PC Build: Cooling Advice needed

Cymoril

Cymoril
Finally at a stage that I can build a new machine (purely for gaming). I decided to go for an i9-14900k (Had some very bad experiences with AMD) with a Gigabyte Z790 mobo plus an Antec C5 ARGB Mid Tower. I was going to get a TR-Phantom Spirit 120 SE cooler but I'm having doubts that it will cool enough as apparently, the 14900K does run hot. I've never considered liquid cooling but I think I have to look at it now. I did a little research and for my budget, this one seems to fit the bill ... Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro A-RGB 360 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler. Before I commit to buying I thought I would ask for any advice from those in the know. Will this setup be enough to steer me away from a house-consuming fiery conflagration? (although I do expect the lights to dim when I turn it on).

I've no intention to overclock btw.

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CMDR Lefty Jackson

CMDR Lefty Jackson
Have you ever built a pc before? I've built more than one, and maintained computers when I was in the military. I'm no expert, but know enough to know I need to do some real research when putting together a system.

Personally, I don't like the idea of introducing liquid to an electrical environment. A pc is designed to operate with air cooling. You should be able to build an air system that will work just fine.

Yes, many people use liquid cooling, but I also think many can do without it, but they get it because it looks cool. But does it cool better than a properly set-up air system with fans? Maybe. Do your research on liquid cooling, the good and bad.

A processor that runs hot needs a case with fans set up properly for sure. Which fans are intake and which are exhaust, and fan size. It also doesn't need to be in a room that is not well-cooled/ventilated.

You also need to consider cooling that video card. It adds heat as well. What video card are you considering? That must be factored into the mix.

I would suggest you watch some videos on building a pc by one of the popular video channels, LinusTechTips, JayzTwoCents etc. Watch several videos. They likely won't be building a rig same as yours, but it will be similar usually. They have to deal with the same issues as you; heat is bad.

It all starts with the case. The case is your foundation. Don't cut corners with the case. Get it right. A good case will run you well over $150/130 Euros. RGB lights might look cool, but they don't cool anything, they just eat up your money with eye candy.

You are going to spend a lot of money so look for the best-qualified people for help.

This is a gaming site, not a pc building site. Go to the experts!

Ohh, and for the love of all that is digital, keep your rig clean! A dirty rig is just as bad as poor cooling.

Good luck!

Oh, JayzTwoCents has a recent video on the 14900KS, you might want to watch it! Just posted yesterday on the YT.
 
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DeckerSolo

DeckerSolo
Cymoril said:
Finally at a stage that I can build a new machine (purely for gaming). I decided to go for an i9-14900k (Had some very bad experiences with AMD) with a Gigabyte Z790 mobo plus an Antec C5 ARGB Mid Tower. I was going to get a TR-Phantom Spirit 120 SE cooler but I'm having doubts that it will cool enough as apparently, the 14900K does run hot. I've never considered liquid cooling but I think I have to look at it now. I did a little research and for my budget, this one seems to fit the bill ... Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro A-RGB 360 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler. Before I commit to buying I thought I would ask for any advice from those in the know. Will this setup be enough to steer me away from a house-consuming fiery conflagration? (although I do expect the lights to dim when I turn it on).

I've no intention to overclock btw.

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Click to expand...
Liquid AIO (All In One) Cooler is best, suggest a 360mm version (3x 120mm Fans), used them for years never had a problem.
 

Cymoril

Cymoril
CMDR Lefty Jackson said:
Have you ever built a pc before? I've built more than one, and maintained computers when I was in the military. I'm no expert, but know enough to know I need to do some real research when putting together a system.

Personally, I don't like the idea of introducing liquid to an electrical environment. A pc is designed to operate with air cooling. You should be able to build an air system that will work just fine.

Yes, many people use liquid cooling, but I also think many can do without it, but they get it because it looks cool. But does it cool better than a properly set-up air system with fans? Maybe. Do your research on liquid cooling, the good and bad.

A processor that runs hot needs a case with fans set up properly for sure. Which fans are intake and which are exhaust, and fan size. It also doesn't need to be in a room that is not well-cooled/ventilated.

You also need to consider cooling that video card. It adds heat as well. What video card are you considering? That must be factored into the mix.

I would suggest you watch some videos on building a pc by one of the popular video channels, LinusTechTips, JayzTwoCents etc. Watch several videos. They likely won't be building a rig same as yours, but it will be similar usually. They have to deal with the same issues as you; heat is bad.

