Demonic Donut

Regarding heat pumps and gas boilers/furnaces, this isn't 100% true. Insulation and sealing apply just as much for a hydronic loop, gas furnace or heat pump. Assuming ductwork is sealed properly, there isn't going to be a big difference in heat sources with a house that is similarly sealed/insulated. Convection will suck the heat out of any house. All will cycle, all will experience energy loss from cycling. But a heatpump suffers more from cycling, mainly due to electric motors high starting current and time to stabalize pressures and temperatures. Furnaces and boilers lose their efficiency from flu gas, not so much from the boiler being a heatsink. As long as the boiler or furnace is in the conditioned space, there isn't any heat loss from the boiler itself. Its the 300 degree exhaust going outside. Thats why all high efficiency boilers and furnaces are condensing units that drop the flu gases below condensing temps, removing more sensible and latent heat from the combustion air. A variable rate boiler, furnace or heatpump avoid this to some extent by having a good turndown ratio. Being able to limit their output to a fraction of their full output to load match. Newer inverter driven heatpumps are incredibly efficient and will run at a fraction of their output to maintain setpoint instead of cycling. Inverter units can achieve 4:1 turndown, but many boilers can go as far as 10:1 which is quite impressive. Depending on your energy source, a gas furnace or boiler could be better for the environment. But residential equipment is not held to the same maintenance standards as commercial or industrial equipment. Its not just CO2 output, but CO and NOx, which is quite important as it causes things like acid rain. These are tightly monitored and restricted in the commercial and industrial sectors. A proper tune can reduce CO2 output by 10%, halve CO and reduce NOx considerably as well. And these are conservative numbers. Out of curiosity I did some math. Coal is the worst CO2 producer at 2257 pounds per MWh while natural gas is at 977 pounds per MWh. A therm of natural gas produces an average 11.7lbs of CO2 for an average consumer. If we assume 80% efficiency, that's 80,000BTUs per therm. Math time. I'll just use the MWh amount of power. 2257lbs of CO2 per MWh from coal, furnace equivalent would be 15,432,479 BTUs rounded up to the nearest BTU. 977lbs of CO2 per MWh from NG, furnace equivalent would be 6,680,342 BTUs rounded up to the nearest BTU. So now the heatpump. To make it easy and sway in favor of the furnace and the dirtiest power producer, I'm just going to use the larger BTU amount of the coal plant electrical vs natural gas furnace. The easiest math will be to decide what HSPF (Heating Season Performance Factor) we need to achieve in order to beat the gas furnace. 15,432,479 BTUs / 1000 / 1,000 KWh = a HSPF of 15.43. Well that doesn't look good. Coal is dirty! Furnace/boiler wins hands down. Let's try the NG power plant. 6,680,342 BTUs / 1000 / 1,000 KWh = a HSPF of 6.68. Thats much better and actually attainable by all modern equipment. High efficiency heatpumps are usually considered HSPF of 8 or better. And in my area you cant even buy a new unit with lower than 14 SEER efficiency, which generally range from 8-9.5 HSPF. So depending on where your power is coming from, a heatpump may or may not be better for the environment. For my area, coal is less than 25% of power produced, 35% hydro/solar/wind. So a heatpump is a better option by far in my area. There are also high efficiency furnaces and boilers, achieving 90%, 95%, or even 98.5% efficiency. Although those numbers are under some very whiteboard perfect variable scenarios, although so are the heatpump numbers. So it's a moot point. The biggest problem, in my opinion, as a consumer is cost. A high efficiency unit sounds great. A heatpump replacing a gas furnace is a great environmental choice. But they are expensive. I crunched the numbers when I installed AC, debating going with a heatpump when my natural gas furnace works just fine. The ROI was 4-7 years depending on runtime. And that's with me purchasing the equipment at wholesale and installing it myself, AC only vs a heatpump unit of the same efficiency. And the higher efficiency ones had an even longer ROI. A condensing furnace is thousands of dollars. High efficiency heatpumps are as well. People need incentives to do this, and the $700 tax break in my area is not nearly enough. Anyway, thats my rant.

Would she actually benefit from a pcie4.0 m.2 like the 970 pro? I'm a fan of Samsung drives. They have served me well. I have 870's, 970's and a couple crucial mx500's between our two systems.

