Hmm, the cooler should cover the chip it is cooling... who would have thought that to be the case?
"AMD’s Threadripper processors certainly do not require liquid coolers to function properly at stock"
Moot point, as nigh end noctua coolers easily beat AIO water coolers and can only be marginally bested by significant custom loop systems.
Finally, it might have been a good idea for amd to invest in a third socket for dual die chips. Sure they saved some money on underusing SP3 for TR, but that might have backfired more than the savings - the socket is huge, complex and expessive, takes up too much space, limits mobo designs and a lot of users report serious problems with the installation. On top of rendering existing coolers rather inefficient, something that would not have been a problem with a dual die socket.
I wager we might see AMD introduce a new socket with Threadripper being a success. It's been reported that TR was essentially a passion-project for the engineers and so they didn't have the full resources at their disposal, even if they had the blessing of execs. There's the Epyc embedded 3000 series just coming out, which is a 1-or-2-die package supporting full PCIe lane potential and quad-channel memory in the two-die configuration, but it's designed to be soldered. Perhaps we'll see a socketed version, which would make ITX form factors possible and uATX more comfortable, and possibly reduce motherboard socket costs. I think they've committed to supporting the current TR socket for 3 generations of CPUs, but supporting two different sockets shouldn't be overly difficult given the multi-die/interposer construction and being able to leverage similarities/economies-of-scale with Epic 7000. Plus, if mainstream core counts continue to increase we're gonna need more PCIe and DRAM channels anyway, so maybe this just becomes the new mainstream socket.
We won't see a new socket for a while. Threadripper was a HUGE success and AMD wants to keep the Gravy Train rolling. I bought an Enermax 360 for mine and even when overclocked to 4.1 the machine runs silent and cool.
I have Enermax 360, I'm having troubles with cooling. Idk why but my Threadripper can't fall below 45 degrees Celsius when I'm working. When I start rendering something the temp goes up to 68 and clock speed starts dropping down. I don't know what's the problem, I've re-applied the thermal paste recently but the problem went away just for a short time and then it slowly reappeared.
Not sure how you could have "serious problems" with the install. I for one like the overbuilt socket. I mean, unless you're one of the strange people aiming for an ITX TR build.
I don't have any plans to own a TR system for personal use... I don't need more than 8 cores, quad channel RAM, or a crapload of PCIe lanes. But if you do it's a decent platform, and relatively affordable.
No need for the hate. It's an obvious conclusion but it's nice to have some of the "why" laid out so well for those of us with only introductory engineering knowledge.
I wasn't aware that it takes engineering knowledge, introductory or otherwise, to possess common sense. "Contact" IMO is a pretty intuitive and self-explanatory concept...
Yet it seems certain overly sensitive individuals have put emphasis on developing nonsensical sensibilities and neglected developing precious common sense... To the point of misidentifying sarcasm as "hate"... It is not hate, it is simply not being a dumb robot person whose worldview is so narrow that literally techniques slip outside of his norms for "appropriate"...
I for one don't find it all that positive that people need such things explained in the first place, it is rather alarming to say the least.
Oh you are sorry for me, are you? Well that sure makes you better LOL. My life rocks because there are no spineless, fake people in it. Being a true human is a deterrent for folk like you, and that is a great thing I wouldn't change for the world, as people like you are mediocre, utterly boring and of no value whatsoever, and only fit in one place - circle jerks of similar individuals. So better save your sorry for your own sorry self. Now go find another mindless drone like you to pat eachother on the backs to create the illusion of self-worth you so desperately need. Maybe talk about gender self-identification and whatnot...
While you my have no fake people in your life I'm going to go out on a limb and say your circle of trusted individuals is quite small. It seems you may be limiting yourself on what you're willing to understand and respect on the basis of feeling superior to others.
Agree. It's obvious to anyone that a CPU cooler only works when it's attached to the CPU. A cooler that is attached only to a portion of the CPU is intuitively only cooling the portion it is attached to.
The article could have just said that. Instead they went so deep-dive on it that honestly it felt patronizing, and that's why I agree with your response. This article is completely over-written, one might even go so far as to characterize it as self-satisfied smart-ass rant... and don't get me wrong on that... some people actually enjoy participating in reading someone else's self-glorification, and have such small egos that they don't mind their time being wasted in the process, lol.
As for the "hate" LostWander is speaking of, that was in s/he/it's own mind. LostWander accuses you of hate only because they don't hear the sarcasm you are directing at the Engineers who suggested building and marketing the adapter which this article reveals to be so ineffective. Those individuals deserve your wry comments because they were fully aware of the shizzle they were encouraging consumers to purchase.