It all starts with the case. The case is your foundation. Don't cut corners with the case. Get it right. A good case will run you well over $150/130 Euros. RGB lights might look cool, but they don't cool anything, they just eat up your money with eye candy.

You are going to spend a lot of money so look for the best-qualified people for help.

This is a gaming site, not a pc building site. Go to the experts!

Ohh, and for the love of all that is digital, keep your rig clean! A dirty rig is just as bad as poor cooling.

Good luck!

Oh, JayzTwoCents has a recent video on the 14900KS, you might want to watch it! Just posted yesterday on the YT.
Click to expand...
I used to build render farms for the film company I worked for so I've built a few PCs and yes, I had the same misgivings about liquid in an electrical environment but time marches on and how I built those renderfarms 5 years ago maybe relevant but not optimal in this day and age. I went with an Antec case because I've always found them to be well designed for air flow. The C5 has so many fans, I would be surprised if it doesn't hover. I'll be using my old 3060 for a couple of months until I can afford the Gigabyte 5060 so heat from the GPU shouldn't be a current issue as it runs at about 60 degrees under full load.

I posted here because I've read some excellent advice from other ED players on these forums and the new PC will be primarily used for ED.... and I am looking on other forums. Just trying to cover all bases.
 

Morbad

Morbad
The 14900K is one of the most power hungry processors for any mainstream platform. Even the best air coolers have trouble with it under heavy loads. Custom loop would be my go to solution for any i7 or i9 LGA-1700 chips, but failing that the largest AIO one can conveniently mount shouldl suffice.

The Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro is a bit on the pricey side for a CLC, but it has good fans, a capable pump, and seems to perform quite well. If you're not going to build your own loop, go for it.

Note that radiator placement is important. The most common position depicted for an AIO's radiator in a system with an air cooled GPU is also one of the least optimal. Mounting the radiator as a top exhaust will have it ingest warm air from the rest of the system, especially from the GPU. It's generally a better idea to use the radiator as an intake, preferably at the front of the case.

Also, the RTX 5060 is not an especially good GPU. The 16GiB Ti variant is alright, if priced right, but there are no 8GiB GPUs that are worth more than $200 at this point and even that is a stretch. In any case, something faster would be a much better match for the CPU.
 

Cymoril

Cymoril
Morbad said:
The 14900K is one of the most power hungry processors for any mainstream platform. Even the best air coolers have trouble with it under heavy loads. Custom loop would be my go to solution for any i7 or i9 LGA-1700 chips, but failing that the largest AIO one can conveniently mount shouldl suffice.

The Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro is a bit on the pricey side for a CLC, but it has good fans, a capable pump, and seems to perform quite well. If you're not going to build your own loop, go for it.

Note that radiator placement is important. The most common position depicted for an AIO's radiator in a system with an air cooled GPU is also one of the least optimal. Mounting the radiator as a top exhaust will have it ingest warm air from the rest of the system, especially from the GPU. It's generally a better idea to use the radiator as an intake, preferably at the front of the case.

Also, the RTX 5060 is not an especially good GPU. The 16GiB Ti variant is alright, if priced right, but there are no 8GiB GPUs that are worth more than $200 at this point and even that is a stretch. In any case, something faster would be a much better match for the CPU.
Click to expand...

The radiator placement is one of my main concerns, I've attached an image of the case I have and yes, the AIO will ingest warm air from the rest of the system. The obvious radiator location is on the top and the rest of the case fans are intakes. I'm not totally sold on the 14900k and I'm not due to purchase it for a couple of weeks. Next purchase is the mobo and I plan to stick with a 1700 slot as they seem to have some 'future' use. When I was adding to the shopping list, I didn't really research the GPU as it would be a couple of months before I can afford one so your comment about the 5060 not being especially good is very relevant. Perhaps I should just stick with a 4 series and research those?
713BsNnbEWL._AC_SL1500_.jpg
 

Morbad

Morbad
Cymoril said:
The radiator placement is one of my main concerns, I've attached an image of the case I have and yes, the AIO will ingest warm air from the rest of the system. The obvious radiator location is on the top and the rest of the case fans are intakes.
Click to expand...

In that Antec C5, the optimal location would probably be in the vertical position, as an exhaust (unlike most cases with front fan/rad emplacements, the back panel here does not have filters). Some GPU air will still be ingested this way, but not as much. However, depending on the precise CPU and GPU used, leaving the CPU rad up top might be fine.

Cymoril said:
I'm not totally sold on the 14900k and I'm not due to purchase it for a couple of weeks. Next purchase is the mobo and I plan to stick with a 1700 slot as they seem to have some 'future' use.
Click to expand...

