Noctua NH-D15 with I9-9900K

[CarlBar]

I keep hearing conflicting info on the 9900K with air cooling, some say pure enthusiast solutions will do whilst others say AIO or go home. ANyone got any real world experiance to share?

[Fasauceome]

The NH-D15 is basically as good as a water cooler, I mean look at that surface area. The only advantage a radiator would have is not covering the motherboard, but the NH-D15 has mad surface area for cooling.

[Princess Luna]

The NH-D15 is usually superior to the usual high end 280mm AiO so if you want to use one by all means go for it.

 

Air cooling is by all means superior than AiO's any ways.

[TVwazhere]

4 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

I keep hearing conflicting info on the 9900K with air cooling, some say pure enthusiast solutions will do whilst others say AIO or go home. ANyone got any real world experience to share?

The only thing that really beats a NH-D15 in sheer performance is a 360mm AIO or custom watercooling. However in general a NH-D15 will be quieter than any AIO on the market

[CarlBar]

About what i thought, but with some review sites saying nope to any air cooling i was like. Whut, Seriously!

[_Hustler_One_]

12 hours ago, fasauceome said:

NH-D15 has mad surface area for cooling.

LOL! True..

My ITX system has the whole motherboard covered up by this NH-D15 *cough!* NotoriousHeatsink(minus)Degree15 *cough* cooler (sorry for awful abbravation).

Can't see my ITX motherboard at all..

[corrado33]

12 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

The only thing that really beats a NH-D15 in sheer performance is a 360mm AIO or custom watercooling. However in general a NH-D15 will be quieter than any AIO on the market

Really? I knew it was good but I didn't think it was THAT good, I thought it was 120mm AIO good but not as good as the next steps up.

 

Color me happy. (I have... 3 NH-D15s)

[LogicalDrm]

17 hours ago, CarlBar said:

About what i thought, but with some review sites saying nope to any air cooling i was like. Whut, Seriously!

I guess they mean more of running at high OC. With stock I would expect midrange air coolers being enough. Knowing how bad Intel's chipsets are with voltage draw atm, one might need to limit voltages, but still. Actually, here's review with D15 vs H100i Pro https://www.techspot.com/review/1730-intel-core-i9-9900k-core-i7-9700k/page3.html

I would call that quite clear. They are even, and OC is pretty high in terms of voltage used.

[TVwazhere]

8 hours ago, corrado33 said:

Really? I knew it was good but I didn't think it was THAT good, I thought it was 120mm AIO good but not as good as the next steps up.

 

Color me happy. (I have... 3 NH-D15s)

A NH-D15 is definitely way better than a 120mm AIO, and is almost on par with most 280mm rads, and generally will match or beat 240mm rads in performance. All while usually being quieter.

 

 

[Princess Luna]

9 hours ago, corrado33 said:

I thought it was 120mm AIO good but not as good as the next steps up.

An Hyper 212X is better than 120mm AiO's

[Princess Luna]

21 hours ago, CarlBar said:

About what i thought, but with some review sites saying nope to any air cooling i was like. Whut, Seriously!

It all depends on how far you want to push it, right now I'm using an actually modest cooling but my i9 9900K is under control since I'm only forcing all cores locked at 4.7ghz for the time being at 1.2v

[SolarNova]

The only time u should be looking at AIO's is if you simply cannot fit a large air cooler.

 

AIO's are suualy more expensive, add points of failure, and are louder.

 

A top end air cooler will match  or beat most AIO's with the exception fo 360mm rad ones, but those usualy cost substantialy more anyway.

 

if a air cooler isnt enough for a person, or they really want to 'watercool' becouse ..its 'the thing to do'. Then go with a full custom loop.

[CarlBar]

5 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

It all depends on how far you want to push it, right now I'm using an actually modest cooling but my i9 9900K is under control since I'm only forcing all cores locked at 4.7ghz for the time being at 1.2v

 

Thats about where i was going to go TBH, just unleash the full baseline available performance, 5Ghz on all cores would be cool but i want the CP to last so the less i need to push the voltage the happier i'll be. I'll probably be asking around here for help on that though as the last time i OC'd anything was an Athlon XP 2500 Barton. I had to replace that with an off the shelf system in a hurry when the PSU blew, (you'll hear me preaching the value of a rock solid PSU for that reason), and this system i never felt i needed it as i was more GPU bound but since i'm grabbing myself a 2080Ti i want to eek what i can out of the CPU, though i fully expect to require better optimized game engines to really get the full grunt out of the machine.

[Princess Luna]

2 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

.

For gaming alone the i7 8700K at 5ghz can still keep up perfectly fine with a single RTX 2080 Ti, if you want a high end gaming rig you could still go with the much cheaper and available processor instead.

