How to cool i7 4790k

[goshag44]

Basically my cpu is running a stock cooler and im getting huge amounts of thermal throttling, 100 degrees whenever im doing anything that isnt idle. How can i cool my cpu better?

[Levent]

Get a decent thermal paste and reapply it. TBH if you got couple of bucks to spare just get a Hyper 212, it comes with decent thermal paste too.

[goshag44]

5 minutes ago, Levent said:

Get a decent thermal paste and reapply it. TBH if you got couple of bucks to spare just get a Hyper 212, it comes with decent thermal paste too.

if i have a few spare bucks, wouldnt it be better to get a water cpu cooler?

[Levent]

3 minutes ago, goshag44 said:

if i have a few spare bucks, wouldnt it be better to get a water cpu cooler?

Sure I just suggest a cheaper solution, that will perform significantly better than stock cooler without not paying extra for going those extra few degrees.  

[goshag44]

Just now, Levent said:

Sure I just suggest a cheaper solution, that will perform significantly better than stock cooler without not paying extra for going those extra few temperatures.  

thanks for suggestion, do you know any good AIOs?
 

[SolarNova]

Top end Air coolers beat AIO's.

 

If u have room for a tower heatsink, get an air cooler.

 

ND-D15 and DarkRock Pro4 are 2 top options

[WoodenMarker]

Are you sure that the cooler is properly installed and that the plastic pins aren't loose?

What case are you using and how is your airflow laid out?

Where are you shopping / located? Budget?

[LogicalDrm]

Limit voltage CPU is drawing. That should help a bit.

[GuruMeditationError]

On 7/21/2019 at 4:44 PM, goshag44 said:

Basically my cpu is running a stock cooler and im getting huge amounts of thermal throttling, 100 degrees whenever im doing anything that isnt idle. How can i cool my cpu better?

4790k's overclock beautifully so if you're confident enough to go that route you'll want something a bit beefier than the Hyper 212.

 

If you don't want to overclock, then the 212 should be fine.

Rule of thumb...high performance air-coolers will outperform AIO water coolers. The only real disadvantage to them is that they're big, bulky and heavy, they don't have RGB lighting (which I personally love) and are a lot of weight to have hanging off of, and levering, your motherboard's CPU cooler bracket. AIO's in comparison are neater, arguably look a lot nicer and are much easier to handle and install, but they have an extra point of failure in the water pump.

Generally speaking, discounting the fans on an AIO, there's not much difference in terms of performance from one AIO of a specific size to another of that same size...so if you opt for an AIO my advice would be to choose the one with the pump assembly that looks the nicest to you and swap out the fans for something with better performance...

...basically if all AIO's were tested with the same fans fitted, there'd probably be very little difference between how they perform.

If you're choosing an AIO try and get one with a two fan radiator for 140mm fans as that's the sweet spot for performance. Don't get one with a three fan radiator (there's barely any improvement at all in efficiency beyond two fan radiators) and don't get a single fan radiator...single fan radiators just don't have enough surface area to work effectively; they do work but they're so inefficient you should only really use one if you have no other choice.

Otherwise, if you're going for air-cooling, the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo is a good solution unless you want to overclock.

If you want to overclock with air, the Noctua NH-D15 is the cooler that the majority of people here would recommend and I'd agree, because you get two high performance Noctua fans included with it...

...but having said that, I personally have been using the Akasa Medusa, it has an 8 heat-pipe heatsink and some seriously high performance fans that I like, but that's me.

That being said, Noctua have been showing off, at the 2019 trade shows, a new 7 heat-pipe heatsink with a 10% increase in surface area over the NH-D15, if you're opting for air cooling, you might want to purchase a less expensive stop-gap solution until their new Noctua flag-ship cooler arrives.  

 Also, 4790k's reaching 100C with the stock cooler isn't unusual. They have terrible thermal paste under the IHS, which is why so many people de-lid them, but that's an advanced cooling technique...

...also, I think Intel were just assuming people would buy aftermarket coolers for the 4790k's, because they just overclock so well and they're intended for overclocking, and so just shipped them with the standard coolers, but the standard intel stock coolers (in probably the majority of instances) won't give you the thermal overhead to run the chip to its full potential at stock speeds let alone support an overclock, which they absolutely just won't.

[TommyTwoPockets]

On 7/21/2019 at 11:45 AM, Levent said:

Get a decent thermal paste and reapply it. TBH if you got couple of bucks to spare just get a Hyper 212, it comes with decent thermal paste too.

Going to chime in on this. Get some nice thermal paste like Grizzly Kryonaut, and go with a Hyper 212 EVO if you are on a strict budget. As much as I love my AIOs, I can appreciate solid air coolers for people who A. Are on a budget and B. People being paranoid about water in their system. 

As Guru said above me though, if you aren't going to OC I would go with the EVO, if you plan on OCing you can go with an AIO or an even higher end Air cooler recommended above. 

[GuruMeditationError]

29 minutes ago, TTP said:

Going to chime in on this. Get some nice thermal paste like Grizzly Kryonaut, and go with a Hyper 212 EVO if you are on a strict budget. As much as I love my AIOs, I can appreciate solid air coolers for people who A. Are on a budget and B. People being paranoid about water in their system. 

