Z420 Cooling Upgrade or Downgrade?

[Rhothgar]

Quick question!

Sometime ago I built a Z420 which I am still tinkering with in terms of overclocking.

It currently has a Z420 AIO Cooler which is the 'car' radiator type of cooler.

There was a discussion sometime ago about upgrading from the standard cooler to this one with the single screws either side of the bracket (because it's more sturdy) SDH suggested this one:-



But I currently have this installed:-

Surely this water cooled one is better than a non liquid cooled fan, is it not?



The reason I ask is I have been offered one of the hard to get opposing screw ones as the above photo as recommended by SDH.

[NonSequitur777]

@Rhothgar,

I am sure @SDH will have something to say about your question, but what I have to say is this: let's see what your processor temps are when fully engaged, so to speak.

For this, you'll need two most helpful freeware programs, the first being: "Speccy" -which you can download from here: Thanks for downloading Speccy (ccleaner.com), install, and run the program.

Then download "CPU-Z" from here: https://download.cpuid.com/cpu-z/cpu-z_2.09-en.exe and install.  Once installed, go to the "Bench" tab, check-off the "CPU Multi Thread" reference box, and under "This Processor Reference", select a similar (or identical) processor like shown here with the PC I am working with right now:

Then hit the "Stress CPU" button and observe what happens:

Let this run until temperatures have stabilized. WARNING: if your temps exceed 90 degrees C or beyond, hit the "Stop" button immediately.

Let me know what you got, and then we can discuss if your AIO cooler is sufficient for its purposes -or not.

Btw: I am using a modified 7-heatpipe Thermaltake PS120 SE air cooler boosted with three high-capacity 120mm cooling fans in order to provide outstanding cooling results for my hot-running (127-watt TDP) i9-9900KS:

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[Rhothgar]

Hi
Thanks for your suggestions.
Here are my base temps (I ran it for around 80 minutes as I set it going and went and did something else).
I sat in front of the PC for about 10 minutes at the start and it was teetering around 69-70 degC.

[NonSequitur777]

@Rhothgar,

The temps look great!  However, it looks to me that you ran the "Bench CPU" test, I would like you to repeat the test whilst running the "Stress CPU" test.  Please observe carefully, as temps may be (significantly) higher than running the bench test.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[Rhothgar]

Hi

I definitely ran the stress test.  Can run again though.

Note that this is not clocked at these temps.  It reaches 90+ degC in 5 minutes on 4.1Ghz but will also test that again.

EDIT: Here you go!  Before and after 10 minute stress test. Obviously slightly lower reading then 80 minutes test earlier today.

[Rhothgar]

And what's really amazing is when the fan is on full tilt it doesn't go above 46 deg C at 10 minutes in.  Might get to 47-48 degC after an hour of very slow creep.

As soon as I stop the stress test with fans on full tilt, temp drops to 30 deg C within 2 seconds.

[NonSequitur777]

@Rhothgar,

Outstanding!

This shows that your AIO is more than capable to cool your processor.

In my opinion, these results would suggest that there is no need to upgrade your CPU cooling solution!

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[Rhothgar]

@NonSequitur777

That's what I thought but a couple of years ago I had a discussion with SDH on this point whereby he pointed me in the direction of the fans he uses which are passive Z440 ones I believe.

I've trawled back through our discussions but it isn't clear at what point, and why, I ended up with an AIO?  I think it came with the 2nd Z420 I bought.  Hence, with those fans SDH uses, becoming available for little money from one seller, it piqued my interest again.

As an aside, after I installed Speccy and CPU-Z, I could no longer get Intel XTU 5.2 to boot up again.  It might have been the installation of those or something else I did between last week and installation those programmes you suggested.  I did do some BIOS changes but was careful to restore a replicated setup afterwards.

It may be that I've been tinkering to try and set Hyper-V up and maybe that has played some part.