New PC Build - Air cooled - Looking for a bit of a review

[TemmyFox]

Hello all,

Hope this is the right place to ask - I built myself my first ever PC at the weekend after my trusty one of 5 years died, which was equal parts nervewracking and wonderful. It feels great to have learnt a bit how to put something together, and to have a PC that I better understand how it all works.

The specs are:

CPU: Ryzen 3600x
Motherboard: MSI Tomahawk x570
RAM: 32GB G. Skill Trident Z 3600mhz
GPU: GTX 980 (hanging onto the old card until the 3000 series is readily available and tested)
Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus
AIO Cooler: NZXT Kraken x63
PSU: Corsair TX650M 650w
Case: Lian Li O11 DYNAMIC
Case fans: 6 x ARCTIC BioniX F120 (powered by a Deepcool FH-10 fan hub)

I have a few questions about what I've built. I've been using it for a couple of days now and the great thing is it all appears stable, but there are a couple of cooling related questions I have:

1) The x63 pump is plugged into the CPU_FAN header as per NZXT instructions. I've set the pump up to be always 100% active. All the fans (six case & the two NZXT fans for the AIO) come off a single SYS_FAN header (via the SATA powered HUB). This means all the fans respond in the same way. Should the AIO fans be on their own seperate header? Would that be better practice?

2) I'm seeing the following CPU temps:

30°C-45°C - Idle / minimal load in Windows such as typing this. Occasionally when opening windows and dragging things around it'll suddenly jump up to 50°C and then back down. It does seem quite jumpy! Is that normal?

60°C - 80°C Full load with Prime95. The fans are speeding up inline with CPU temp increase however is 80°C an ok top end?
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3) I used 6 x ARCTIC BioniX F120 in the case because they were just easily availble to me at the time however would you recommend any particular others? I'm trying to find the sweetspot between quiet yet providing good airflow for the case.

I'm also noticing a 'whine' which sounds a bit like there is a fly in the room. It's either going to be the NZXT fans or the Arctics but I haven't narrowed it down yet.

4) I have MSI Dragon Center installed which provides fan curve control, however the BIOS also provides fan control. Which one takes precedence? Is Dragon Center useful at all or would I just be better setting up fan stuff in the BIOS?


I appreciate your thoughts! Thank you very much.

 

[Chris Beard]

1) It doesn't overly matter, no

2) Yes - 80°C is okay. It does feel a little high to me, but it isn't going to hurt your CPU any.

You may wish to check the voltage that is going to your CPU in HWMonitor in case your board is being overzealous.

3) Noctuas or Bequiet! Silent Wings are both good fan options. I bet it's the chipset fan you can hear however!

4) Mostly the software will override BIOS settings once it starts in Windows. There is a small performance advantage to not having Dragon Centre installed; but I imagine it's nicer to work with than the BIOS.

 

[pp111]

The whine may well be the water pump. They can whine a bit.

The simplest way to reach the perfect balance between noise and temps is to vary the fan curves. Either using the BIOS or an application. And it depends what you do with the PC. On my main PC I mostly play games so the fans are set up for that. They are pretty much off for normal Windows stuff, browsing etc. I watched the PC and realised that all the temps wander above a specific limit only when I am gaming ( about 40 degrees for my PC ). So at a GPU temperature of 40 degrees I start to ramp up the case fans. In practice this is almost two settings - "off when everything is idle" and "X rpm when busy" . X being a value I find acceptable for the noise temps I want. In my case that's about 1200rpm. But I have fans that will go up to 2000rpm. That's way too noisy, but it was important to have that range to allow me to experiment. I would recommend the average gamer to get fans with a range of about 500-1500 rpm then tweak them to get the performance you want. You have tons of fans so I think you would be closer 500rpm than 1500! But just experiment.