performing better than Wraith Ripper and even did a good job of keeping up with their custom loop. Below is link to 2950X results. I suggest skipping over temperature graph and instead concentrate on CPU clocks and power before throttling. That is where cooler performance really shows itself.
https://www.hardocp.com/article/201...ir_coolerssilver_arrow_tr4_vs_wraith_ripper/5

So if you can return your Wraith Ripper without too much out of pocket and get Silver Arrow TR4, that is what I would do.

I have Silver Arrow TR4, but don't have TR CPU so haven't been able to use or test it yet. If you are in the Torbay area let me know. You could look at mine, even check how it will fit if you like.
 
Thankyou Doyll for the advise. I don't think I will be overclocking my system. I just use optimized settings in the bios. I think of it as it just reducing the lifespan of the components you over clock, just to make it a little faster, and also producing excessive heat. I have looked at some pictures with X399 boards with threadripper fans, even the ones that clear the PCIe slot, it still seems very tight when it has a GPU in it. I am starting to think that, they designed the board like this, as they expected the CPU to be water cooled rather than air cooled. They must know how thick the new GPU cards are, and how close and tight it would have been to cooling fans, and in some cases, as I have now seen, not been able to fit a GPU in the first slot, because the fans are to big. But how ever water cooled, nothing is covered.
 
I could but I have other stuff I need to fit in, like a creative labs ZxR sound card which has 2 boards, and My USB 3.0 Hub from my old PC. I will only properly know when I start fitting stuff in. I am hoping that the daughter board of the sound card, although it doesn't actually need a PCIe slot it will still screw in under the Wraith ripper. I am just a little concerned that being the GPU is so low to the base of the tower and near the PSU, although the PSU has a cover on it heat still raises up and may affect the running temperature of the GPU.
 
I don't really want to stick anything under the GPU as it will be so close to the base and PSU.I'd prefer GPU cooling fans get as much air as possible without being hamperdd I am pretty confident I should be ok. I just need to purchase my GPU once their in stock.
 
I've read a few reviews from people who have purchased the CM WR that the fan is facing the wrong way which impedes air flow within the case.
 
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