About worthy components and relevance SVO
Hi GT! Today I want to touch on a very interesting topic on which I received questions more than once. All of them are very different, but in a nutshell are characterized like this: "Why buy an expensive cooling system, if the cheap and cope." I will try to answer the question “what a good CO is capable of” under the cut.
The very “airways” were and remain monsters from Noctua, Termalright and Phanteks. Cost - from 70 to 100+ dollars, impressive size and impressive weight in the kit. These giants can both make virtually any hardware noiseless and provide tremendous stability under overclocking and high loads even with processors such as the Intel Core i7-5960X (8 cores, 16 threads, frequencies up to 4.5 GHz for good specimens under continuous load).
')
On the cooling of 220-watt heating elements (AMD 9590/9370, where you get out, let people look and laugh), which by mistake are sold as processors, we will not say today. For the same money, you can take a Core i5, which in most tasks will bypass its hot rival, and pay only for the fact that AMD has eight cores and almost five gigahertz ... well, you are all adults here, you know. Back to the super towers.
Manufacturers of such cooling systems embark on all sorts of tricks, just to squeeze out of the technology a little more. Optimize the size and shape of the heat pipes, their distribution over the substrate, which is in contact with the processor's thermal distributor, invent special coatings that increase the thermal conductivity, change the contours of the radiator plates to provide the most efficient airflow ... Well, of course, sometimes they simply increase their size. Just look at these giants:
And what about processor manufacturers? Once every two years, desktop rulers “drop” a couple of nanometers and increase frequencies, while thermal packs of models with productivity similar to those of previous generations are slowly decreasing, so only LGA-2011-3 processors and overclocked to 4.5 require active and very powerful cooling + GHz Core i5 and i7 k-series on 115x sockets.
In other cases (Core i5 / i7 without overclocking), models are more modest: single-fan Noctua, Thermaltake, CoolerMaster.
Using water as a coolant is not a bad idea. It was successfully used in steam locomotives and in nuclear reactors, so it will work here. Fortunately, the phase transition as a method of absorbing heat is not used here, so the NWO is going to be quite simple. Moreover, for the past 5 years, if not more, there are so-called on the market. "Factory dropsy", the complexity of the assembly and installation of which does not differ from the installation of supermassive air cooling systems.
The question is whether or not to use the expansion tank is pure taste. There is no place to go in a closed factory water system; in self-assembled water it is more convenient to do it as recommended by the manufacturer of the pump that pumps the fluid.
The effectiveness of such systems as a whole depends on the same parameters as the “airways”, just in this case, the heat radiator is not directly above the processor, but moved to another place: on the back or top wall of the PC. So, the same questions as in the "classic" coolers come up here: dissipation area, volume of air pumped in an hour, resistance of radiator ribs to flow.
Just want to note that by installing the factory SVO (especially after the "super tower" or any other high-quality air cooling) you will not see -10 degrees in idle and -15 under load. The only difference between “dropsy” and “vozdushka” is where the heat dissipates, plus a water-cooled system takes some time to “warm up” the entire volume of water from the pump to the radiator ~ to the temperature of the processor cover. After removing the load from the processor, in just a few minutes the temperature will be higher than with an air cooler of similar power dissipation, simply because the coolant is more inert than the evaporative system of heat pipes and the metal radiator.
I see several reasons for applying factory SVOs: the desire to pontatsya, the desire to assemble a powerful but very compact computer, and the desire to assemble a powerful And very quiet / silent computer.
In the first case, I will not discourage anyone. Any whim for your money. In the second, often, dropsy is the only way to cram the unwashable. In the third, everything is difficult. Fully passive cooling on powerful components will not work, custom SVO and a water block on a video card are an option, but will require at least minimally working fans that blow a powerful radiator. And just "not heard by day and night computer" can be assembled on the air. I don’t know about you, but my power unit is the most noisy now.
What happens if the computer does not look from the moment of its assembly? My i7-3930K based PC was assembled at the very beginning of 2012, and since then the only thing I did in it was testing video cards / RAM. The rest of the glands were usually tested on a test bench from another iron, in which you don’t have to climb: put, tested, removed.
