Cooling Options for an AMD Ryzen™ 9 3950X in a SilverStone SG13 with a SFX-L PSU

[FutaGrlAlicePA]

As the title suggests, I’m trying to find Cooling Options for an AMD Ryzen™ 9 3950X in a SilverStone SG13 with a SFX-L PSU. I want do air because of wanting a mass storage 3.5” Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Main Boot Drive will be a NMVE with a second as Project Scratch Drive. My Steam Liabrary Drive will be a 2.5” Solid State Drive (SSD). I’d like to store my projects locally as well as a thunderbolt 3 external RAID 5.

 

thanks in advance:

alice

[Arttu89]

If you're set on that case and that CPU you'll probably have to be a little unconventional with an air cooler, beacuase of the clearance.

You could try getting something like a be quiet! Shadow Rock LP, mount it without the fan and flip the power supply so it pulls air from inside the case and exhausts it out back, it would do double duty as your CPU cooler fan at the same time, unfortunetly it's hard to say how well would that work in a setup like that without giving it a try.

Obviously you'd have to turn off any silent running options on the PSU if it had any features like that and maybe get a PSU a step or two over the power requirements of your system so it doesn't mind the extra heat going through it.

[LaPlume]

I recently had my fair bit of experience with "limited profile aircooling" and Ryzen 9 (a 3900X in my case).

My personal advice would be a simple one: don't.

Spoiler

 

Personal experience with R9 and CPU air coolers, neither of these would fit in you case, but that's as an observation:

 

The Be Quiet Pure Rock Slim prooved itself equivalent to an AMD stock cooler while not being free.

An H7QL (which was right against my height limit, 145mm) wouldn't have been a tremendous performer either, but still miles above.

The best sub-130mm performer in front-back air flow was supposed to be the Alpenfohn Atlas with an AM4 bracket, but it disappeared from the market.

 

With R7 and Ryzen 5 processors, I tested other Alpenfohn and Cryorig coolers, from biggass tower coolers to really low profile ones.

 

But a Ryzen 7 I would surelly prefer to have running on water, or a beefy twin tower cooler already.

 

 

From researches around, I'ld say a single 120mm thick AIO is what I would call a bare minimum if you want to take advantage of a Ryzen 9, or a top tier beefy air cooler.

 

 

BUT, if you are really set on this case and this CPU, and have to go air cooling, here is my call:

 

-an Alpenfohn Black ridge ( prefered option, top performer if you have the ram/board clearance, designed for both down>top or top>down air flow ), or as second choices, LP53 or Cryorig C7cu or C7g (which are top-downs)

-in all cases, replace stock fan by a NF-A9x14 noctua fan (gain in performance, and the stock fans of all of theses low profile coolers are SCREAMERS )

 

>in the case of the  Alpenfohn Black ridge, which I really would recommand, I would advise a push-pull configuration, adding a 120mm slim fan on top of it, like a Noctua NF-A12x15 or a Prolimatech Ultra Sleek Vortex 12 , which can account for a 7-8°C difference.

 

As for if you should go for top-down or down-top with the BR, the delta is supposed to be less than 5°C on open bench, don't know which would be best in your computer case though.

[FutaGrlAlicePA]

Looking at 2 coolers by noctua. The NH-L12S or NH-L9x65 I’m using a adapter to use a smaller SFX-L psu to game clearance. Like noctua for quality, reliability, & versatility (Rotatable).

 

edit: if I didn’t want the 3.5” drive I’d just use a thick 120mm AIO. But if cooler is to limited i could use a external raid solution.

[LaPlume]

@FutaGrlAlicePA Ok, I missed the part about the SFX-L PSU. How much clearance do you have then? My proposition of the  Alpenfohn Black ridge can still hold, but it was centered on packing the most air cooling possible in the STOCK amount of height clearance.

 

If you already have a cooler -even an insufficient one- on hand that you can mount in your rig, and that we can verify the height of, it would make it easier for you to measure.

[FutaGrlAlicePA]

so far i have acquired the SilverStone：SG13, SilverStone：G11313530-RT, SilverStone：PP08, and Phanteks: PH-LEDKT 1m & 2m RGB Strips.

 

haven't gotten my psu yet and finding the cooler clearance has been difficult. i do know lots use this pp08 adapter with a sfx psu but not having much luck on cooler hight. all ive found is a YouTube Video by The Tech Buyer's Guru (Low-Profile CPU Cooler Review: NH-L12S and NH-L9x65 vs. Shadow Rock LP, Big Shuriken 3 & NT06-Pro!) but dont think it mentions exact dimensions. so was hoping someone r might have a good idea on it. my backup idea is a Corsair Hydro Series™ H80i v2 liquid CPU cooler or similer

[FutaGrlAlicePA]

if it matters, im planning on the SilverStone: SX800-LTI for jy psu with custom cablemod pro wires

[FutaGrlAlicePA]

Found out the Noctua NH-12S is 70mm and has the clearance needed. But can it cool the beast of a cpu???

[WoodenMarker]

On 1/5/2020 at 3:15 PM, FutaGrlAlicePA said:

my backup idea is a Corsair Hydro Series™ H80i v2 liquid CPU cooler or similer

If you can fit a H80i v2, it'll be much better than any other air cooling solution. That being said, I'm not sure how that would fit with 3.5" hdd's.