Question Is the 10850k right for me?

[TechGuy75]

Hi guys.

Overview:

I am still trying to put together my build and all I can rely on are reviews and youtube videos, and your comments ofcourse I can probably build a more barebones machine that will fit my needs but I want to treat myself a little and splurge a little. Since I build machines roughly once a decade or little less and therefore keep them for many years.

So, I think I got a pretty good deal on the 10850k, at $389 And bought it. I want to try and do a pretty high end intel build, but I am not sure if it is possible given my situation. I have seen many reviews on this chip and I am aware that it runs hotter and needs good cooling.

Summary:

• I am going to be running it in a Fractal Design define r5 case. It has 1 x 140 mm case fan in the front of the case pulling the cool air in and 1 x 140mm case fan in the rear exhausting heat out the back. I can add 1 more 140mm case fan in the front if I need to. Thats about all the case cooling I can do, since I need to put this case in a tower enclosure in my desk(hopefully you know what I mean). The enclosure in my desk allows for the front and back of the case to be completely exposed. The top, bottom, and sides are blocked by the desk enclosure.
• I plan on doing a Noctua nh-d15 air cooler. I don’t want to do an aio and definitely not a custom water loop.
• given this cooling situation that I describe above, would I be able to run this chip at a proper temperature at stock settings without thermal throttling? Would I lose performance, even at stock speeds, due to the heat , making it pointless to run this chip?
• If stock settings are going to be ok, can I overclock at all given my setup? Ideally I would like to overclock some taking the base clock speed of all cores from 3.6 stock to a max of 4.5. Possible given my setup? If not how much oc is possible?
• If even stock cooling is not possible properly and this whole deal is not possible, then does it make sense to fall back to a 3900x? I hear this runs significantly cooler at stock and is very comparable to a 10850k.
• i dont know the exact gpu I am running. Probably anything from a 1660 super to a max of a 2060 super. 1 gpu.
• my first preference would be to do an intel build but if that is not really realistic, then I would like to cancel my order as soon as possible.

My proposed build:

• CPU = 10850k or 3900x
• CPU cooling = Noctua nh-d15(if 10850k for sure) or better? For the 3900x I will use the wraith prism for a start. If that starts to give me problem then I would look for an after market cooler.
• MOBO = not sure yet. Something good in the $200 to $300 range. X570 or z490.
• boot drive = wd sn750 1tb nvme pcie
• psu = seasonic gx-850
• case = fractal design define r5
• gpu = 1660 super or 2060. If I need something more powerful, I will give it some thought. Not saying no. Kind of want to settle on the cpu and mobo for now.
• memory = 32 gb ddr4 3600
• os = windows 10 pro
• monitor = 32” 4k 60hz

My uses:

• Office work; word, pp, excel, outlook
• several browser tabs
• watching youtube videos
• visual studio .net programing and compiling. This app has grown large and can take some resources. Other web programming outside of .net.
• Running an instance of sql server using ssms. Also possibly running an instance of Oracle.
• running a linux install in VM
• Encoding of my music from cd to flac, mp3 etc
• Retro gaming of older titles from Blizzard, some modern rpg games, overwatch. Maybe room to grow of my gaming needs?

Please help! Thanks

 

[TechGuy75]

Certainly he will throttle in a limited air flow situation like his, on heavily multithreaded loads like compiling.

However, it may very well be that the 10850K is the better choice because 1) it's available easily, 2) it is on-par in most other tasks, and 3) it's really cheap at that price for what you're getting.

I will not be hitting the cpu hard all the time, just sometimes I suspect. The initial price of the 10850k is cheaper than the 3900x, but after adding a good cooler to the intel, they come out to be about the same price.

My primary worry is that you will not be able to utilize all of what you're buying, even at stock, with that type of limited airflow... in which case it may make more sense to get something that is roughly equivalent, cheaper, and draws less power (and generates less heat).

Exactly!! This is my thinking and my concern exactly. This is the heart of my concern. If I went and got the 10850k and it is thermal throttling or getting damaged from the heat, whats the point? I am not getting what I paid for Or worse yet I bought something that I cant use.

All in all it seems the 10850k runs hot. Some people say it needs a lot of cooling and others say moderate cooling is ok and doable. Hard to get a consensus on whether this chip will work for me or not. I just cant say for sure since I don’t have the chip. There is no way I can acquire this experience to make an informed decision. So I plan to error on the side of caution and go with the 3900x. Unless some one in my exact situation or very similar can prove to me that it will work.

btw - all things being equal, how much cooler does the 3900x run than the 10850k?

thanks.

 

[UsandThem]

btw - all things being equal, how much cooler does the 3900x run than the 10850k?

There are lots of reviews out there for both of those CPUs. From power usage to heat, all the data is available. I'll start you off with a few links:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-10850k-cpu-review

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ryzen-9-3900x-7-3700x-review,6214.html

 

[blckgrffn]

Well... so long as you aren't doing distributed computing or looping all core benchmarks I think it would be fine.

Just set PL2 to something sane for your cooler. I frequently set it to just below the TDP of the cooler but 140 seems to work great. PL1 at 115-125. Hardly ever hear a fan spin up with those type of settings yet high 4 ghz speeds most of the time.

I've been pleasantly surprised at the 9th and 10th gen higher end CPUs. If you load them down they are power hungry but normal usage (gaming, coding with the random compile) that isn't video encoding they seem to keep power in check and run cool - certainly cool enough to stay working without damage.

I've got an old AMD 940 Black x4 AM2+ CPU. It's been a daily driver for first my sister and then for some things like bike simulations and my daughters been using it for schooling since about April. The fan on the Hyper 212 was getting loud so I replaced it. The board isn't high end, it has barely any thermal controls and yet, despite the 140W TDP and at times in the past been used for distributed computing (pretty sure it purred away doing WCG for years when my sister had it) it still works. And when it was doing that, it had a ~90W rated Arctic Cooling cooler, the Hyper 212 only was added like 4 year ago Ha, it's been in use since ~2008!

What does core temps matter, really, from CPU to CPU? Power usage (and dissipation) seem to be such more important numbers.

 

[Jdraper6]

do yall think there would be any bottleneck between this processor and a rtx 2070?

 

[blckgrffn]

do yall think there would be any bottleneck between this processor and a rtx 2070?

Depends on the game and resolution obviously, but the RTX 2070 will definitely choke before the CPU does in the vast majority of normal people use cases. If you are likely to be with that 2070 for a while, I'd say it's a great match up.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If OP is not overclocking, during truly intense workloads, the 10850k will drop to its TDP value (125W) after 56s of intense work, throttling it to about 4.3 GHz (unless the motherboard decides otherwise, which some of them do). You don't technically need a huge cooler if you are okay with the CPU dropping to all-core clocks at that level. During bursty workloads, it'll maybe throttle back depending on how quickly the cooler experiences heat soak. But I do not think you will see many situations where your cores will go below 4.3 GHz, and you will have a lot of circumstances where they will run faster than that, with some variations (again depending on cooler and heat soak). The only thing a D15 will suffer versus an objectively better cooling solution is that it will spend less time at peak boost clocks. Your baseline will never really change.

If you are trying for a static OC then you will have to massage the voltage/frequency curve as best you can to keep it operating within boundaries that your cooler can handle. That's where true thermal throttling will kick in, where the CPU has no power limits and has to downclock to save itself from heat death. IF you push it too hard. @ 4.3 GHz, a 10850k will be about a 125W CPU, but at 4.9 GHz or so it's typically a 250W CPU (all core) with some variance if you won the silicon lottery. Use fewer cores and/or less SIMD to burn less power. You have been warned.