As Guru said above me though, if you aren't going to OC I would go with the EVO, if you plan on OCing you can go with an AIO or an even higher end Air cooler recommended above. 

I concur...I would go for with the EVO if you're not going to overclock; otherwise you'll need something beefier.

Also, one big problem with big performance air coolers is they can be bothersome to install and often favour the motherboard being removed from the case completely for installation. With an AIO, if you have a cut-out in the motherboard tray, inside your PC case, which gives you access to the rear of the CPU bracket, then you can often install them quite easily without having to unplug or remove anything. 

[TommyTwoPockets]

2 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

I think that's a typo and TTP means he "wouldn't" go with the 212 EVO for overclocking but other than that...

...I concur.

Also, one big problem with big performance air coolers is they can be bothersome to install and often favour the motherboard being removed from the case completely for installation. With an AIO, if you have a cut-out in the motherboard tray, inside your PC case, that gives you access to the rear of the CPU bracket, then you can often install them quite easily without having to unplug or remove anything. 

That is correct, my fault on that. Yeah I wouldn't use a Hyper 212 EVO for OCing. I also agree with that they are pretty bothersome to install and some consider them to be "ugly". If you care about aesthetics in your case then that might be an issue but like you said on a budget might be the best route to just go with an EVO for now and if you want to do anything else later down the road you have time to save up for that. 

[goshag44]

On 7/26/2019 at 12:53 AM, TTP said:

That is correct, my fault on that. Yeah I wouldn't use a Hyper 212 EVO for OCing. I also agree with that they are pretty bothersome to install and some consider them to be "ugly". If you care about aesthetics in your case then that might be an issue but like you said on a budget might be the best route to just go with an EVO for now and if you want to do anything else later down the road you have time to save up for that. 

 

On 7/26/2019 at 12:48 AM, GuruMeditationError said:

I concur...I would go for with the EVO if you're not going to overclock; otherwise you'll need something beefier.

Also, one big problem with big performance air coolers is they can be bothersome to install and often favour the motherboard being removed from the case completely for installation. With an AIO, if you have a cut-out in the motherboard tray, inside your PC case, which gives you access to the rear of the CPU bracket, then you can often install them quite easily without having to unplug or remove anything. 

hey so my options are: noctua NH-D14 or the cooler master MA610P, what do you guys think?

edit: nh-d14 doesnt fit in my socket, getting other one

[WoodenMarker]

5 hours ago, goshag44 said:

edit: nh-d14 doesnt fit in my socket

It does.

115x sockets are the same and older packaging hasn't been updated to include the different sockets that fall under that category.

[GuruMeditationError]

9 hours ago, goshag44 said:

 

hey so my options are: noctua NH-D14 or the cooler master MA610P, what do you guys think?

edit: nh-d14 doesnt fit in my socket, getting other one

I'd need to look at the reviews to see if I needed the extra cooling capacity that the two tower NH-D14 offers. If it turned out I didn't need the extra cooling I'd go for the MA610P, purely because it'd look nicer in the case.

Having said that I've got an overclocked 4970k so, if I were to switch to air cooling I'd favour the twin tower design, so that I could get three fans working in concert on the cooler; also I'd use an Akasa Medusa. It's got eight heat pipes and the top fins are finished in a black coating which I personally think looks a little nicer than silver. Plus the fans you get with the cooler are head to head, among some of the best available; it's just they're yellow, and people don't like yellow.

[goshag44]

18 hours ago, GuruMeditationError said:

I'd need to look at the reviews to see if I needed the extra cooling capacity that the two tower NH-D14 offers. If it turned out I didn't need the extra cooling I'd go for the MA610P, purely because it'd look nicer in the case.

Having said that I've got an overclocked 4970k so, if I were to switch to air cooling I'd favour the twin tower design, so that I could get three fans working in concert on the cooler; also I'd use an Akasa Medusa. It's got eight heat pipes and the top fins are finished in a black coating which I personally think looks a little nicer than silver. Plus the fans you get with the cooler are head to head, among some of the best available; it's just they're yellow, and people don't like yellow.

welp, my only real option with which im able to use the pc right now with no wait for delivery was the ma610p and to be honest im stoked! After an intense installation (ive never installed something like that) the temps went down SOOO much from 100 degrees Celsius and only 20% usage to a peak of 68 degrees on the whole package with 100% usage! and the rgb looks great!

[GuruMeditationError]

4 hours ago, goshag44 said:

welp, my only real option with which im able to use the pc right now with no wait for delivery was the ma610p and to be honest im stoked! After an intense installation (ive never installed something like that) the temps went down SOOO much from 100 degrees Celsius and only 20% usage to a peak of 68 degrees on the whole package with 100% usage! and the rgb looks great!

That's fantastic; really good to hear.  

 

I was working on my CPU temps recently and re-lidded with liquid metal (I've got a 4790k) and now Prime95 is the only thing that'll get the temperatures to go above the mid forties.

 

Also, the temps you were getting with the stock cooler seem really high for those loads, but I guess that's solved now.

Happy you're happy with it (I'm glad you went for the good looking one)   

...and yeah, I wasn't really into RGB until I bought some components that just happened to have RGB and now I love it.