Upgrade cooler for Ryzen 3800X ?

Hey all,

I'm using an older Ryzen 3800X system for video rendering, and also for folding on WCG during the winter. Currently I have an older Cooler Master Hyper 612 - a pretty big cooler (but not a dual tower), but I'm getting temps in the 90-95 C range when fully loaded, which is probably slowing it down. So I've been using Ecomode 65 and the temps drop to the mid 70s under full load. Would I get noticably better temps and higher boost clocks if I got something like the Thermalright 140 frost king or 140 peerless assassin when running the CPU at full power? Please advise, as you guys know your stuff.

Edit: at full power, I get around 4 ghz on all cores, going to Eco 65 reduces speed to like 3.8. Using Eco 45 drops temps still further - like 60 C, and it gets like 3.6 ghz on all cores.

Thanks

frost tower? yes, itd be a bit better. or a 280+ aio.

My vote. Affordable and decent

Thermalright Peerless Assassin

Thanks Pendragon1. I just don't want to mess with water cooling at all. Not ready for that leap. I'd really like to upgrade the whole system... but with prices these days... ugh.

i know the pa but not the tower, it looks like it could be a bit better, it has an extra heat pipe and faster fans.

I'm thinking of getting their 140 rather than the 120 - I have a huge case, and it might be better for when I finally upgrade. Edit: according to the charts I've looked at the 140 does better with high wattage, and is nigh as good as the super Noctua - though the fans are obviously better on the Noctua.

Unless you're doing long renders for hours or days at a time or your using this to make money, it might not be worth messing with a different cooler and just sticking to 65w eco mode. A couple of hundred mhz isn't a lot although there is a potential of getting a small clock speed increase with a much better cooler but I wouldn't count on it.

That's a solid point, SmokeRngs. It'd be like a 10 to (maybe) 20 percent performance bump or so. Is that worth dropping any money on, particuarly for an old build like that?

How is the airflow INTO your case?
Have you dusted it out, cleaned the fans?
Also, when was that cooler installed, have you considered re-pasting the heatsink with some new thermal paste?

MrGuvernment said:

How is the airflow INTO your case?
Have you dusted it out, cleaned the fans?
Also, when was that cooler installed, have you considered re-pasting the heatsink with some new thermal paste?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I bet a decent cleaning and a repaste will probably help. That processor has been around for 7 years now and could probably use a little tlc.

"How is the airflow INTO your case?
Have you dusted it out, cleaned the fans?
Also, when was that cooler installed, have you considered re-pasting the heatsink with some new thermal paste?"


These are good questions and I should have noted them in the original post. The case's airflow is quite good - it's some, big oldish Corsair model - with a 14 CM fan up front, and a 12 CM in the back. It's a bit dusty generally, but I cleaned out the cooler a few weeks ago. When I first got it (it was my brother's old machine) I cleaned it up completely and removed all unnecessary stuff, like the mount for hard drives to maximize airflow. Took off cooler and repasted (used some quality silver-based paste) and remounted it. That was about a year and a half ago. The temps today are like it was when I first got it, and not really better than before the cleanup and repasting.

Thinking it over, there's no way that a single tower Cooler Master is enough to keep it running at its best. On my mother's computer, which I assembled, I foolishly got a single tower cooler very like the old Cool Master Hyper 212 for her 5800G processor. When it started to balk at folding on WCG (it would stop folding intermittently for a few seconds every minute or so), I put a Peerless Assassin on it, and viola!, it handles a full load without trouble now.

I'm not getting any intermittent slow down/stoppage, but I don't like a chip to run so hot - even running in the 70s bugs me. I'm inclined to go ahead and pick up some Thermalright dual tower, if it means getting getting a bit more performance and peace of mind, too. Also, I figure if I get a good one, it will be fine for a new build, if prices ever come back to earth. The question is, which one? Looking around the last few days, there have been three! 14 CM Thermalright coolers sold: the Peerless Assassin 140, the Frost Commander 140, and the Frost Tower 140. Of the three, it would seem the Frost Tower is the best, having (I think) 7 heatpipes. I can't find the Frost Tower for sale anywhere, though. They have a very confusing line of coolers - possibly the most confusing CPU cooler collection every devised by capitalism.