Good to know. Thanks for all of the information everyone. Definitely a lot I didn't know about Adobe. I'm planning to go with a 32gb kit for now. I need to check her drives because she tends to fill them. I wouldn't be surprised if the drive Adobe was using for scratch was near full as well. Might need more storage.

@Shimejii PC was built with gaming and budget in mind. She hadn't planned to do any Adobe work when the computers were built. It does pretty well though. Now I probably would have spent the extra $150 or so but it didn't make sense back then. @dogwitch I know it's already trying to use the SSD as a cache and it's not pretty. @SupaKomputa I've thought about this but people seem to act like it's sacrilege to run mixed sizes or a mixed kit. I used to run 1 extra 4gb ddr3 stick with two matched 4gb sticks in my old build and the extra ram was better than any possible performance hit I took from having uneven slots. I'd like to save the extra $100 on 32 vs 64 and use it towards a more color accurate monitor if I can get away with it.

My wife is getting closer to the end of her schooling for graphic design. She uses the Adobe suite. Primarily Photoshop and Illustrator. Animator too. Recently she's been having issues with running out of RAM now that her projects are getting larger and more complex. Currently only 16gb and it's just not enough. She has lagging issues and has even locked up (once a full crash) when she has Illustrator and Photoshop open sometimes. I read around some and found some say 32gb is perfect, to 32gb is barely ok, 64gb is much better. For those that use the programs regularly, what would you recommend? I was looking at either another 16gb 3600 CL16 kit to drop in or go for an entire 64gb kit. Admittedly another 16gb kit would be much cheaper, but I'll get 64gb now if she'll need it. We don't plan to upgrade CPU etc anytime soon. Maybe summer ish 2023 at the very earliest. Current System Ryzen 3600 16gb 3600mhz CL16 5700XT Various m.2 and 2.5" SSDs

Sounds like you'll have to make new shortcuts. I had major stuttering and performance hits with that driver as well, but didn't lose anything like you did.

Is there literally no air? A little bit of air (a CC or 2 is probably more than enough) plus the flexibility of the loop is (most likely) plenty of room for the thermal expansion that the loop will experience. Also loops are surprisingly good at handling pressure. Check out Jayz video on over pressurizing a custom loop. There is usually air somewhere in the system to allow the water to expand and compress the air, even with distro blocks. I was taught water will expand 5% from fill to boiling, assuming 40 degree F fill water. It's closer to 4% if I remember correctly, but we always did 5% for fudge factor and the math is easier that way. The small amount of expansion a loop goes through due to it's low delta T makes it not too much of an issue If you have no air space, you should pull some water out and let air in, but you don't need much.

Considering most RGB headers do 25 watts or so, maximum heat is negligible and you won't notice a temp difference unless your case is extremely restricted. I can do a maximum of 122W of RGB through my motherboard's 5 headers. While this seems like a lot, it is spread through the case, and not all of that energy is directly heat energy.

You have a fan directly on the radiator as rear exhaust, correct? If so you should be fine. If you want extra fans, I would try adding two top intake and keep the front intake as well. That will help feed cool air to the radiator and force air past the GPU and out of the empty pcie slots.

What are your gaming temps? Sounds normal though. Especially as exhaust for the AIO and high ambient temps. I know the 3000 series has high stock voltage. I manage 1.25 static on my two 3600's at 4.2ghz all core. Maybe try an offset to help lower useless voltages. You could also play with fan curves and pump speeds to see where your sweet spot is for noise vs performance.

Pricing for me, U12S redux is $50 and Gammax 400 is $25. Cooling/noise wise, you'd probably be better off spending the extra money on some case fans depending on your case and how many fans you already have. Or save the money for bills, a dinner out, a new game or something that brings you some fun. If you like the look of the u12 redux, and it's worth the extra money to you for coolness, definitely get it.

I have a D15 on my 3600. OC'd to 4.3 all core at 1.3V in bios and it stabilizes at 60c in cinebench, as a temp example. Gaming I'm usually in the 50s somewhere. Fans at static 50%, good case airflow. I run a 120mm fan above the ram due to clearance. I bought it 5-6 years ago for my i5 3570 and didn't run fans on it. It was overkill then, still is now to some extent but I enjoy the cooler. I like a quiet system. If you like the idea of it. Go for it. I don't like AIOs due to failure. I find the $100 has been worth it for me.

The U12S might slightly outperform the Deepcool unit, but with the processor your going for it'll be negligible and not worth the extra cost. Go for the AK400.