All this time, the cooling of the processor involved the legendary Noctua NH-D14. Outwardly, she was always fine, wiped the dust from the outer impeller a couple of times. I didn’t even look in the basket with the screws that stood behind the 180-mm fan, and the screws in it were even longer: the year of the commercials since 2011, when everything moved to this building along with the Core i7-2600k.
For all this time, temperature monitoring did not reveal anything unusual. Well, it is time to find out how many different kinds of time the cooler was pumping, and how much it affected the atmosphere inside the case. \
Temperature without load and after half an hour of high-quality multi-threaded load.
As you can see, the results are very far from critical ( according to Intel Ark ) for i7-3930K 67 degrees. We begin to rake the Augean stables? :)
At first glance, everything is fine. Well, a little dusty, it happens. Otherwise, everything worked fine, the temperature you saw above on the screen. The side covers were closed, thick foam filters were installed on the inlet fans, which were regularly cleaned. True, the computer stood next to the balcony door, which was open for half a year.
Here, by the way, is the first serious minus of the “old” power supply. No, he is not bad, and still works like a clock (and for him, for a moment, 7 or 8 years exactly, if not more). But thick cables in the additional braid could barely be placed between the backplate and the back cover.
Here's what happens if you hit the grid on the bottom:
Instead of the NH-D14 there will be a dropsy DeepCool Captain 360 . Why 360? Because 3 sections under 120-mm coolers. It also happens Captain 240 (the price is almost the same) and Captain 120 (significantly cheaper), twice and three times shorter, respectively. The radiator is so long that its last part will go beyond the perforated zone and will be in the area of ​​the first slot for the optical drive. Fortunately, the developers of the case (Cooler Master HAF-932, another “legendary” piece of iron, its ideological heir - HAF X ) provided such huge radiators, so that there will be no problems with the mount.
Thermal grease is applied just like this “factory” pattern. Smaz - my cant, carelessly opened the protective plastic cover, and she fell to the base. In fact, the area of ​​application is slightly larger than the thermal distributor of the processor, so there will be no problems.
Another plus in the piggy bank creators. BP can be placed both below and above. Moreover, there are conclusions under the "custom" water and hoses.
In my case, the BP is below. This creates some difficulties, (the trains are not designed for a similar installation), but there were some reasons for this: I used to have a NWO on I7-2600K.
Remove the fans, which instantly hook with a piece of "felt boot", formed on the radiator.
Separately, I want to note a special “jagged” edge of the platinum: it is made to reduce the noise generated by the air passing through the radiators. However, the dust, she also perfectly collected all these long nearly 4 years.
The delights of the Palit'ovskoy cooling system and the generally not hot temper 980Ti: 90% of the time, the fans either stand still or spin at the minimum speed. As a result, for half a year there is no dust in the video card at all. Only on the edge of the impeller a bit.
Remove the sound and SSD-drive. I don’t know how to remove the dust that has accumulated inside this beautiful red thing. Is that try to blow out with compressed air.
Md Little beautiful:
For what we love Noctua: in the kit there is always everything you need to install. Even a very long screwdriver.
Native thermal grease Noctua is still alive, lubricated as easily as on the day of application! Recommend!
30+ thousand hours blowing fans.
Fingerprint thermal paste fresh nowhere. Dust sticks only in the way:
Fu:
By the way, what I was talking about. Inability of loops. Their connectors are installed in such a way that the cable can only be pushed from top to bottom. Well, or you can try zafigachit screws upside-down. :)
But here's a little strange: a transparent plate is installed behind the wing power supply unit, which cuts off a good 40% of the air flow. What for? Riddle.
There’s no such thing in this:
Here was the power supply. You can even write a finger about it. :)
The processor is simply rubbed with a cloth. Everything went literally in 1 second.
All the dust was vacuumed out, the casing was rubbed, the garbage was thrown out, the fans were washed, it was time to assemble the ITS. Instructions for her, to put it mildly ... Primitive. One such leaf here:
Established fans have frames of ... I would call it hard rubber grades. In fact, most likely, this is just a flexible plastic, albeit a “rubber” touch. Vibration absorbs perfectly.