What's the primary use case for this system? For gaming the 14700K(F) is quite close to the 14900K and probably overkill when paired with any GPU that goes for less than 1k USD/EUR/GBP, unless one is chasing low detail frame rates.

LGA-1700 is likely going to see a limited release of Bartlett Lake P-core only CPUs as it's last hurrah. Even LGA-1851 is only getting one more architecture after the current Arrow Lake stuff.

Depending on exactly how long you plan on holding off finishing the system, it might be worth waiting on Bartlett Lake for a gaming build, especially if one isn't planning on replacing the system for a long while.

Cymoril said:
When I was adding to the shopping list, I didn't really research the GPU as it would be a couple of months before I can afford one so your comment about the 5060 not being especially good is very relevant. Perhaps I should just stick with a 4 series and research those?
Click to expand...

The issue with the 5060 isn't that it's a 5000 series, it's that NVIDIA's entire mainstream line-up is under equipped and overpriced. About the only NVIDIA GPU that doesn't feel like a total rip off a the moment is the RTX 5070. Everything above it gets extremely expensive extremely fast and everything below it is either slow or has too little VRAM to handle modern titles.
 

CMDR Byr Goefin

C
Cymoril said:
Finally at a stage that I can build a new machine (purely for gaming). I decided to go for an i9-14900k (Had some very bad experiences with AMD) with a Gigabyte Z790 mobo plus an Antec C5 ARGB Mid Tower. I was going to get a TR-Phantom Spirit 120 SE cooler but I'm having doubts that it will cool enough as apparently, the 14900K does run hot. I've never considered liquid cooling but I think I have to look at it now. I did a little research and for my budget, this one seems to fit the bill ... Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro A-RGB 360 77 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler. Before I commit to buying I thought I would ask for any advice from those in the know. Will this setup be enough to steer me away from a house-consuming fiery conflagration? (although I do expect the lights to dim when I turn it on).

I've no intention to overclock btw.

​

​

Click to expand...

It's a little overkill if you don't overclock, but set the fan speeds right and it will be very quiet. Well worth it for that.​


Its a sealed unit and probably will burn out the pump before it starts leaking. I handed down a rtx2080 to my son that I had for years with an integrated cooling system. 7 years and it finally started leaking from one of the hoses that got brittle over the years.

I've been building systems since the 80s, and using liquid since late 90s, I have had zero leaks in that time. And anyway, the liquid is non-conductive, generally, and is unlikely to short anything out.

If you are worried, get a case with the power supply at the top, so if it does leak it does not leak into the power supply.
 

CMDR Byr Goefin

C
Morbad said:
Note that radiator placement is important. The most common position depicted for an AIO's radiator in a system with an air cooled GPU is also one of the least optimal. Mounting the radiator as a top exhaust will have it ingest warm air from the rest of the system, especially from the GPU. It's generally a better idea to use the radiator as an intake, preferably at the front of the case.

Also, the RTX 5060 is not an especially good GPU. The 16GiB Ti variant is alright, if priced right, but there are no 8GiB GPUs that are worth more than $200 at this point and even that is a stretch. In any case, something faster would be a much better match for the CPU.
Click to expand...


Pulling in air won't be that bad, for one the cards exhaust the air, not intake. So radiator on top, fans in the front to provide positive pressure will be fine.

As for the 5060... I mentioned I had the RTX2080, which ran Elite at 4K and a decent 60 frame rate. The 5060 is about the same, but the lower VRAM is going to be a restraint. The 5070 or the 5060TI 16GB would be better. With high quality textures, Elite uses 10 to 12GB of that VRAM.


The other option is the 7900 XT 16GB, which would be slightly faster than the 5070 TI and usually $100 less in the US.
 

Cymoril

Cymoril
Morbad said:
In that Antec C5, the optimal location would probably be in the vertical position, as an exhaust (unlike most cases with front fan/rad emplacements, the back panel here does not have filters). Some GPU air will still be ingested this way, but not as much. However, depending on the precise CPU and GPU used, leaving the CPU rad up top might be fine.

What's the primary use case for this system? For gaming the 14700K(F) is quite close to the 14900K and probably overkill when paired with any GPU that goes for less than 1k USD/EUR/GBP, unless one is chasing low detail frame rates.