 

The i9 9900K extra potential does not translate in more gaming performance, it only allows you to stretch your legs even further on multi-tasking like streaming and what not DURING your gaming experience.

[CarlBar]

4 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

For gaming alone the i7 8700K at 5ghz can still keep up perfectly fine with a single RTX 2080 Ti, if you want a high end gaming rig you could still go with the much cheaper and available processor instead.

 

The i9 9900K extra potential does not translate in more gaming performance, it only allows you to stretch your legs even further on multi-tasking like streaming and what not DURING your gaming experience.

 

 

I basically have a couple of thoughts in mind here:

 

1. We know that everyone working on a game that supports RTX is sayuing 6 cors 12 threads is going to be the new standard going forward.

 

2. I'm a real clutterbug who leaves silly amounts of stuff running in the background while i game. Having a couple of extra cores beyond that and some extra cache to keep that load from effecting my gaming is nice. 

 

So i don;t really expect to get outside of CPU bound till the newer games optimized for 6 cores 12 threads come along, but i want some core count and other CPU overhead beyond that to account for my personal use case. A full 2 extra cores is probably overkill, but it will do the job.

 

For reference with about 75% of my normal clutter running, did a restart earlier today and not fire everything back up yet), here's my Performance Monitor outputs:

 

System is an I5-4690K with 32GB f DDR and a GTX 970, No OC'ing.

 

 

I'd actually love to see LTT do a more in depth investigation of effects of background clutter on benefits of memory amounts, speeds, and CPU core counts. They did one on memory but they're with clutter and games test where supremely light on clutter by my standards, (though i admit i'm an extreme case). 

[Princess Luna]

1 minute ago, CarlBar said:

1. We know that everyone working on a game that supports RTX is sayuing 6 cors 12 threads is going to be the new standard going forward.

Actually no, games are still in their majority 4 cores optimized, that's the thing though when you have a good 6 cores you have 4c for the game and 2 cores for the system and background reason why they are the best alternative for gaming.

 

2 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

2. I'm a real clutterbug who leaves silly amounts of stuff running in the background while i game. Having a couple of extra cores beyond that and some extra cache to keep that load from effecting my gaming is nice. 

That's understandable, then again it will depend on the resolution you'll be gaming at, the Ryzen 7 2700X is actually identical if you're going 4k for instance even with the RTX 2080 Ti, either ways the i7 8700K can suffice if you just don't go completely wasteful on resources like trying to play AAA games with 200 tabs of Chrome open along side bunch of other applications you're not realistically using.

 

4 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

I'd actually love to see LTT do a more in depth investigation of effects of background clutter on benefits of memory amounts, speeds, and CPU core counts. They did one on memory but they're with clutter and games test where supremely light on clutter by my standards, (though i admit i'm an extreme case). 

Memory Frequency and Timings dictates speed of things, amount of memory alone is only so you can have that stuff running and being processed by the CPU, that being said as long as you have enough memory to keep all your doing there and not go to pagefile your system should remain responsive and fast, sure if you have only 4 cores/4 threads to go through 32gb of active memory the poor thing will choke.

 

All in all the i9 9900K is actually a TERRIBLE value product, it is the best 8 cores 16 threads processor in the market yes but it hardly makes sense as a product compared to the competition's Ryzen 7 2700X or even Intel's own older line up with the i7 8700K.

 

But all falls down to you have the $$$ means to have one.

 

 

[CarlBar]

2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Actually no, games are still in their majority 4 cores optimized, that's the thing though when you have a good 6 cores you have 4c for the game and 2 cores for the system and background reason why they are the best alternative for gaming.

 

 

I think i stated something poorly. Whats being said is that future games and games that are going to be patched to support RTX will need 6C/12T to run optimally. (Pardon the bolding). I know DICE have come out with an explicit statement and i believe other developers working on patching RTX into other games have indicated a similar expectation. 

 

I'd assume from here on out you can assume the majority of future releases with new games will want 6C/12T with that becoming the new normal 18 months or so from now. Given i'm going to need this to last a while thats a genuine thing i want to plan for.

 

 

22 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

That's understandable, then again it will depend on the resolution you'll be gaming at, the Ryzen 7 2700X is actually identical if you're going 4k for instance even with the RTX 2080 Ti, either ways the i7 8700K can suffice if you just don't go completely wasteful on resources like trying to play AAA games with 200 tabs of Chrome open along side bunch of other applications you're not realistically using.

 

200 is a bit much but a 100 plus other stuff is a good description. I'm pretty scatterbrained with everything i do flitting between projects like crazy and same with web browsing. It makes closing most things a pain.

 

23 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

All in all the i9 9900K is actually a TERRIBLE value product, it is the best 8 cores 16 threads processor in the market yes but it hardly makes sense as a product compared to the competition's Ryzen 7 2700X or even Intel's own older line up with the i7 8700K.