In the photo there is a package with fastenings for socket 2011 of the first revision of these waterworks. Mounts frankly terrible, but with a dropsy I got another set of mounts, completely different in quality and ease of installation. That is, while this CBO went to us, the developer managed to fix the marriage and dump the retailers for the shoal too. Nicely.
There are already used mounting 2.0:
As you can see, the radiator goes to the basket of optical drives, but this does not interfere with the installation and blowing. The new power supply unit flat cables, with their placement behind there is no problem. The pump itself is powered by a standard fan connector on the motherboard. Some competitors are powered from internal connectors for USB connectors.
A trio of fans connects to the motherboard through an adapter like this. To be honest, I am not very pleased with this solution: I am not sure that the motherboard manufacturers relied on connecting three loads to the same place. Such currents can kill both the connector and the tracks leading to it. It would be quieter for me if only instructions from the motherboard were taken from this bus for the desired revolutions, and the power was supplied separately, from USB ports or a SATA / IDE cable.
The white connector, apparently, is designed to install more and power pump. Strange decision, then I will finish with a file. ^ _ ^
All assembled and podvetochkoy. You can close the lid, it's time to test. In the BIOS, we remove the PWM for the pump, set the SILENT profile for the fans, set the minimum speed to 400. After a few minutes, the system becomes absolutely silent (as it was with Noctua NH-D14), only the power supply fan is heard. The air bubbles from the cooling circuit came out quickly, though I did not actively shake and turn the system over. The network had complaints about the noisy work of the pump, my copy does not suffer from this.
In idle time, after the temperature of the system has settled down, the picture is somewhat worse than with the tightly clogged NH-D14. Two hours of warm-up did not allow the system to warm up higher than 56.5 degrees, that is, under load, the effect is the same as from the super tower, which has been collecting dust for more than three years.
Here, the corpus made its amendments to the measurement: a perfectly blown BigTower with a large amount of free space and extremely perforated from all sides.
Even the stress test AIDA-64 did not manage to warm up the processor above the throttling temperature:
With cooling even such an “evil” processor as the six-core i7-3930K, the system coped with dignity. At the end of the test, fan speeds rose slightly, but overall, the acoustic picture remained more than comfortable. But if the difference with the “super-towers” ​​(and the NH-D14 today is far from the coolest supercooler) is not so great, then why are unattended ITSs needed then? The answer is simple: for cramped bodies and tricky assemblies.
Such a “two-piece” (Captain 240) allows you to assemble a very powerful PC based on top-end i7 with a MiniATX motherboard in an ultra-compact package (especially if you use the relatively cold GTX 970/980 / 980Ti, most of the time with passive or semi-passive cooling). The only condition is to use high-quality case studies that provide for the normal positioning of the air conditioning system and blowing hot air out of the case - the Corsair Carbide 240 Air or the TT Core V21 will work perfectly. Yes, if you wish, you can cram something classic in them, but here the question of proper organization of the air flow will arise.
If you are not a fan of overclocking, use conventional processors (from Pentium G3250 to Core i5 / i7 without the K index at the end) and do not want to spend a lot of money on cooling - take Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo . Time-tested solution. Quiet, reliable, common, inexpensive and not the largest cooler.
In small-sized cases (well, all of a sudden you are going to ITX-based on the i7, which you will not encounter any distortions today), the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 would be an almost perfect option. Of course, the height and amount of free space should be compared in advance, not all buildings are equally well designed. An alternative for Noctua is the Thermalright AXP200 .
With the K-series of modern i7 and i5, even Noctua NH-U12S , NH-U14S will cope with hard overclocking, well, in factory cabinets, factory-built CBO will come to the rescue.
Super towers and similar three-section monstro-SVOs are relevant only in the case of a very hot climate or the use of top-end processors, such as the eight-core i7-5960X . Well, or if you had a misunderstanding on the hands of AMD 9590 . According toeyewitnesses of the victims and survivors, HN-D14 and its compatriots more or less cope. Installing such coolers in compact cases is still a problem, and the high price of such cooling and the corresponding case obviously will not stop a person who gave from $ 600 to $ 1,200 for the processor alone.
PS: Look into the computer more often, even if according to the temperature sensors and the general state of health of iron "all the rules." Nothing good from as much dust as it has accumulated on me is definitely not worth the wait.
