Newbie Questions to AIO performance and settings

[Qk321]

Hey guys so I recently moved from air cooling to a AIO solution. My expectation was that it would certainly offer better performance.

 

In terms of AIO I first had a cheapie 120mm radiator AIO which offered ok performance with my Zen 3 5600x OC with PBO and Auto OC.

 

I wasn`t happy so I bought a H150i Elite 360mm AIO thinking this will for sure do the trick as people said it can handle higher end cpu oc settings no problem.

 

My question is what to expect from the AIO (as I am actually still bit disappointed in the performance).

 

At the moment my temps with mild overclock reaches 72 - 76C which is a bit high in my opinion. What I tried to see response from AIO -  Pre-cooling liquid running the fans at 80% for 5 minutes then do a 10 minute R23 test vs leave the AIO in balanced mode (which fan rpm is on average probably 800 - 900rpm). Results  - thermal delta is 2 or 3 degrees.

 

So it seems like the AIO has a set thermal saturation point (don`t know how to explain this) the set ability to absorb a certain amount of heat as the cpu basically instantly shoots up to the 72 C point then stays there. (the 120mm one was higher).

 

If your fan speeds are based on your liquid temp in your AIO, what is the best way to set the fans (as day fan and night fan curves differ hugely as I stay in a hot place, so the liquid settles higher during the day and drops at night). It takes a bit getting use to setting the fan speeds to this and I`m asking for some help from guys who had a bit longer to figure this stuff out.

 

Much appreciated.

 

EDIT: My setup is in my profile pic, I think it has enough fresh air coming in - would another 3 fans in pull config help performance at all for the radiator (at the moment I only have 3 fans in push)

[Devryd]

Afaik amd 7nm Chips tun pretty hot, because the jeat is concentrated im such a small area. If you want to get your temps down, I can recommend clock tuner for ryzen by 1usmus. 

It's an overcklocking Tool which also reduces voltage if possible 

[jaslion]

Aio's and normal air coolers are basically doing the same thing in different ways. The water in an aio can be considered the heatpipes in a air cooler.

 

I think you fell for the watercooling is better than air cooling. This is NOT TRUE. All that matters is the heat exchange that can take place between the fins of the coolers and the outside air. Both water and air coolers operate on the exact same principle.

 

There is literally not a single good 120mm aio as even the best is still behind a hyper 212 simply because the hyper 212 is bigger and can just exchange more heat.

 

Most 360 rads do not perform better than a dark rock pro 4 or noctua nhd 15. A sycthe fuma 2 tends to beat most too. That being said the h150 is on the better end but still will hover around nhd15/dark rock performance.

 

Since you auto oc'd the 5600x it's not wonder it is running hot as the auto oc pushes stupid high levels of voltage through the cpu usually causing a lot of heat to be generated.

 

As for your remarks on the aio. Yes it saturates as water simply takes more energy to heat up this doesn't improve cooling or anything it's basically just a buffer. Another thing that greatly affects cooling performance is pump speed too. So make sure that is set to at least 75% of max speed to get good circulation.

 

What I would recommend here is that you remove the auto oc and just leave it at stock. Or if you want to oc you do it manually. Please first remove all the ocing stuff and take a base cinebench run too so you have a base score. Then test with each oc as it would not be the first time a oc that lets say puts it at 5ghz actually has a worse score than the base one. These kinds of bad ocs happen.

[Qk321]

I`ll give that a try - do you have any recommended settings using the 1usmus tool?

 

I`m just wondering, surely a 360mm radiator can cool a entry level cpu? It`s the best AIO I can get my hands on, and it still isn`t performing great which might be because I`m not using it properly or missing something>

[Devryd]

There are tutorials for ctr. It usually suulggests you values. 

I cant give you mine, since I am using an oder cpu with it 

[Devryd]

this one Was made by the creator of ctr

[Qk321]

Just now, Devryd said:

this one Was made by the creator of ctr

Great man thanks I`ll give it a try

[Qk321]

5 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Aio's and normal air coolers are basically doing the same thing in different ways. The water in an aio can be considered the heatpipes in a air cooler.

 

I think you fell for the watercooling is better than air cooling. This is NOT TRUE. All that matters is the heat exchange that can take place between the fins of the coolers and the outside air. Both water and air coolers operate on the exact same principle.

