Recommendation needed for good and reliable 360 or 420mm all in one liquid cooler

[sonyzz]

I was thinking of getting all in one liquid cooler for my cpu but, because I'm totally new to liquid coolers, thought of asking here for a recommendation of good and reliable 360 or 420mm AIO, currently owning an NH-D15 air cooler and during encoding my 5950x would get pretty warm up to 80c - stock at about 24-25c room temperature and even more on hotter days, testing cpu with pbo on gave 90c during CB23 multi core run... so far from what I've seen online, NH-D15 is on par with 240/280mm AIO but question would be - would 360mm or 420mm AIO make any negligible difference?

[GuiltySpark_]

Luckily there are lots of great reviews and roundups out there. The top performing 360 AIO's are the models from Arctic Cooling, EK and Lian Li. I know Arctic also makes a 420 model. 

[NorKris]

Many if not all 280 AIOs out performs a NHD15. 
put as rickeo said: Arctic, EK and Lian Li makes very good AIO's.
CM and NZXT also makes good AIO's. 

[freeagent]

If the room is hot your temps wont really change, and if they do, its only until the coolant warms up.. The difference between the AIO you are looking at and your D15 is the AIO will probably get more fresh air then your D15 is. And that is the difference most people see when they fire up their AIO. If you aren't feeding your D15 a steady supply of fresh air, it will be warm regardless of your room temperature. Just like with your AIO, if you cant feed it anything but warm air, you will see that passed on to the CPU. But to be fair, most people don't like noise, and you need to make noise to move air..

[NorKris]

We know that 30c of room temp will give you higher temps on the CPU when using a NHD15  than using a 280 or bigger AIO. 
This is what delta T is. 

[freeagent]

That’s crazy talk.

[NorKris]

7 minutes ago, freeagent said:

That’s crazy talk.

aah you funny  

[sonyzz]

On 8/8/2021 at 3:44 PM, NorKris said:

We know that 30c of room temp will give you higher temps on the CPU when using a NHD15  than using a 280 or bigger AIO. 
This is what delta T is. 

false, at same room temp of 24c I ran CB R23 multiscore test with stock 5950x cpu temp with D15 was 68c, at 1000rpm case fan speed, and cpu fan speed in 70-80% range, today Liquid Freezer II 360mm AIO arrived, so I've installed it to be top exhaust, assembled pc back and start testing, because pump block and fans use same connector (which goes to cpu fan) so, in bios I have set a profile for cpu fan header to be 50% at 40-45c, 75% at 60-65c and 100% from 80c onwards, same profile was used for D15. Once again case fans running at fixed speed set by fan controller, turned on pc, let it warm up for about 10 minutes then ran CB R23 multiscore test, while it did gained about 500CB points - cpu temp via HWInfo64 was showing 64-65c so about 4c lower at 0.5c higher room temp

[sonyzz]

4c lower is okay but not what I was expecting judging from the praise AIO's get vs Air Coolers, atleast access to m.2 ssd is now easier and honestly I could squeezed in 420mm AIO inside Obsidian 750D airflow edition because it supports 3 x 140mm fans at the top but I was worried about diminishing returns of it cause, pump block is identical to 240, 280 and 360...

[NorKris]

12 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

false, at same room temp of 24c I ran CB R23 multiscore test with stock 5950x cpu temp with D15 was 68c, at 1000rpm case fan speed, and cpu fan speed in 70-80% range, today Liquid Freezer II 360mm AIO arrived, so I've installed it to be top exhaust, assembled pc back and start testing, because pump block and fans use same connector (which goes to cpu fan) so, in bios I have set a profile for cpu fan header to be 50% at 40-45c, 75% at 60-65c and 100% from 80c onwards, same profile was used for D15. Once again case fans running at fixed speed set by fan controller, turned on pc, let it warm up for about 10 minutes then ran CB R23 multiscore test, while it did gained about 500CB points - cpu temp via HWInfo64 was showing 64-65c so about 4c lower at 0.5c higher room temp

false? 

 

my statement: 280+ AIO gives lower temps
ur testing AIO has lower temps 

[sonyzz]

Just now, NorKris said:

false? 

 

my statement: 280+ AIO gives lower temps
ur testing AIO has lower temps 

I meant, false to a certain degree, like the way you put it, in my eyes looked like ''lower = 10c or 15c lower'' temps that's why I said false

[NorKris]

2 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

I meant, false to a certain degree, like the way you put it, in my eyes looked like ''lower = 10c or 15c lower'' temps that's why I said false

Lets ignore that u installed the AIO for "worse temps" my statement does not say by how much. but tests by GN shows 7-8c at the same noise lvl. 