PPS: We will talk about how well DeepCool Captain 360 copes with the overclocked SandyBridge-E next year.
Super tower
The very “airways” were and remain monsters from Noctua, Termalright and Phanteks. Cost - from 70 to 100+ dollars, impressive size and impressive weight in the kit. These giants can both make virtually any hardware noiseless and provide tremendous stability under overclocking and high loads even with processors such as the Intel Core i7-5960X (8 cores, 16 threads, frequencies up to 4.5 GHz for good specimens under continuous load).
')
On the cooling of 220-watt heating elements (AMD 9590/9370, where you get out, let people look and laugh), which by mistake are sold as processors, we will not say today. For the same money, you can take a Core i5, which in most tasks will bypass its hot rival, and pay only for the fact that AMD has eight cores and almost five gigahertz ... well, you are all adults here, you know. Back to the super towers.
Manufacturers of such cooling systems embark on all sorts of tricks, just to squeeze out of the technology a little more. Optimize the size and shape of the heat pipes, their distribution over the substrate, which is in contact with the processor's thermal distributor, invent special coatings that increase the thermal conductivity, change the contours of the radiator plates to provide the most efficient airflow ... Well, of course, sometimes they simply increase their size. Just look at these giants:
And what about processor manufacturers? Once every two years, desktop rulers “drop” a couple of nanometers and increase frequencies, while thermal packs of models with productivity similar to those of previous generations are slowly decreasing, so only LGA-2011-3 processors and overclocked to 4.5 require active and very powerful cooling + GHz Core i5 and i7 k-series on 115x sockets.
In other cases (Core i5 / i7 without overclocking), models are more modest: single-fan Noctua, Thermaltake, CoolerMaster.
NWO - what is needed and what can?
Using water as a coolant is not a bad idea. It was successfully used in steam locomotives and in nuclear reactors, so it will work here. Fortunately, the phase transition as a method of absorbing heat is not used here, so the NWO is going to be quite simple. Moreover, for the past 5 years, if not more, there are so-called on the market. "Factory dropsy", the complexity of the assembly and installation of which does not differ from the installation of supermassive air cooling systems.
The question is whether or not to use the expansion tank is pure taste. There is no place to go in a closed factory water system; in self-assembled water it is more convenient to do it as recommended by the manufacturer of the pump that pumps the fluid.
The effectiveness of such systems as a whole depends on the same parameters as the “airways”, just in this case, the heat radiator is not directly above the processor, but moved to another place: on the back or top wall of the PC. So, the same questions as in the "classic" coolers come up here: dissipation area, volume of air pumped in an hour, resistance of radiator ribs to flow.
Just want to note that by installing the factory SVO (especially after the "super tower" or any other high-quality air cooling) you will not see -10 degrees in idle and -15 under load. The only difference between “dropsy” and “vozdushka” is where the heat dissipates, plus a water-cooled system takes some time to “warm up” the entire volume of water from the pump to the radiator ~ to the temperature of the processor cover. After removing the load from the processor, in just a few minutes the temperature will be higher than with an air cooler of similar power dissipation, simply because the coolant is more inert than the evaporative system of heat pipes and the metal radiator.
I see several reasons for applying factory SVOs: the desire to pontatsya, the desire to assemble a powerful but very compact computer, and the desire to assemble a powerful And very quiet / silent computer.
In the first case, I will not discourage anyone. Any whim for your money. In the second, often, dropsy is the only way to cram the unwashable. In the third, everything is difficult. Fully passive cooling on powerful components will not work, custom SVO and a water block on a video card are an option, but will require at least minimally working fans that blow a powerful radiator. And just "not heard by day and night computer" can be assembled on the air. I don’t know about you, but my power unit is the most noisy now.
Air vs. water: a visual comparison
What happens if the computer does not look from the moment of its assembly? My i7-3930K based PC was assembled at the very beginning of 2012, and since then the only thing I did in it was testing video cards / RAM. The rest of the glands were usually tested on a test bench from another iron, in which you don’t have to climb: put, tested, removed.