 

There is literally not a single good 120mm aio as even the best is still behind a hyper 212 simply because the hyper 212 is bigger and can just exchange more heat.

 

Most 360 rads do not perform better than a dark rock pro 4 or noctua nhd 15. A sycthe fuma 2 tends to beat most too. That being said the h150 is on the better end but still will hover around nhd15/dark rock performance.

 

Since you auto oc'd the 5600x it's not wonder it is running hot as the auto oc pushes stupid high levels of voltage through the cpu usually causing a lot of heat to be generated.

 

As for your remarks on the aio. Yes it saturates as water simply takes more energy to heat up this doesn't improve cooling or anything it's basically just a buffer. Another thing that greatly affects cooling performance is pump speed too. So make sure that is set to at least 75% of max speed to get good circulation.

 

What I would recommend here is that you remove the auto oc and just leave it at stock. Or if you want to oc you do it manually. Please first remove all the ocing stuff and take a base cinebench run too so you have a base score. Then test with each oc as it would not be the first time a oc that lets say puts it at 5ghz actually has a worse score than the base one. These kinds of bad ocs happen.

Yeah I though water cooling would definitely be better which I`m finding is not the case, either on par or slightly better/worse than air - benefit is fan noise which is where it ends. 

 

Would a negative override offset on the cpu in bios work as a undervolt for current settings or would a manual oc still be the better way to go to keep voltage constant and not let it spike as with PBO and auto OC

[Devryd]

A manual undervolt will likely cost you a lot of Single core Performance, at least on zen2 that was the case. 

If you dont want to use ctr, just let the CPU run Stock, as you wont get more Performance any other way 

[jaslion]

5 minutes ago, Qk321 said:

Yeah I though water cooling would definitely be better which I`m finding is not the case, either on par or slightly better/worse than air - benefit is fan noise which is where it ends. 

 

Would a negative override offset on the cpu in bios work as a undervolt for current settings or would a manual oc still be the better way to go to keep voltage constant and not let it spike as with PBO and auto OC

Not even noise. Air coolers by nature are quieter because they don't have a pump making noise. If you want quiet cooling you simply put need to get the correct cooler for that.

 

Manual oc is still best. Or ya know just let the cpu do it's thing at stock I doubt you'll need that extra bit of performance.

[Chris Pratt]

26 minutes ago, Devryd said:

Afaik amd 7nm Chips tun pretty hot, because the jeat is concentrated im such a small area. If you want to get your temps down, I can recommend clock tuner for ryzen by 1usmus. 

It's an overcklocking Tool which also reduces voltage if possible 

CTR isn't made nor recommended for Zen 3. Zen 3 has PBO2 with the curve optimizer, which is very similar to what CTR does, but at a hardware level versus via software. That makes it much more stable and effective.

[Qk321]

4 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

CTR isn't made nor recommended for Zen 3. Zen 3 has PBO2 with the curve optimizer, which is very similar to what CTR does, but at a hardware level versus via software. That makes it much more stable.

In your opinion is the thermal result with the OC settings (my curve optimization is maxed at -30 for undervolt whatever that = in mv) is that the temps to expect from a 360mm AIO 72-74C?

[Chris Pratt]

Liquid isn't just instantly better than air. You need a 280mm or bigger rad to outperform what air cooling can achieve. A 120mm rad is actually worse than a single tower air cooler.

 

The 360mm you have now should be giving good cooling performance, but there's a lot of factors that affect temps. 70s Celsius is actually good for an AIO when under load. It's not like you have LN2 in there. It's not going to be in the 50s or something when you're pushing it to its limits.

 

Additionally, you said you overclocked it which means you're pushing a more constant and probably higher voltage. There's no point in OCing Zen 3. Not only is it not really effective, but you're losing single core boost when you do so. Undervolting with the curve optimizer is the way to go, then enable PBO and let it use the extra power and thermal headroom to go nuts.

[Qk321]

Theoretically is will be possible to set values in bios that the CTR software does, I`m just unsure how one would isolate the 2 core, 4 core, 6 core pairings and then change values only for those, must be possible but have not yet gotten to that way of OC in bios

[Chris Pratt]

4 minutes ago, Qk321 said:

In your opinion is the thermal result with the OC settings (my curve optimization is maxed at -30 for undervolt whatever that = in mv) is that the temps to expect from a 360mm AIO 72-74C?

