Gearing Up for Threadripper 2990WX Cooling

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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You might have noticed our excitement about AMD's Threadripper over the last year, both in terms of performance and cooling. Given that AMD will soon be rolling out its 32-Core 2990X processor, we have been getting things in line for it in terms of overclocking and cooling. We have two more dies down on the substrate this time around so assuredly we will be dealing with larger package power peaks and heat to deal with.

For our cooling testing, XSPC sent over its all metal Raystorm NEO Water Block. The block is of the same design than we have used so much in the past, sans the acrylic top.

The rest of the top performers that we will run through testing again are the Watercool Heatkiller 4, the Koolance 400A-S v2, and the Phanteks Glacier C399A. These four blocks were our top performers within a few degrees of each other in our 4GHz overclocked Threadripper 1950X testing.

Pictures on News Page.

You might be wondering why we are not seeing redesigned blocks since we are moving from 2-Dies to 4-Dies. The fact is that all of these water blocks are already built "correctly" in terms of cold-plate and micro-fin footprint, and how these move coolant across the tops of the dies. I do not think these companies knew that a 4-Die Threadripper was upon us, but building these the way they did actually made these appropriate for EPYC cooling as well. It was also likely more cost effective in terms of the machining processes too.

Now, AMD, bring on the 2990X Threadripper!
 
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Are you going to need more radiator capacity on the test bench you think?
 
Are you going to need more radiator capacity on the test bench you think?
Don't think so. I still do not think that is our bottleneck. I think these blocks are pulling heat about as fast as they can quite frankly. I would suggest the heatspreader is the bottleneck.
 
Hmmmm how to justify the need for this over the trip to Taiwan...
 
even for as big as TR4 processors are, i don't think the surface area of the heatspreader is big enough to handle transfering that much heat.. probably would need to be 30-40% larger than it currently is to see any significant drop in temp.. but ultimately we still don't know the temps of the dies are since it's based on an algorithm that even AMD has trouble getting right and not true temp.

Hmmmm how to justify the need for this over the trip to Taiwan...

go look at some pictures of taiwan, there you saw it. now you can afford a 2990x, lol.
 
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May have to go back to an A/C cooled case, room setup would make it easy to box in the whole case and all. Something to think about. Have 240v and plenty amps to spare, 3d program that uses all the cores/threads you throw at and 8 cores/16 threads can take a while to render at that. Not to mention CPU mining which Ryzen does fairly well, the 32 core/64 thread TR2 would rip Vega ass in two with Cryptonite V7. Keeping the air going through the water cooler radiator cold, like less than 65F, should help with CPU cooling.

Now it is the question: How much?

Cooling is key as well as good power to push it. Plus cooling your room should come into play unless one likes desert level feel.

Since virtually every watt used or consumed from the cord to power supply to computer turns into a watt of heat. To cool your room from the heat from your computer:

Watts to BTU/hr conversion table
Power (watt) Power (BTU/hr)
1 W. . . . . . . . . 3.412142 BTU/hr
10 W. . . . . . . .34.121416 BTU/hr
100 W. . . . . .341.214163 BTU/hr
1000 W . . . 3412.141633 BTU/hr
10000 W . 34121.416330 BTU/hr
 
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Don't suppose you have the new EK block avail to test? I have the new one but haven't got round to installing it yet.
 
Pretty sure I'm doing a loop for this along with gpu, it has been ages since my last one so going to be fun fun fun.

Going for a man-portable build and one of those will 4 definitely be my block, EK however can get bent.
 
even for as big as TR4 processors are, i don't think the surface area of the heatspreader is big enough to handle transfering that much heat.. probably would need to be 30-40% larger than it currently is to see any significant drop in temp.. but ultimately we still don't know the temps of the dies are since it's based on an algorithm that even AMD has trouble getting right and not true temp.



go look at some pictures of taiwan, there you saw it. now you can afford a 2990x, lol.
I would disagree. Actually I think the IHS could be smaller and be just fine. From a water cooler perspective anyway. Probably being bigger in terms of air cooling would be of benefit.
 
Would be nice if you could also include the Enermax LiqTech TR4 (or separately if you plan a round of AIO testing too). That was one of the best performing AIO Threadripper coolers, unfortunately it suffered from poor quality issues initially.
 
Would be nice if you could also include the Enermax LiqTech TR4 (or separately if you plan a round of AIO testing too). That was one of the best performing AIO Threadripper coolers, unfortunately it suffered from poor quality issues initially.
We know of a couple of cases, plenty of folks are not having issues, so let's not blow it way out of proportion. Waiting for Enermax to address this still.
 
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Got my titan V block in (bitspower or EK only choices, keeping stock backplate and nvlink fingers exposed even though can't use them for now made this choice easy), starting to pick rads for this (dual 280 if I can fit them) so which purty TR block to get and a bayres combo is all thats left.