Instead, Lostwander is so defensive that s/he/it assumed that any negativity must be directed toward themself personally and so they jumped in to defend their ego by attacking you, and that is sad, especially given they believe they were delivering a message of acceptance.
I wouldn't say that. Prime95 small-ffts load gives me 45.5C on my Enermax TR4 AIO. That's more than 'marginal'. Furthermore, if you overclock to 4.1 GHz, it is likely you'll find the Noctua unable to keep the CPU temp below 68C. My Enermax has no problems doing so.
Thnx for review, but IMHO final words and conclusion is bad. Max allowed temp for 1950x is 68 degrees (https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-thre... but measured delta in best case is 59 degrees! Yes, throttling temp is about 85C, but who knows how long TR will operate with temp higher then recommended.
Hello Yurius. That was my bad - it is not the delta over ambient but the temperature reported by the motherboard's sensor. I had forgotten to edit the graph's subtitle. So it's 59°C real, about 9°C below the throttling point.
Wow, that's big different, thnx for update. Nevertheless it's to close even in stock on top rate cooler and there is huge problem with VRM on X399 boards, so I think AMD recommendations make sense and fullcover that fits CPU and VRM is a great idea.
That Noctua Threadripper cooler is a minor masterpiece of engineering. About 5 seconds after opening the box it came in, I had already forgotten about it's cost. Hell - even the box it comes in is beautifully made - a sure sign that you're dealing with a company that cares.
A fascinating read. Now for the follow-up: an article where you test sticking two 212 Evos side by side on a Threadripper. That should cover most of the IHS, no?
My preference is Peltier air cooling. By cooling a processor slightly frozen less thermal noise is generated and less miscalculations are performed. Perhaps this is more important for studio Sound Recording and Mixing/Editing or Movie Video Editing or for Work Station performance. If I am going to all the trouble to build a multi core computer I will also so go to the trouble of cooling it far more effectively.
A Peltier cooler will help you with extreme OC, if sized properly, but apart from that will only increase your energy consumption significantly. If you want lower temperatures go for chilled water, that's far more efficient. But you absolutely don't need that. Otherwise all the servers in data centers, DELL shops etc. would have to be constructed differently. And if you really want to reduce the chance of calculation errors beyond the manufacturer specification, simply drop the CPU clock by 100 MHz.
BTW: are you using ECC RAM? Not that I'm recommending it for home computers, but if not you're definitely overshooting with that Peltier and should care for more probable points of failure first.
A question - on Page 3, is this supposed to read " absolute thermal resistance of the cooler itself needs to be very *low,*" instead of high?
Excerpt: "The high thermal resistance caused by an undersized contact plate cannot be easily countered, which is why the absolute thermal resistance of the cooler itself needs to be very high, i.e. why AMD’s cooler recommendations are so over the top."
The conclusion I can get from here is that desktop CPU with around 90W TDP can also benefit from the larger surface area, considering the differences in temps at idle of the TR chip.
Out of curiosity I ran AIDA64's CPU/FPU/Cache stress tests for 30 minutes on my 1950X with a Corsair H115i and an ambient temperature of 21C and my CPU temperature pegged out at 58C the entire time.
Minor quibble about the presentation (not content, top-notch article there!). In the bar charts for idle & load temperatures, the subtitle reads "Ambient at ~21°C" but the tilde almost looks like a negative sign at that size of font, which threw me for a minute. May I suggest that in future it be replaced by "approx."?
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FireSnake - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Awesome review, thank you!iter - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Hmm, the cooler should cover the chip it is cooling... who would have thought that to be the case?"AMD’s Threadripper processors certainly do not require liquid coolers to function properly at stock"
Moot point, as nigh end noctua coolers easily beat AIO water coolers and can only be marginally bested by significant custom loop systems.
Finally, it might have been a good idea for amd to invest in a third socket for dual die chips. Sure they saved some money on underusing SP3 for TR, but that might have backfired more than the savings - the socket is huge, complex and expessive, takes up too much space, limits mobo designs and a lot of users report serious problems with the installation. On top of rendering existing coolers rather inefficient, something that would not have been a problem with a dual die socket.
