Question CPU cooler in a closed case

[iCyborg]

I'm finally replacing my ancient PC, I've been waiting for it to die, but starting to lose patience.
I'm eyeing 9950X3D and leaning towards Fractal Define R5 or R7 case with its closed panels option.

My concern is CPU cooler, never used AIO and my question is "does it make sense to put fans at the top if the case's top will be a solid panel and not a mesh"?
Same goes for front. The final alternative is at the bottom where I don't mind the mesh, but I've read it's not the best for pump durability.

Would a good air cooler be sufficient for 9950X3D in a closed case and no OC?
I don't plan to use 4090/5090 GPU or something with exorbitant power, 9070XT at the most, maybe even 9070 vanilla to further help with keeping heat down.

 

[In2Photos]

What is the reason for opting for the closed panels? There are plenty of air coolers that would work well with the 9950X3D. Check out the Zen 5 build thread in the CPU section. Several users are on air in there like @Markfw.

 

[Markfw]

What is the reason for opting for the closed panels? There are plenty of air coolers that would work well with the 9950X3D. Check out the Zen 5 build thread in the CPU section. Several users are on air in there like @Markfw.

Personally, case fans are good, but in most cases, and open side panel allows all fans to blow on their respective targets, but the open panel allows for maximum exit of the hot air.

Yes servers are closed, but their case fans are ungodly noisy an require AC air temps to be in the inbound air.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm finally replacing my ancient PC, I've been waiting for it to die, but starting to lose patience.
I'm eyeing 9950X3D and leaning towards Fractal Define R5 or R7 case with its closed panels option.

My concern is CPU cooler, never used AIO and my question is "does it make sense to put fans at the top if the case's top will be a solid panel and not a mesh"?
Same goes for front. The final alternative is at the bottom where I don't mind the mesh, but I've read it's not the best for pump durability.

Would a good air cooler be sufficient for 9950X3D in a closed case and no OC?
I don't plan to use 4090/5090 GPU or something with exorbitant power, 9070XT at the most, maybe even 9070 vanilla to further help with keeping heat down.

There are enough good heatpipe (air) coolers that come within < 10C of AiO water coolers, and there may be one or two that prove better than that. That is, the load temperatures for OC'd processors prove the performance, and you can find those results in data provided in comparison cooler reviews.

The only stipulation is that you can count on needing a midtower case and it probably needs to accommodate a cooler up to 158mm to 160mm high from bottom of its base. So left case panel must close without obstruction when the cooler is installed on the motherboard. There may be "shorter" air-coolers -- you can seek that out with a search of your own. The ThermalRight Phantom Spirit 120 EVO rates among the best. Another ThermalRight model, the Royal Pretor 130, edges out the Phantom Spirit in review comparisons, but it is bundled with fans of non-standard sizes. Some noobies may have had confusions while installing it (or attempting to install it!). Check the spec heights on those models, but they shouldn't present any problems fitting in the cases.

I was able recently to find a brand new ThermalRight Le Grand Macho RT shipped from some outfit in Spain. It's still good for LGA 1851 -- last year's Arrow Lake processors. I would suppose it, too, would work with your AMD Ryzen 9. "TechInn" I think is the reseller's name -- they were online last month -- TechInn under TradeInn's umbrella. Here's the link for Le Grand Macho RT, because they still have it, priced the same as previously.

 

[iCyborg]

What is the reason for opting for the closed panels? There are plenty of air coolers that would work well with the 9950X3D. Check out the Zen 5 build thread in the CPU section. Several users are on air in there like @Markfw.

To minimize both noise and rgb lighting - I'll take nonrgb over rgb, but it can be hard to avoid these days. I'd rather downgrade to 9900X if need be, tbh 9950 is likely an overkill, I'm not a heavy gamer or anything.

The only stipulation is that you can count on needing a midtower case and it probably needs to accommodate a cooler up to 158mm to 160mm high from bottom of its base. So left case panel must close without obstruction when the cooler is installed on the motherboard.

Thanks. I remember Markfw mentioning ThermalRight Peerless Assassin, didn't know about Pretor 130, looks good too, I'll pick one of these two, both are quite cheap.
Define 7 XL is too big, it would look awkward next to my desk, Define 7 is as large as I want to go. I'm not particularly limited by budget, more by space.

Wondering how people cool those 300+ W TDP Threadrippers? Do their physically larger packages make it easier to dissipate heat? Or people just accept jet noise?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Design 7 may be a perfectly good case. I myself recycle CoolerMaster Stacker 830's first released around 2007. I have a formula of fan deployment and cooling that I've used in two of those cases so far. I have a third one awaiting a new build.

Noctua has a line of "industrial" grade fans, or with "iPPC" in the model name. I think they have a 3,000 rpm 120 and 140 iPPC, and I always need at least one of those for a build with a heatpipe cooler -- maybe two. But a motherboard-controlled iPPC-3000 should not be a noise annoyance.

