Following a very successful AM4 upgrade looking to now build an AM5 box too - https://forums.bit-tech.net/index.php?threads/new-am5-build.386471/ Was thinking of doing this.. for fans https://www.arctic.de/en/P14-PWM-PST/ACFAN00125A/ for rad https://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/p/Alphacool-NexXxoS-UT60-Full-Copper-420mm-Radiator_25161.html or the thinner https://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/p/Alphacool-NexXxoS-ST30-Full-Copper-420mm-radiator-V2_76531.html for waterblock https://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/p/Watercool-Heatkiller-IV-Pro-AMD-black-copper_69076.html for pump https://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/p/EK-Quantum-Inertia-D5-PWM-D-RGB-Plexi_74036.html Would that all work together? Any suggestions on swapping any of it out?
TBH, what are you looking to get out of it? TBH modern hardware runs so cool and moderns coolers run so quiet for fairly low amounts of money that unless you really *want* wantercooling its kind of pointless. The 7950X is a sub 230W chip, so those will easily cool it though I run one of these, its the best bang for your buck CPU block Highly recoment it. Go for the thinner rad, it'll still have waaaaay more than enough cooling, but the lower static pressure it'll need will mean lower fan speeds.
mostly for the fun of it and it being quieter than air (right?) - also i had assumed that if you turn on PBO it'll pull way more wattage and be thermally limited?
Most CPU's are basically clocked to the max these days, so you won't really get enything extra, it'll just not thermally throttle. And a big tower cooler like a Noctua will do the same thing for less money...
I could be wrong, but I don't believe so, especially if you're only CPU cooling like you are. CPU coolers can be silent, although very large, and GPU coolers are very quiet from most of the top tier vendors. I never got to spin up my 3090 before I put my waterblock on, but the systems I designed at work are a Ryzen 9 7900 and a RTX 4070 and even when we're stress testing them they're totally siilent!Its because those systems pull less than 400W at full load, so its easy to cool! Also, most of the 'overheating' comes more from heat density of the tiny chiplets, so unless you're actively cooling them you can've overcome it. Then there's the cons of watercooling, its expensive. You could bump your GPU to nearly a 4080 with the cost difference. The effoirt to install watercooling is high, even for someone like me who's been doing it for decades. Compatibilty is a pain, I had to change cases becasue the block inputs were too large for my old one. I appear to have air slowly collecting in my top rad, so I'll need to fix that at some point. Leaks will always be a risk. Honestly, if I didn't already have the parts I'd have probably gone for an AIO water cooler or returned to air cooling as its just so so so much less cost and faff! What I would suggest, build your new PC, stress test it, see what the noise profile is like and then work out if you want to spend hundreds of pounds to reduce it
Yup I just do WC as I have had the same gear for years and I'm just buying blocks when I upgrade which tend to be cheaper than good air. Most Ryzen CPUs are run to the max via the sensors on board, there will still be a tiny benefit to water cool particularly at full load, but it is so small it is not worth the cost, my chip holds an extra 200Mhz at full core load, that on 4.6Ghz is not really giving me much percentage wise, yup it's an improvement but I'd not notice, the real benefit comes with the GPU, my GPU does not thermal throttle so in an extended session where the clocks can be pulled back a bit, I'm still a few 100Mhz higher than stock with a massive bump on RAM, I just hit the power caps, also removing the air cooler allows me to use my PCie slots as GPU air coolers are stupid in the high end these days