Then plumbing it...oh boy.
 
subbed, currently running a i7 3930k that has been powered on between 4.6 and 4.8ghz 24/7 (with CnQ enabled for powersaving), since 2013. It's had a good run, did notice after maybe 4 years of 4.8ghz, had to drop it to 4.6ghz for stability (although have had it boot windows at 5ghz for superpi and other benchmarks lol), so I guess chips do burn out after a high vcore for 5 years lol. It also out-lived a h220 and a PSU. Seems now that we can get a 32 core chip, it's finally worth upgrading from a 6 core one.

Anyway, would a h100i work for cooling? It sounded like some kind of adapter was made available for threadripper v1 when it came out? Or would I be better off just getting a new water cooler?

Probably will pair it with the newest nvidia 11 series whenever that comes out too.

Also, do you think a 850w PSU with single 12v rails would work with this? Have been out of the OC scene for a long time, but years ago the single 12v rails was much better for really pushing chips.

Is the single threaded performance going to be a lot slower than my current old build? looks like the world record for a 1950x superpi 1m http://hwbot.org/submission/3814016_fugger_superpi___1m_ryzen_threadripper_1950x_8sec_643ms is still over a second slower than my current setup? http://www.superpi.net/Scores/17574/View

I guess mostly using it for video editing don't care that much, since the 32 cores should destroy my 6 core setup.
 
the asetek-based watercoolers like the H100i could just barely keep up with a stock Threadripper 19xxX. I doubt they would be good enough for a 32-core 2990X.
 
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My god look at that cooler!!!! Make sure to lap that beast of a heat sink!
 
Actually it is a h115i, guessing it still wont be able to keep up?

My old cooler was a h115i (140mm fans). It was ok for my 1950X but I really could not overclock it much (3.7Ghz max!) without sending the temps into the low 68c(Tdie) or 95c(Tctl) area. That's is just about as hot as you want to get a TR chip. The Enermax unit in my sig with the cpu at 3.8Ghz keeps the temps at about 58c(Tdie) / 85c (Tctl) - a solid 10c less! (prime95 small FFTs for 30 minutes in both cases). Consider that when you are thinking of a CPU with double the number of cores than I have. With the Enermax unit you may be able to get a mild overclock on that 2990X. I'm not holding expecting that kind of performance from any air->air cooler on the 2900 series TR. But I will wait until someone actually can test it out. Who knows - Thermalright makes some really nice coolers. They could surprise me.

Note:
Tdie = the overall die temperature calculated from Tctl - Not sure why it exists but it is a less scary number. It is calculated as Tctl - 27c.
Tctl = the internal CPU junction temperature - is the actual temperature you see in the bios comes from (At least it is for my Asrock bios).
 
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Yeah I will definitely go with water and probably either reuse my noctua fans or get new ones to replace whatever I go with. An AIO like the 360 would be nice and easy to setup, but if the performance of the Raystorm neo is a lot better, might go that route with a custom loop.
 
I use a 3x120 rad custom loop and it can handle 600watts of CPU and 2 1080ti.

Yeah I think people overestimate quite a bit on requirements in the wrong places. I bet the recent reality check of the TR heatspreader coverage being more important than anything else (which is why all the usual AIOs are shit on it) still hasn't sunk into your average PC tweaker build nerd.

I have an initial plan for a 2990X and Titan V loop that I won't dare mention the specifics because the nerd foaming at the mouth that comes with armchair "expert" commentary: "blah blah meltdown blah blah you're dumb blah blah my 3 credit hours in thermodynamics blah blah".

The proof will be in the pudding, worst scenario I can double up on radiators in the case I plan to use: main thing is it needs to be portable enough to carry.
 
I saw heatkiller released a very sexy Titan V block, so I went all in with a pile of nickel-plated copper from germany. I'm no psychic but I predict it will be one of the top performing blocks in Kyle's tests for TR2.
 
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I saw heatkiller released a very sexy Titan V block, so I went all in with a pile of nickel-plated copper from germany. I'm no psychic but I predict it will be one of the top performing blocks in Kyle's tests for TR2.
Links please. I do not see anything on HKIV on their site.
 
As blocks evolved, things went from copper plates and pipe caps, to mazes, swirls, fins, small fins, cavitation most leading to the cooling of a central core. Now that you're cooling a large area, I would wonder how old designs, esp maze 2, would fare.
 
I just got in my 3 heatkiller blocks, top-notch machining. Grabbed a vega one too, going to do something else in this build that will annoy pedantic nerd types.

Weird because the earliest reference I could find to them was mid-july, I bought a bitspower block earlier going to give to a work buddy I know with another TV.
 
Nice review Kyle. Do you think many people will actually air cool these? These things are screaming for custom loops to keep the thermals down under OC.
Got more testing to do to really see how these air coolers work.
 
For those that have called BS on my Threadripper TIM technique, you guys can suck it. :) It is kicking ass and taking names.

XSPC Stock Mount 2.jpg XSPC Stock Mount 1.jpg

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/02/19/amd_ryzen_threadripper_tim_application/
 
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I usually put the layer on a little thinner (I use a razor blade to scrape it down til it is translucent) and use 5 dots. Works well too.
 
My god that Thermalright heatsink is a fucking beast. Can't wait to see what it can do.
 
Monday needs to hurry the fuck up.

I like that cooler. Looks like 7 heatpipes under there.
 
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