ravyne - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
I wager we might see AMD introduce a new socket with Threadripper being a success. It's been reported that TR was essentially a passion-project for the engineers and so they didn't have the full resources at their disposal, even if they had the blessing of execs. There's the Epyc embedded 3000 series just coming out, which is a 1-or-2-die package supporting full PCIe lane potential and quad-channel memory in the two-die configuration, but it's designed to be soldered. Perhaps we'll see a socketed version, which would make ITX form factors possible and uATX more comfortable, and possibly reduce motherboard socket costs. I think they've committed to supporting the current TR socket for 3 generations of CPUs, but supporting two different sockets shouldn't be overly difficult given the multi-die/interposer construction and being able to leverage similarities/economies-of-scale with Epic 7000. Plus, if mainstream core counts continue to increase we're gonna need more PCIe and DRAM channels anyway, so maybe this just becomes the new mainstream socket.eek2121 - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link
We won't see a new socket for a while. Threadripper was a HUGE success and AMD wants to keep the Gravy Train rolling. I bought an Enermax 360 for mine and even when overclocked to 4.1 the machine runs silent and cool.Martin Malice - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
I have Enermax 360, I'm having troubles with cooling. Idk why but my Threadripper can't fall below 45 degrees Celsius when I'm working. When I start rendering something the temp goes up to 68 and clock speed starts dropping down. I don't know what's the problem, I've re-applied the thermal paste recently but the problem went away just for a short time and then it slowly reappeared.Alexvrb - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Not sure how you could have "serious problems" with the install. I for one like the overbuilt socket. I mean, unless you're one of the strange people aiming for an ITX TR build.I don't have any plans to own a TR system for personal use... I don't need more than 8 cores, quad channel RAM, or a crapload of PCIe lanes. But if you do it's a decent platform, and relatively affordable.
eek2121 - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link
I would love to see them make a mobile variant.LostWander - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link
No need for the hate. It's an obvious conclusion but it's nice to have some of the "why" laid out so well for those of us with only introductory engineering knowledge.iter - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link
I wasn't aware that it takes engineering knowledge, introductory or otherwise, to possess common sense. "Contact" IMO is a pretty intuitive and self-explanatory concept...Yet it seems certain overly sensitive individuals have put emphasis on developing nonsensical sensibilities and neglected developing precious common sense... To the point of misidentifying sarcasm as "hate"... It is not hate, it is simply not being a dumb robot person whose worldview is so narrow that literally techniques slip outside of his norms for "appropriate"...
I for one don't find it all that positive that people need such things explained in the first place, it is rather alarming to say the least.
LostWander - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link
Lots of assumptions there friend. Really sad honestly there were a lot of better (and more accurate) interpretations of my comment available.I'm so sorry for anyone in your life. Get help for their sake.
iter - Friday, March 16, 2018 - link
Oh you are sorry for me, are you? Well that sure makes you better LOL. My life rocks because there are no spineless, fake people in it. Being a true human is a deterrent for folk like you, and that is a great thing I wouldn't change for the world, as people like you are mediocre, utterly boring and of no value whatsoever, and only fit in one place - circle jerks of similar individuals. So better save your sorry for your own sorry self. Now go find another mindless drone like you to pat eachother on the backs to create the illusion of self-worth you so desperately need. Maybe talk about gender self-identification and whatnot...Jedi2155 - Friday, March 16, 2018 - link
While you my have no fake people in your life I'm going to go out on a limb and say your circle of trusted individuals is quite small. It seems you may be limiting yourself on what you're willing to understand and respect on the basis of feeling superior to others.bobcov - Friday, April 6, 2018 - link
LostWander has a point which you have quite strongly validated through the wording of your post. His advice has merit.Arbie - Saturday, March 17, 2018 - link
Iter, did you forget your WccfTech password? That's the right place to warp general commentary into a personal attack chain.linuxgeex - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link
Agree. It's obvious to anyone that a CPU cooler only works when it's attached to the CPU. A cooler that is attached only to a portion of the CPU is intuitively only cooling the portion it is attached to.The article could have just said that. Instead they went so deep-dive on it that honestly it felt patronizing, and that's why I agree with your response. This article is completely over-written, one might even go so far as to characterize it as self-satisfied smart-ass rant... and don't get me wrong on that... some people actually enjoy participating in reading someone else's self-glorification, and have such small egos that they don't mind their time being wasted in the process, lol.
As for the "hate" LostWander is speaking of, that was in s/he/it's own mind. LostWander accuses you of hate only because they don't hear the sarcasm you are directing at the Engineers who suggested building and marketing the adapter which this article reveals to be so ineffective. Those individuals deserve your wry comments because they were fully aware of the shizzle they were encouraging consumers to purchase.