The issue with the 5060 isn't that it's a 5000 series, it's that NVIDIA's entire mainstream line-up is under equipped and overpriced. About the only NVIDIA GPU that doesn't feel like a total rip off a the moment is the RTX 5070. Everything above it gets extremely expensive extremely fast and everything below it is either slow or has too little VRAM to handle modern titles.
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These comments certainly made me think. The primary use for this system will be gaming now that I've retired from film work. ED, GW2 and Black Desert (and the odd rpg e.g Starfield). ED and Black Desert really work the GPU if high settings are selected and GW2 hardly uses the GPU at all but does take a bit of CPU. In light of what you said, I think the 14700KF would make a better option, not least because it's considerably cheaper and I can add what I save to getting a 5070. Not sure I can stretch to a ti but will see how I go. Very valuable info... thank you.

CMDR Byr Goefin said:

It's a little overkill if you don't overclock, but set the fan speeds right and it will be very quiet. Well worth it for that.​


Its a sealed unit and probably will burn out the pump before it starts leaking. I handed down a rtx2080 to my son that I had for years with an integrated cooling system. 7 years and it finally started leaking from one of the hoses that got brittle over the years.

I've been building systems since the 80s, and using liquid since late 90s, I have had zero leaks in that time. And anyway, the liquid is non-conductive, generally, and is unlikely to short anything out.

If you are worried, get a case with the power supply at the top, so if it does leak it does not leak into the power supply.
Click to expand...
Having no experience whatsoever with liquid cooling, that does calm a couple of concerns. The PSU in this Antec case is at the top behind the mobo mounting plate so shouldn't be an issue. As the 14700KFs also run hot I need to do some research as to whether I would be better off with 420 version of this cooler. Thanks for the reply:)
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Don’t know the specifics of your bad AMD experiences but I was always Intel and was looking at a 14700KF a year back. Anyway, like you I had heat concerns and the more I read about these power hungry Intel beasts the more worried I got. You can read my own thread (keeping in mind it’s over a year old now) but I started reading about the AMD 7800x3d and how its smart design choices and large amounts of onboard L3 cache (which benefit gaming performance significantly) meant this dramatically cooler and less power hungry CPU actually performed better than the raw number crunching power of the Intel chip. I haven’t looked back, it’s been fantastic. Anyway, here’s my thread (which had lots of good input from these fine folks). I would personally suggest maybe giving AMD (and the 7800x3d's current equivalent) a second look?

Building a new PC for Elite: Dangerous Odyssey (hardware discussion)

Edit: purchased build (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/building-a-new-pc-for-elite-dangerous-odyssey-hardware-discussion.620979/page-10#post-10346775) — I've had my current i5 / GTX 1080 based PC for 8 years now. I got it from PCSpecialist, really liked their service and have been...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
 

Morbad

Morbad
CMDR Byr Goefin said:
Pulling in air won't be that bad, for one the cards exhaust the air, not intake. So radiator on top, fans in the front to provide positive pressure will be fine.
Click to expand...

Using a the AIO radiator at the top as an intake would work, especially since the C5 seems to have a top intake filter. However, in this scenario I'd probably make the front side fans exhaust, or leave that section empty, as that area is not filtered, and six intake fans is plenty.

CMDR Byr Goefin said:
The other option is the 7900 XT 16GB, which would be slightly faster than the 5070 TI and usually $100 less in the US.
Click to expand...

I do generally feel that AMD is a better option in the sort of price ranges we seem to be looking at, but the OP seems to have an aversion to AMD. Depending on what's available and at what prices, the 9070 XT is often my upper-mainstream recommendation at the moment, but the RTX 5070 tends to be in a pretty good position as well, despite the dubious longevity of 12GiB of VRAM.

The 5070 Ti tends to be priced dramatically higher than the 5070. It's a faster card to be sure, but it's value is questionable.
 

CMDR Byr Goefin

C
Morbad said:
Using a the AIO radiator at the top as an intake would work, especially since the C5 seems to have a top intake filter. However, in this scenario I'd probably make the front side fans exhaust, or leave that section empty, as that area is not filtered, and six intake fans is plenty.



I do generally feel that AMD is a better option in the sort of price ranges we seem to be looking at, but the OP seems to have an aversion to AMD. Depending on what's available and at what prices, the 9070 XT is often my upper-mainstream recommendation at the moment, but the RTX 5070 tends to be in a pretty good position as well, despite the dubious longevity of 12GiB of VRAM.

The 5070 Ti tends to be priced dramatically higher than the 5070. It's a faster card to be sure, but it's value is questionable.
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I mean I get it... I have been using Nvidia since the TNT2.
 