 

Oh if i had a clearer idea of when Ryzen 3rd gen was due and it wasn't too far in the future i'd happily wait, i fully expect them to completely blow Intel out of the water en passant, (see spoiler tag below for my predictions), but they seem to be a few quarters away at the least and i'm really starting to feel the limits of my system alas, and i'm suddenly in a position to upgrade it. The fact that i basically have to replace near everything bu the case and drives also plays a part, the steep price tag of a 9900K looks a lot less appalling as part of a rebuild that extensive.It's still a nsty ding but not as ouchy as when taken on it's own.

 

Spoiler

I figure Zen 2 will bring the same Chiplet tech to the desktop thats in the Rome server chips. I think they'll stick with the 4 cores per CPU chiplet for the desktop, but they'll start the Ryzen 5 of with a pair of them with the top end Ryzen 5 landing either on the 9900k, or between it and he 9700k. Ryzen 3 will presumably be a single CPU die, or 2 with each having the worst half of the cores disabled. Ryzen 7 i think will do the same as the current gen compared to 5 and double down on the CPU dies whilst upping clock speeds at the upper end of the product range. Giving a chip with equal or better per core performance than the 9900K and twice the cores/threads.I'm also suspecting we'll see quad channel memory support with legacy dual channel for old boards for backwards compatibility.  Threadripper 3 will likely take another IO Die and pair it with 6/8 4 core dies in the 20X and 50X while the 70WX and 90WX swap in very highly clocked Rome 8 chip dies. In effect the 90WX being separated by the weaker memory support ad PCI-E limits compared to Epyc, but with better raw on CPU compute.

 

[CarlBar]

@Princess Cadence Pardon me for double posting and grabbing your attention again but my brain decided to poke me in the back of the skull. It decided to remind me AMD has confirmed they will be supporting AM4 going forward for a few more years yet. I think you just made up my mind on that. Won't save me much money but it does give me a clear potential upgrade path in future, which honestly is the real issue with my current setup, there's not really any firm upgrade path of any significant size from the 4690K.

 

So thanks i guess :).

[bobhumplick]

dh 15 would be fine but the thing i would keep in mind is this.  use a power limit (its in the bios.  read up on how to set it, there are 3 power limits or more) and set it to about 200w or 220w and then overclock it to as high as you want it while still using decent voltage (maybe use an offset so it will use a bit more for avx and a bit less for regular loads).  set the offset so it uses about 1.3 in normal loads like cinebecnh(no avx in that one) and set the clock to whatever will run at 1.3 - 1.35. if you get a decent one that will be 5ghz (maybe have to set an avx offset of 1).  then set your power limit.

 

the thing that causes the heat is power draw.  so when you get up to 200 or 220 it will throttle the clocks down til the power drops and it wont get so hot.  

 

when gaming you could clock this thing to 5ghz and use a hyper 212. gaming uses next to no power on the cpu.  maybe 70-100w max.  if thats all you do then dont worry about it it will be fine.  but things like video rendering or streaming on the cpu you will need to either have the power limit set low enough to keep it from getting too hot or you will need to lower the clocks with oc software when doing those intensive workloads.

 

for stock it will be fine.  but i would try to tune the voltage down even if you are running stock to keep it as cool as you can

[Alex Atkin UK]

On 11/9/2018 at 11:20 PM, CarlBar said:

@Princess Cadence Pardon me for double posting and grabbing your attention again but my brain decided to poke me in the back of the skull. It decided to remind me AMD has confirmed they will be supporting AM4 going forward for a few more years yet. I think you just made up my mind on that. Won't save me much money but it does give me a clear potential upgrade path in future, which honestly is the real issue with my current setup, there's not really any firm upgrade path of any significant size from the 4690K.

 

So thanks i guess :).

You do have to bear in mind though that this doesn't necessarily tell the full story.  Just look at how some z370 and even z390 boards don't support the 9900k properly due to power requirements, AMD are just as likely to hit these issues with newer CPUs on older motherboards.  Its pretty common to also hit memory bottlenecks when using new CPUs on older motherboards.  This is why Intel tend to prefer to do full refreshes often, it allows them to fully optimise the whole platform rather than trying to squeeze more out of the CPU while limited by the chipset.

 

While yes its nice to have an upgrade path as a CPU upgrade will always bring "some" performance, I don't think its necessarily a major thing to be thinking about when doing a build as you never know what bottlenecks those future CPUs will have on existing boards.

 

If you have the money, pushing for the best CPU and motherboard combo you can get today makes way more sense IMO as there are no guarantees that the best AM4 CPU will ever compete with the 9900k on a current motherboard, even if it might on new boards in the future.

Ultimately I think both sides end up paying similarly, its just Intel you make that investment all up-front, whereas AMD you spread it over a few years as you end up replacing the CPU, motherboard and RAM to get the best performance.