Instead, Lostwander is so defensive that s/he/it assumed that any negativity must be directed toward themself personally and so they jumped in to defend their ego by attacking you, and that is sad, especially given they believe they were delivering a message of acceptance.
eek2121 - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link
I wouldn't say that. Prime95 small-ffts load gives me 45.5C on my Enermax TR4 AIO. That's more than 'marginal'. Furthermore, if you overclock to 4.1 GHz, it is likely you'll find the Noctua unable to keep the CPU temp below 68C. My Enermax has no problems doing so.romrunning - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
"AMD’s Threadripper processors certainly do not require liquid coolers to function properly at stock"Can we add the performance of a liquid cooler to the charts to see how the air TR-4 cooler performs against it?
eek2121 - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link
I can tell you significantly better then that noctua.mrpiggy - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
'Cus it's all about that base, 'bout that base, no treble..SaolDan - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
ChuckleFreckledTrout - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
'Cus it's all about that base, 'bout that base, no TIM..mr_tawan - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Can you please give me some more mid.Holliday75 - Friday, March 16, 2018 - link
<15hz or nuttin.Yurius - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Thnx for review, but IMHO final words and conclusion is bad. Max allowed temp for 1950x is 68 degrees (https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-thre... but measured delta in best case is 59 degrees! Yes, throttling temp is about 85C, but who knows how long TR will operate with temp higher then recommended.E.Fyll - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Hello Yurius. That was my bad - it is not the delta over ambient but the temperature reported by the motherboard's sensor. I had forgotten to edit the graph's subtitle. So it's 59°C real, about 9°C below the throttling point.Yurius - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Wow, that's big different, thnx for update. Nevertheless it's to close even in stock on top rate cooler and there is huge problem with VRM on X399 boards, so I think AMD recommendations make sense and fullcover that fits CPU and VRM is a great idea.colonelclaw - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
That Noctua Threadripper cooler is a minor masterpiece of engineering. About 5 seconds after opening the box it came in, I had already forgotten about it's cost. Hell - even the box it comes in is beautifully made - a sure sign that you're dealing with a company that cares.FreckledTrout - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
I have a NH-D15 on my Ryzen and felt the same way when it came in. The Noctua coolers are just well made.tamalero - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Agree, not only that.. they also have the signed paper of the CEO thanking you for the purchase.Probably one of the best coolers I've bought, right there with the famous 212EVO from CoolerMaster.
Dr. Swag - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Just out of curiosity, but what's your PhD in, Dr. Fylladitakis?Ryan Smith - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
To clarify, the title of page 2 is a bit of humor. E. isn't a doctor (though Ian is).LordanSS - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Thank you for the article. It was a good read with the thermodynamics explanation as well.fackamato - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
What are the decibels during load for each cooler/rpm?Valantar - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
A fascinating read. Now for the follow-up: an article where you test sticking two 212 Evos side by side on a Threadripper. That should cover most of the IHS, no?LanceLLandon - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
My preference is Peltier air cooling. By cooling a processor slightly frozen less thermal noise is generated and less miscalculations are performed. Perhaps this is more important for studio Sound Recording and Mixing/Editing or Movie Video Editing or for Work Station performance. If I am going to all the trouble to build a multi core computer I will also so go to the trouble of cooling it far more effectively.MrSpadge - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
A Peltier cooler will help you with extreme OC, if sized properly, but apart from that will only increase your energy consumption significantly. If you want lower temperatures go for chilled water, that's far more efficient. But you absolutely don't need that. Otherwise all the servers in data centers, DELL shops etc. would have to be constructed differently. And if you really want to reduce the chance of calculation errors beyond the manufacturer specification, simply drop the CPU clock by 100 MHz.BTW: are you using ECC RAM? Not that I'm recommending it for home computers, but if not you're definitely overshooting with that Peltier and should care for more probable points of failure first.
Crazyeyeskillah - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Water or GTFO.master381 - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
Nice article!A question - on Page 3, is this supposed to read " absolute thermal resistance of the cooler itself needs to be very *low,*" instead of high?
Excerpt:
"The high thermal resistance caused by an undersized contact plate cannot be easily countered, which is why the absolute thermal resistance of the cooler itself needs to be very high, i.e. why AMD’s cooler recommendations are so over the top."
Ryan Smith - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link
That was meant to read "thermal conductance". Thanks!zodiacfml - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link
The conclusion I can get from here is that desktop CPU with around 90W TDP can also benefit from the larger surface area, considering the differences in temps at idle of the TR chip.Chaotic42 - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link
Out of curiosity I ran AIDA64's CPU/FPU/Cache stress tests for 30 minutes on my 1950X with a Corsair H115i and an ambient temperature of 21C and my CPU temperature pegged out at 58C the entire time.Phylyp - Wednesday, March 21, 2018 - link
Minor quibble about the presentation (not content, top-notch article there!). In the bar charts for idle & load temperatures, the subtitle reads "Ambient at ~21°C" but the tilde almost looks like a negative sign at that size of font, which threw me for a minute. May I suggest that in future it be replaced by "approx."?vpz - Thursday, March 22, 2018 - link
Thermal results do represent the delta ?What was the ambient temperature ?