All this time, the cooling of the processor involved the legendary Noctua NH-D14. Outwardly, she was always fine, wiped the dust from the outer impeller a couple of times. I didn’t even look in the basket with the screws that stood behind the 180-mm fan, and the screws in it were even longer: the year of the commercials since 2011, when everything moved to this building along with the Core i7-2600k.
For all this time, temperature monitoring did not reveal anything unusual. Well, it is time to find out how many different kinds of time the cooler was pumping, and how much it affected the atmosphere inside the case. \
Temperature without load and after half an hour of high-quality multi-threaded load.
As you can see, the results are very far from critical ( according to Intel Ark ) for i7-3930K 67 degrees. We begin to rake the Augean stables? :)
At first glance, everything is fine. Well, a little dusty, it happens. Otherwise, everything worked fine, the temperature you saw above on the screen. The side covers were closed, thick foam filters were installed on the inlet fans, which were regularly cleaned. True, the computer stood next to the balcony door, which was open for half a year.
Here, by the way, is the first serious minus of the “old” power supply. No, he is not bad, and still works like a clock (and for him, for a moment, 7 or 8 years exactly, if not more). But thick cables in the additional braid could barely be placed between the backplate and the back cover.
Here's what happens if you hit the grid on the bottom:
Not to look nervous!
Instead of the NH-D14 there will be a dropsy DeepCool Captain 360 . Why 360? Because 3 sections under 120-mm coolers. It also happens Captain 240 (the price is almost the same) and Captain 120 (significantly cheaper), twice and three times shorter, respectively. The radiator is so long that its last part will go beyond the perforated zone and will be in the area of ​​the first slot for the optical drive. Fortunately, the developers of the case (Cooler Master HAF-932, another “legendary” piece of iron, its ideological heir - HAF X ) provided such huge radiators, so that there will be no problems with the mount.
Thermal grease is applied just like this “factory” pattern. Smaz - my cant, carelessly opened the protective plastic cover, and she fell to the base. In fact, the area of ​​application is slightly larger than the thermal distributor of the processor, so there will be no problems.
Another plus in the piggy bank creators. BP can be placed both below and above. Moreover, there are conclusions under the "custom" water and hoses.
In my case, the BP is below. This creates some difficulties, (the trains are not designed for a similar installation), but there were some reasons for this: I used to have a NWO on I7-2600K.
Remove the fans, which instantly hook with a piece of "felt boot", formed on the radiator.
Separately, I want to note a special “jagged” edge of the platinum: it is made to reduce the noise generated by the air passing through the radiators. However, the dust, she also perfectly collected all these long nearly 4 years.
The delights of the Palit'ovskoy cooling system and the generally not hot temper 980Ti: 90% of the time, the fans either stand still or spin at the minimum speed. As a result, for half a year there is no dust in the video card at all. Only on the edge of the impeller a bit.
Remove the sound and SSD-drive. I don’t know how to remove the dust that has accumulated inside this beautiful red thing. Is that try to blow out with compressed air.
Md Little beautiful:
For what we love Noctua: in the kit there is always everything you need to install. Even a very long screwdriver.
Native thermal grease Noctua is still alive, lubricated as easily as on the day of application! Recommend!
30+ thousand hours blowing fans.
Fingerprint thermal paste fresh nowhere. Dust sticks only in the way:
Fu:
By the way, what I was talking about. Inability of loops. Their connectors are installed in such a way that the cable can only be pushed from top to bottom. Well, or you can try zafigachit screws upside-down. :)
But here's a little strange: a transparent plate is installed behind the wing power supply unit, which cuts off a good 40% of the air flow. What for? Riddle.
There’s no such thing in this:
Here was the power supply. You can even write a finger about it. :)
Allergy sufferers do not open!
This fellow blew on the screws for about five years, from the moment they were installed in the case until recently:
This fellow blew on the screws for about five years, from the moment they were installed in the case until recently:
The processor is simply rubbed with a cloth. Everything went literally in 1 second.
All the dust was vacuumed out, the casing was rubbed, the garbage was thrown out, the fans were washed, it was time to assemble the ITS. Instructions for her, to put it mildly ... Primitive. One such leaf here:
Established fans have frames of ... I would call it hard rubber grades. In fact, most likely, this is just a flexible plastic, albeit a “rubber” touch. Vibration absorbs perfectly.