Cymoril

Cymoril
I do want a machine that will last me a while so I'm thinking you are all correct on the Ti option. It's a bit more than I can afford but a couple of extra months with the 3060 12gb I currently have won't hurt whilst I save up. I'm sure AMD are much better these days but after all the trouble I've had with them in the past with renderfarms, I find it hard to give them another go.
 
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Neilski

Neilski
Cymoril said:
The primary use for this system will be gaming now that I've retired from film work. ED, GW2 and Black Desert (and the odd rpg e.g Starfield). ED and Black Desert really work the GPU if high settings are selected and GW2 hardly uses the GPU at all but does take a bit of CPU. In light of what you said, I think the 14700KF would make a better option, not least because it's considerably cheaper and I can add what I save to getting a 5070. Not sure I can stretch to a ti but will see how I go. Very valuable info... thank you.
Click to expand...
I agree with many of the other comments.
Firstly, I'd strongly consider the 7800X3D or 9800X3D (lower power consumption than Intel, excellent performance especially for gaming). If you do steer clear of AMD CPUs then yes definitely drop down from the top of the Intel stack and put the money towards the GPU - I would agree with Morbad that the 5070 is the best of a fairly dubious bunch right now in the Nvidia stable.
You say that GW2 doesn't stress the GPU but I don't think you've mentioned if you will run in 1080p or something higher (the higher you go, obvs the more relative load transfers to the GPU). These days, since GPUs went insane in terms of cost, most "balanced gaming systems" put quite a bit more money into the GPU than the CPU.

Oh, and personally I wouldn't touch liquid-cooling with a bargepole. I keep my systems for years and so the risk just isn't worth it for the small performance boost or quieter running (think aging pipework, connectors, whatever).
If you were a person who lived on the bleeding edge, it could make sense to liquid cool your machine, but you've already commented that you'll be hanging onto it for a while (and a 5070 isn't even close to bleeding edge), so to me that clearly says that a few tens of percent of performance are of little concern to you. (People to whom that's important invariably feel the need to upgrade every year or two :))
 

Cymoril

Cymoril
CMDR Byr Goefin said:
With the 5060TI, you are looking at a 25% uplift on the video performance. I suspect you could keep saving money for a year and be happy. The 5070 is a 100% uplift in performance.

Comparative benchmarking:


Current
16828(-48.8%)		5060ti
22761(-30.7%)		5070TI
32848
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Thank you for running that benchmark. You had already convinced me to go the 5070ti route and I decided to go for the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Ti EAGLE OC SFF 16G Graphics Card. Will take me a little while to save up for it but that benchmark is pretty convincing.
Neilski said:
I agree with many of the other comments.
Firstly, I'd strongly consider the 7800X3D or 9800X3D (lower power consumption than Intel, excellent performance especially for gaming). If you do steer clear of AMD CPUs then yes definitely drop down from the top of the Intel stack and put the money towards the GPU - I would agree with Morbad that the 5070 is the best of a fairly dubious bunch right now in the Nvidia stable.
You say that GW2 doesn't stress the GPU but I don't think you've mentioned if you will run in 1080p or something higher (the higher you go, obvs the more relative load transfers to the GPU). These days, since GPUs went insane in terms of cost, most "balanced gaming systems" put quite a bit more money into the GPU than the CPU.

Oh, and personally I wouldn't touch liquid-cooling with a bargepole. I keep my systems for years and so the risk just isn't worth it for the small performance boost or quieter running (think aging pipework, connectors, whatever).
If you were a person who lived on the bleeding edge, it could make sense to liquid cool your machine, but you've already commented that you'll be hanging onto it for a while (and a 5070 isn't even close to bleeding edge), so to me that clearly says that a few tens of percent of performance are of little concern to you. (People to whom that's important invariably feel the need to upgrade every year or two :))
Click to expand...
I have a 3k screen so I run everything in that. With everything turned up to max, GW2 barely phases the GPU and it generally runs about 42 degrees. Black Desert and ED (not all settings maxed ) runs at 60 degrees maxed so well within tolerance. I would like a bit more 'Ultra'
with those games and I think I'll have another run at Cyberpunk and Witcher 3 at some point so having a few more options to improve performance is certainly the way I want to go.


TBH, I've always gone for air cooling options and initially thought of getting a Phantom or Noctua. I did look for players experiences online and whereas many say it will be fine with an air cool option, the overwhelming majority favour the AIO route for that particular CPU. Air Coolers generally last for a long time and I was concerned how long the AIO would last. The general trend seems to be about 5 years and I generally upgrade every 3-4 years. Never had an AIO before so will be an interesting experience:)
 
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