Cooling a R9 7950X

[jhogan93]

Hey guys, Ive been rocking my Ryzen 9 7950X for the past year. I bought a NZXT Kraken Z Series Z73 360mm AIO and the performance is not what I was hoping for. Is there a better cooler I should invest in or should I try to undervolt/ mess with Ryzen master? I've tried to use Ryzen Master before but couldn't quite get a handle on it. Any advice would be great! 

 

thank you!

[HeliusMagnum]

If the NZXT Kraken Z Series Z73 360mm is having a hard time keeping up with it you might want to under-volt your cpu. The only other cooling option that might help you keep your temps down if the 360 aio is not working out is a custom loop, so I would try to under-volt first. 

Take a look at this video: 

 

[RONOTHAN##]

5 minutes ago, jhogan93 said:

the performance is not what I was hoping for.

What temps are you getting and what were you hoping for. Just saying, in stress tests, the 7950X will run at 95C unless you set a temp limit in the BIOS, where the only difference in coolers will be the frequency they hit. 

 

You can mess with the curve optimizer if you want to, that can help, but that can give weird stability issues at idle so be prepared for that. 

[Mando772004]

I know this probably isnt a popular option but i have the cooler master PL360 30th anniversary edition on my 7950X3D ( i know its a less power consuming cpu) and on cinebench r20 stress tests it never surpasses 82c. and in games the highest i saw was 70c on fortnite which a cpu heavy game if you play on lower settings.

[jhogan93]

17 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

What temps are you getting and what were you hoping for. Just saying, in stress tests, the 7950X will run at 95C unless you set a temp limit in the BIOS, where the only difference in coolers will be the frequency they hit. 

 

You can mess with the curve optimizer if you want to, that can help, but that can give weird stability issues at idle so be prepared for that. 

when rendering 4k 60fps video with premiere pro i see 5.15ghz to 5.2ghz all core. im worried that my cooler is as effecient as it could be but doesnt out right fail. ive tried to use the NZXT software but i see no difference in performance no matter what settings i adjust. i tried to fiddle with bios settings and really all i could figure out at the time was to reduce my max temp to 90c. when it was a stock 95c the cpu would thermal throttle down to 4.95ghz to 5ghz.

[jhogan93]

17 hours ago, HeliusMagnum said:

If the NZXT Kraken Z Series Z73 360mm is having a hard time keeping up with it you might want to under-volt your cpu. The only other cooling option that might help you keep your temps down if the 360 aio is not working out is a custom loop, so I would try to under-volt first. 

Take a look at this video: 

 

thanks for the reply! when rendering 4k 60fps video with premiere pro i see 5.15ghz to 5.2ghz all core. im worried that my cooler is as effecient as it could be but doesnt out right fail. ive tried to use the NZXT software but i see no difference in performance no matter what settings i adjust. i tried to fiddle with bios settings and really all i could figure out at the time was to reduce my max temp to 90c. when it was a stock 95c the cpu would thermal throttle down to 4.95ghz to 5ghz. im curious if i should just replace the cooler with another high end one to make sure its not just the chip being a steamy boi, but the extra cost for a second cooler isnt ideal. ill try to see what i can do with undervolting thank you!

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, jhogan93 said:

when rendering 4k 60fps video with premiere pro i see 5.15ghz to 5.2ghz all core.

That's expected with no tweaks, it does sound like your chip is performing as expected.

[jhogan93]

Update! after many rounds of tinkering everything (except updating my bios) i have come to the conclusion:

 

-Ryzen master literally does nothing to boost performance.

-set the max temp to 90c

-set your "XMP" memory settings

-set your fan curves "agressively". 100% at 90c, 90% at 80c, etc.

 

the R9 7950x is just a thermal trainwreck. it could clock higher but commerical AIOs and Air Coolers are not gonna tame it. now as exciting as it would be to investing into custom watercooling; the amount of time, money, and headaches are not worth it for me currently. I would be better off waiting for Ryzen 9000 for the generation gains rather than chasing the dragon with my current CPU. this is my first "Top Tier" CPU i bought day one and the performance increase compared to my previous R7 2700 overclocked to 4ghz all core is vast.

 

So hopefully if anyone else wanted to look into this will help. thanks everyone for the feed back, it was very helpful!