[sonyzz]

3 minutes ago, NorKris said:

Lets ignore that u installed the AIO for "worse temps" my statement does not say by how much. but tests by GN shows 7-8c at the same noise lvl. 

It's my first ever AIO so my expectations were high, sorry for that. for the price - AIO good and comes half assembled already, would a bigger radiator like let's say 420mm one benefit something if pump block is the same or it would do nothing?

[NorKris]

2 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

It's my first ever AIO so my expectations were high, sorry for that. for the price - AIO good and comes half assembled already, would a bigger radiator like let's say 420mm one benefit something if pump block is the same or it would do nothing?

more Rad less C  always. but ur 60-70c is fine. test front mounted rad btw 

[sonyzz]

1 hour ago, NorKris said:

more Rad less C  always. but ur 60-70c is fine. test front mounted rad btw 

with pbo on it still gets to 89-90c which is a bummer as with pbo on cpu goes to over 200w heat and both D15 and 360mm Arctic LF II - result in 1c difference, lol. case fans were set to max, and pump with its fans were also max as per 100% at 80c bios setting for cpu fans

[NorKris]

3 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

with pbo on it still gets to 89-90c which is a bummer as with pbo on cpu goes to over 200w heat and both D15 and 360mm Arctic LF II - result in 1c difference, lol. case fans were set to max, and pump with its fans were also max as per 100% at 80c bios setting for cpu fans

front mounted AIO 

[sonyzz]

11 minutes ago, NorKris said:

front mounted AIO 

360mm don't fit in front only 280

[NorKris]

2 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

360mm don't fit in front only 280

 

XD

 

try do intake on the rear fan.  4 out and 2 in is... 

[IkeaGnome]

1 hour ago, sonyzz said:

It's my first ever AIO so my expectations were high, sorry for that. for the price - AIO good and comes half assembled already, would a bigger radiator like let's say 420mm one benefit something if pump block is the same or it would do nothing?

Something to keep in mind. With an AIO you have more mass to heat up. Radiator, liquid, and even the tubes will radiate some heat. It'll take longer to heat up, but also can take longer to cool back down after. An AIO doesn't mean you're moving less thermal mass. It just uses more thermally conductive materials to move that thermal mass. It still needs time to cool back down. I bet the D15 was cooling down after passes a lot faster than the AIO is. 

[Gohardgrandpa]

I'll never go back to an aio after using a big air cooler. The fans are noisy as hell and the temp difference isn't big enough to justify the price difference 

[NorKris]

3 minutes ago, Gohardgrandpa said:

I'll never go back to an aio after using a big air cooler. The fans are noisy as hell and the temp difference isn't big enough to justify the price difference 

Its like saying: im never gettting a car again, the tiers where not grippy at all. 

its impossible to change tiers right, i mean fans  

[Jeppes]

Its not exactly a comparison if it boosts higher with the better cooler. You would need fixed voltage and clock speed for that.

 

 

[NorKris]

17 minutes ago, Jeppes said:

Its not exactly a comparison if it boosts higher with the better cooler. You would need fixed voltage and clock speed for that.

 

 

ye, i agree. and without a hwinfo pic of the NHD15 at work its even harder to say 

[sonyzz]

Thanks for input guys, this is my very first AIO so my expectations were too high for it in thinking that it would lower cpu temps by 20c or more... but, now I got more questions which are related to the pump and motherboard. AIO pump assembly has one 4pin pwm connector to supply 3 fans, small vrm fan and pump of single pwm fan header. In specifications of AIO it says max pump speed - 2000rpm but, during tests cpu fan was never going up above 1600-1700rpm. My motherboard has a dedicated AIO_PUMP header on the motherboard next to CPU_FAN and CPU_OPT headers (which share current of 1A). Question is - if I disconnect small vrm fan with 3 fans on radiator and only leave pump, should I plug it in the aio_pump header and able to see accurate pump speed, if the headers pinnout is the same as cpu fan header (picture from manual page about fan headers below) and run 3 (or 6) radiator fans from cpu fan header with aio pump not needing to share power from single fan header and having it's own 1A header?

[NorKris]

You connect the pump to the aio header. If the speed on the pump is 1700++ ur fine. 

 

You dont have a hwinfo with the nhd15..?