Can you download HWInfo 64 and give us a screenshot of the core temps and frequencies while having Minecraft open? It's a much better diagnostic tool. Does it freeze or anything? Or just straight shuts down? Is it it menu or once you load a world? What's the GPU doing? *Edit* One thing to try real quick. Go and make a save of the bios profile, then reset to defaults. Then try again. You could have a bad setting somewhere. If it works, try enabling one setting at a time if you are OCing or using XMP etc.

This. You've added more exhaust to the case + air from the air cooler isn't circulating in the case at all. CPU heat is going directly out of the case.

Your don't mean your cold tap is 30C, but you're using tap water in your loop? Just genuinely curious. Did you mean your loop temp stabilizes at 30C? I agree here though, it seems like your loop might have problems not related to ambient. For OP - An 8k BTU AC should be able to handle 2000 watts of cooling. It should be able to keep the room cool. Although it'll run almost 24/7. Is your portable model one with one vent tube that goes out the window? These kind exhaust air from the conditioned space and that means air needs to come IN from somewhere, aka outside where it is warm. DIY yourself an intake vent for the intake of the condenser coil if you have one of these models. That will help some with room temps.

I'm so used to it that it doesn't bother me too much. BTU is a British thermal Unit but is 1 Pound of water 1 degree F which cracks me up. 12k btu/hr is a ton of cooling, but refrigeration equipment is often rated in HP... Boilers are the same way. Natural Gas is measured in Therms or cubic feet. A therm is 100k BTUs, or 100 cubic feet. But large boilers are rated in Horsepower! I think they just keep things confusing for job security.

You wouldn't be able to get an adequate chiller setup for $1000 anyway. A portable AC is definitely the best choice. What style did you get? If it's the kind with one vent that goes outside, I highly recommend DIYing another vent for the intake of the condenser. The single vent units are very inefficient because they pull your space into negative pressure, causing warm outside air to be sucked into your space. 1500W of cooling is probably talking Watts as heat capacity as @Kilrah stated. SEER rating is the amount of btus per watt. So a 14 SEER unit moves 14 btus per watt of energy used. 1 watt = 3.41 BTUs. So 1500w of heat is a bit over 5k BTUs. Which is less than 1/2 ton of AC, which at 14 SEER would be ~430 watts of electricity pulled from the wall.

What's your budget and are you limited to 120v or can you do 230/208?

If he goes with a higher resolution and larger display, he'll have equal screen space and pixels vs more lower resolution screens. A 42" 4k will be pretty much the same as 4 1080p 20" displays.

Are your temps only out of control in that one use case?

My first thought is coil whine resonating in the rad/pump.

Hole saw and go slow as others have said. It should be ok. You can maybe try cutting oil too, but test for staining on the back of the panel first. 4.5" is close enough for 120mm fan if you need imperial units. You can get a cheap one off of Amazon. It'll cut a hole through plastic just fine. You don't need an expensive bimetal one. What kind of tools do you have access to? A Dremel will work, just go slow. You can trace the circle, and make many small holes with a regular drill bit. Then file the rest once the bulk of the material is gone. I've used a hacksaw blade on plastic. The key is to go slow and careful. Let the tool do the work, don't push hard etc.

Interesting read. How do you like the 4000D overall? I'm thinking of getting one for my daughter's first computer. But the lack of 5.25 bay makes me hesitate. I like having a DVD/blu-ray drive. Your case fan setup results are the same as mine. I run the top front as intake and top rear as exhaust. Although I have a side and bottom intake as well. I have a Noctua D15 and I will say I got a very minor CPU temp decrease (iirc 2 ish degrees) by having a second fan. So my cooler goes 120mm fan -> fin stack -> 140mm fan -> fin stack -> 140mm rear exhaust. But with a dual tower cooler it makes sense to have two fans. I ran without the 120mm for a bit because the 140mm wouldn't fit due to ram.

What is your ram voltage at? As I said, go with the max speed level you are comfortable with for sound honestly. Fluid dynamics is complicated. You can try modifying fan speeds while stressing the system to see what temperatures do. I would assuming if all fans are at 100pct, you would be slightly positive for pressure. As the 3 140mm will move more air than the 3 120mm, assuming restriction from front mesh and the radiator are roughly the same. Can you feel air being exhausted through the rear port or at the empty pcie slots? You can always add a fan to directly blow on the ram modules if you really need it.