Well, since Spalls rambled on about this retro PC, I figured I'll ramble
a little about my current gaming desktop and what I did to it last
month.

Some time ago (fall 2021?) I rebuilt my main gaming desktop system with
AMD's Ryzen 5600X and new motherboard (Asrock B550 Extreme4) and RAM
(Kingston 16GB ECC) and case (Fractal Design Define 7). Added another 1
TB SSD since the new motherboard has two m.2 slots. Also Intel's AX200
wifi+bt card but I haven't actually used that so far.

Kept my RTX3070Ti. It's not really what I like to have for a GPU but
since it works OK and was something I managed to find during the
pandemic and for a somewhat reasonable price from a small company's
small sale lot. But expensive enough I don't feel like upgrading to
something beefier like a 3080 or 40x0.

System was fine but the included Wraith Spire HSF seemed weak, any
torture test seemed to lead to thermal throttling pretty quickly,
especially after I enabled the "PBO2" overclocking which basically just
gives longer sustained clock speeds. I didn't even try to boost max
clocks yet so basically this just means I can have six cores at the
nominal 4.6GHz for longer or even indefinitely.

So, I got a Noctua NH-U14S to replace the stock cooler. The Define 7
case is very open and easy access so things went well but as it turned
out, the Noctua was just so large I couldn't get the fan on the heat
sink without pulling out my GPU. So I thought I could just put it in the
other slot.

Well, after reassembly the GPU had other ideas with random hangs even on
the desktop. Not that often but after a few times it was clear something
was wrong. I even got some errors that looked like memory errors so I
pulled one DIMM and then the other, no change. *Then* I wised up and
undid the change, put the GPU back in the other slot. Random hangs
disappeared then and there.

So, post incident reading of the motherboard manual reveal: The other
x16 slot is actually x4 and PCIe gen 3 too. So hardly an ideal place for
a gaming GPU but still, it shouldn't have caused random hangs. Could be
it just wasn't seated in the slot properly. Hard to say now.

Oh yeah, Prime95 torture test keeps cracking on at 4.6 GHz now without
issue so the Noctua is good enough. So the HSF upgrade was great.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Oh yeah, Prime95 torture test keeps cracking on at 4.6 GHz now without
issue so the Noctua is good enough. So the HSF upgrade was great.

I've moved a NH-D14 Noctua, and now a NH-D15 between builds multiple
times now. I'll never bother with an AIO, the reliability and performance
of a heatpipe HSF is worth the clearance issues.

rms

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sun, 5 Mar 2023 15:37:49 -0700, "rms" <rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net>
wrote:

I've moved a NH-D14 Noctua, and now a NH-D15 between builds multiple
times now. I'll never bother with an AIO, the reliability and performance
of a heatpipe HSF is worth the clearance issues.

Same. All the more since I like to tinker with my PCs, adding and
removing components as I acquire them (or as the mood hits me).
All-in-one liquid coolers just make this more complicated, what with
their tubes and wires dangling everywhere. A big fan I can work
around, but AIO coolers often need to be removed even for the simplest
of hardware swaps. And unless you're overclocking, they aren't really
providing you with anything a tradition fan/heatsink can't.

AIO liquid coolers are fine if a) you want visual pizazz and b) you
aren't ever going to open up your PC. But for a 'working PC'*, a
traditional HSF runs as cool, as quiet, is more convenient, and less
expensive. It may not be as visually exciting, but, really, how often
are you looking inside (or even at) your PC anyway?




* even if all that 'work' your PC is doing is pushing polygons in
video games

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Monday, March 6, 2023 at 8:43:52 AM UTC-8, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Sun, 5 Mar 2023 15:37:49 -0700, "rms" <rsqui...@MOOflashMOO.net>
wrote:

I've moved a NH-D14 Noctua, and now a NH-D15 between builds multiple
times now. I'll never bother with an AIO, the reliability and performance >of a heatpipe HSF is worth the clearance issues.

Same. All the more since I like to tinker with my PCs, adding and
removing components as I acquire them (or as the mood hits me).
All-in-one liquid coolers just make this more complicated, what with
their tubes and wires dangling everywhere. A big fan I can work
around, but AIO coolers often need to be removed even for the simplest
of hardware swaps. And unless you're overclocking, they aren't really providing you with anything a tradition fan/heatsink can't.

AIO liquid coolers are fine if a) you want visual pizazz and b) you
aren't ever going to open up your PC. But for a 'working PC'*, a
traditional HSF runs as cool, as quiet, is more convenient, and less expensive. It may not be as visually exciting, but, really, how often
are you looking inside (or even at) your PC anyway?

I just watched a video on a tower cooler that was cooling better
than this guy's liquid cooler and he was flabbergasted!

- Justisaur

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)