300+W is a toasty TDP. The coolers I linked are more than capable of handling 250 to 280W. You might want to revisit the idea of an AiO, but check the capacity thermal wattage for those.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Ask Markfw for one of his older Epyc chips. They are absolute beauties. Super smooth in Windows daily usage plus the increased surface area of their IHS allows even 280W to be cooled almost silently. I have his previous 128 thread Zen 2 chip. I was using it just the other day and man, it's always nice enjoying seeing tons of cores at work in Task Manager and gobs of RAM bandwidth available so you know for sure that your CPU isn't starved for anything and giving you the best performance.

You could run the 9900X or 9950X3D with DDR5-6000 or 6400 but that's still less than 8000 MT/s that these CPUs really need in heavy multicore workloads to perform optimally. There are rumors that next year AMD will be releasing Zen 5 consumer CPUs with an updated IOD to handle CUDIMMs and speeds beyond 8000 MT/s. I personally would feel pretty pissed if they did that because I spent a lot on my 9950X3D and for me to not have native CUDIMM support because AMD was lazy is going to make me inconsolable.

But if your primary use case is gaming, then DDR5-6000 CL28 is good enough for you and 9900X3D should give you decent performance for both applications and games.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Wondering how people cool those 300+ W TDP Threadrippers? Do their physically larger packages make it easier to dissipate heat? Or people just accept jet noise?

Depends on the cooler. There are nasty ones with jet noise but also great ones from Arctic Freezer that are virtually silent.

 

[Quintessa]

"does it make sense to put fans at the top if the case's top will be a solid panel and not a mesh"?

Nope. If the top is closed, you’re basically blowing into a wall. Airflow needs a path. R5/R7 are designed with that in mind, front intake (behind the solid door, still has side vents), rear exhaust. Top fans only help if you remove the ModuVent covers.

Would a good air cooler be sufficient for 9950X3D in a closed case and no OC?

Yeah, a big dual-tower air cooler is enough for a 9950X3D at stock. You’ll cap out around ~120W package power under heavy load, which is trivial for those coolers even in a Define chassis.

For your GPU choice (9070 XT or below), case thermals will be totally manageable with just a couple front intakes + rear exhaust. Stick with air and enjoy the silence.

 

[Paperdoc]

Regarding the LIGHTS concern, even if you cannot avoid getting some in a component, there are simple ways NOT to have them working. Most such devices now have separate lighting connection cables that go to a controller or a lighting header on the mobo. Simply do not connect. Some devices have lights and their own controller built in and are controlled by digital communication with an app running in the background, using a USB2 cable connection to the mobo. Because that app also controls other aspects in some cases, you cannot simply not run it. But normally you CAN use the app to turn the lights off permanently.

 

[iCyborg]

Got it guys, air cooler it is.
As for Threadrippers, it was a rhetoric question, I'm not seriously contemplating those, though 4/8-channel memory is appealing.
It's just that in most reviews the best coolers top at 250-260W heat dissipation, so wondering what the heck is used for those 300+ W beasts.

Needing to install SW to control lighting is another pet peeve I had with my mouse that I'd like to avoid if I can lol.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It's just that in most reviews the best coolers top at 250-260W heat dissipation, so wondering what the heck is used for those 300+ W beasts.

https://www.arctic.de/en/Freezer-4U-M-Rev.-2/ACFRE00133B

 

[iCyborg]

Update: ended up going with Thermalright Royal Pretor 130, thanks for the recommendation.

As someone who doesn't do a lot of builds, I think next time I might just buy prebuilt, this was too much hassle.
Cooler was the most frustrating part: there are 2 screws between the two towers. This would be easier if I had a very long and thin screwdriver, but none of the 3 I have (4 counting my swiss knife) were suited for this, and one of the sides took forever to "bite" (a few complaints on the internet about this). This took like an hour, so much struggle with just two screws, I wanted to throw the cooler out the balcony.

I wasn't even sure it's attached properly, on Linux idle temps seems to be in low-to-mid 40s (42-45C) with ambient ~23-24, I thought it would be a bit less, but perhaps normal these days, and it's in a closed case with virtually silent fans. Running stress test on all 32 logical cores semed to stabilize around 83-84C after a few minutes, so maybe not too bad, this time fans are audible, but still fairly quiet-ish.
On Win however idle is in the mid 30s, I haven't tried to stress it yet. I find this discrepancy rather odd, some 8C in idle (CoreTemp on Win, cpu-x on Linux).

I like FD Define 7 case overall, but working with PSU could be better as it's only reachable from the side. PWM cable for the fan hub is also too short, it can't reach Chassis Fan on the MB. Love the USB-C on the front panel, the main reason I chose it over R5 that would've been better size-wise.

I downgraded to 9950X, same TDP, I just found it hard to justify the 20-30% premium for 9950x3D given my usage, even gaming it's ~5% difference at 4K with a 5090.