In the photo there is a package with fastenings for socket 2011 of the first revision of these waterworks. Mounts frankly terrible, but with a dropsy I got another set of mounts, completely different in quality and ease of installation. That is, while this CBO went to us, the developer managed to fix the marriage and dump the retailers for the shoal too. Nicely.
There are already used mounting 2.0:
As you can see, the radiator goes to the basket of optical drives, but this does not interfere with the installation and blowing. The new power supply unit flat cables, with their placement behind there is no problem. The pump itself is powered by a standard fan connector on the motherboard. Some competitors are powered from internal connectors for USB connectors.
A trio of fans connects to the motherboard through an adapter like this. To be honest, I am not very pleased with this solution: I am not sure that the motherboard manufacturers relied on connecting three loads to the same place. Such currents can kill both the connector and the tracks leading to it. It would be quieter for me if only instructions from the motherboard were taken from this bus for the desired revolutions, and the power was supplied separately, from USB ports or a SATA / IDE cable.
The white connector, apparently, is designed to install more and power pump. Strange decision, then I will finish with a file. ^ _ ^
All assembled and podvetochkoy. You can close the lid, it's time to test. In the BIOS, we remove the PWM for the pump, set the SILENT profile for the fans, set the minimum speed to 400. After a few minutes, the system becomes absolutely silent (as it was with Noctua NH-D14), only the power supply fan is heard. The air bubbles from the cooling circuit came out quickly, though I did not actively shake and turn the system over. The network had complaints about the noisy work of the pump, my copy does not suffer from this.
In idle time, after the temperature of the system has settled down, the picture is somewhat worse than with the tightly clogged NH-D14. Two hours of warm-up did not allow the system to warm up higher than 56.5 degrees, that is, under load, the effect is the same as from the super tower, which has been collecting dust for more than three years.
Here, the corpus made its amendments to the measurement: a perfectly blown BigTower with a large amount of free space and extremely perforated from all sides.
Even the stress test AIDA-64 did not manage to warm up the processor above the throttling temperature:
With cooling even such an “evil” processor as the six-core i7-3930K, the system coped with dignity. At the end of the test, fan speeds rose slightly, but overall, the acoustic picture remained more than comfortable. But if the difference with the “super-towers” ​​(and the NH-D14 today is far from the coolest supercooler) is not so great, then why are unattended ITSs needed then? The answer is simple: for cramped bodies and tricky assemblies.
Such a “two-piece” (Captain 240) allows you to assemble a very powerful PC based on top-end i7 with a MiniATX motherboard in an ultra-compact package (especially if you use the relatively cold GTX 970/980 / 980Ti, most of the time with passive or semi-passive cooling). The only condition is to use high-quality case studies that provide for the normal positioning of the air conditioning system and blowing hot air out of the case - the Corsair Carbide 240 Air or the TT Core V21 will work perfectly. Yes, if you wish, you can cram something classic in them, but here the question of proper organization of the air flow will arise.
What to choose?
If you are not a fan of overclocking, use conventional processors (from Pentium G3250 to Core i5 / i7 without the K index at the end) and do not want to spend a lot of money on cooling - take Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo . Time-tested solution. Quiet, reliable, common, inexpensive and not the largest cooler.
In small-sized cases (well, all of a sudden you are going to ITX-based on the i7, which you will not encounter any distortions today), the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 would be an almost perfect option. Of course, the height and amount of free space should be compared in advance, not all buildings are equally well designed. An alternative for Noctua is the Thermalright AXP200 .
With the K-series of modern i7 and i5, even Noctua NH-U12S , NH-U14S will cope with hard overclocking, well, in factory cabinets, factory-built CBO will come to the rescue.
Super towers and similar three-section monstro-SVOs are relevant only in the case of a very hot climate or the use of top-end processors, such as the eight-core i7-5960X . Well, or if you had a misunderstanding on the hands of AMD 9590 . According to
PS: Look into the computer more often, even if according to the temperature sensors and the general state of health of iron "all the rules." Nothing good from as much dust as it has accumulated on me is definitely not worth the wait.
PPS: We will talk about how well DeepCool Captain 360 copes with the overclocked SandyBridge-E next year.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/371551/
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