Yes. There's nothing wrong with those temps.

[Chris Pratt]

1 minute ago, Qk321 said:

Theoretically is will be possible to set values in bios that the CTR software does, I`m just unsure how one would isolate the 2 core, 4 core, 6 core pairings and then change values only for those, must be possible but have not yet gotten to that way of OC in bios

Yes. In the BIOS under PBO settings (usually found in whatever "advanced CPU settings" your BIOS has) there should be a listing for curve optimizer.

[Qk321]

Ah I said all core and selected 30. Would you undervolt your better cores more aggressively and the 'bad'ones less?

[Qk321]

12 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

Liquid isn't just instantly better than air. You need a 280mm or bigger rad to outperform what air cooling can achieve. A 120mm rad is actually worse than a single tower air cooler.

 

The 360mm you have now should be giving good cooling performance, but there's a lot of factors that affect temps. 70s Celsius is actually good for an AIO when under load. It's not like you have LN2 in there. It's not going to be in the 50s or something when you're pushing it to its limits.

 

Additionally, you said you overclocked it which means you're pushing a more constant and probably higher voltage. There's no point in OCing Zen 3. Not only is it not really effective, but you're losing single core boost when you do so. Undervolting with the curve optimizer is the way to go, then enable PBO and let it use the extra power and thermal headroom to go nuts.

So I just check what my package power draw and peak volts readings is in HWinfo when running R23.

 

Package power in watts: 144W

All core Peak Volts: 1.319V

Temps: idle 32C

Load for 1minute or 10minutes : 73.8 - 75 C

 

Score is 11 900 - 12 300

[Devryd]

28 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

CTR isn't made nor recommended for Zen 3. Zen 3 has PBO2 with the curve optimizer, which is very similar to what CTR does, but at a hardware level versus via software. That makes it much more stable and effective.

Why is ctr not made for Zen 3?

1usmus made a Version 2 which Supports Zen 3 

[Stahlmann]

Even with water cooling, Ryzen CPUs typically have rather high temps. But not because they use a lot of power and create much heat. It's because the 7nm design has such a small area where all the heat is created. The heat cannot physically transfer faster to the cooler. I also have a 5600X under a full custom loop with 2 360mm rads. And with just PBO enabled it still easily gets over 70°C. I think you just overestimated AiOs. That being said, your temps are completely fine. Even when considering you're running a 360mm AiO. I wouldn't worry unless you consistently get over 85°C because that's where it will start thermal throttling.

[Qk321]

26 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

Even with water cooling, Ryzen CPUs typically have rather high temps. But not because they use a lot of power and create much heat. It's because the 7nm design has such a small area where all the heat is created. The heat cannot physically transfer faster to the cooler. I also have a 5600X under a full custom loop with 2 360mm rads. And with just PBO enabled it still easily gets over 70°C. I think you just overestimated AiOs. That being said, your temps are completely fine. Even when considering you're running a 360mm AiO. I wouldn't worry unless you consistently get over 85°C because that's where it will start thermal throttling.

Great thanks - nice to compare what you are getting with your cooling and same cpu.

 

I did push mine with a all core manual oc of 4.83Ghz think the volts i set it to was 1.386V or maybe one step higher, it was at night and ambient a lot cooler than in the day and I shot up to 84C then kind of remained between 84C and 87C max while running R23. Think my score was 12 559.

 

Compare that to PBO, Curve optimization and 200Mhz boost offset....my scores normally on R23 are 12 100

  to 12 300 at 73C to 75C max.

 

Not really worth manually overclocking the 5600, even at more modest frequencies in my opinion (guess also depends on the workloads one normally does most of the time)

 

[NorKris]

8 hours ago, jaslion said:

 Air coolers by nature are quieter because they don't have a pump making noise. 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, jaslion said:

Most 360 rads do not perform better than a dark rock pro 4 or noctua nhd 15.

Where do you get this stuff from`? 

[jaslion]

Just now, NorKris said:

 

Where do you get this stuff from`? 

Reviews it's a common trend to see.

[NorKris]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

Reviews it's a common trend to see.

scroll down to find a air cooler xD

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, NorKris said:

scroll down to find a air cooler xD

Fair enough to be expected from these really high end and far thicker than normal aio's and arctic being well arctic . But that is basically how it works. Bigger heat spreader better cooling basically.