Time for an update.
I have got the new heatpipes and the NZXT Grid V2+ installed in my case now.
The boring, but perhaps the most pleasant, first - the NZXT Grid V2+. I will put it straight. Simply one of the best products I have bought and used in a long while. After an easy install, I installed the driver and the CAM software. Made my wanted fan curve and voila! Fans are now turned off until I hit 70 degree Celsius on the cpu and this is all on 3pin fans. If I had to put my finger on something it would probably be the CAM software itself. It is a big excessive to download and a entire suite just for setting some fan curves. It also wants me to create a user and upload my setting to the "cloud". I am however using this software as a "guest". So now need to create a user, but still, isn't many versions away before the guest options is gone, I guess.
Over to the heatpipes. I think I must put the setup in detail here. I use the HDPlex cpu mounting kit. This kit gives me the possibility to use 8 heatpipes while the included one from Streacom gives me the possibility of 6 heatpipes. So 8 heatpipes for this setup and 4 on each panel for maximum spread of heat.
I have also used Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut Liquid Metal between the cpu internal heat spreader and the HDPlex cpu mounting kit.
Between the HDPlex cpu mounting kit and the heatpipes I have used Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut thermal paste, since I have read that this is the best so far. I also used this paste from the heatpipes to the panels themselves. In other words, the quality here should not be in question, so I believe we can rule this out.
By saying that, I am also revealing that not everything is on order here, compared to my expectations for this setup.
I will break this down in 3 runs:
Each run was done with AIDA64 stress test, with cpu, fpu, cache and memory enabled.
First run: CPU(stock), Fans(off), cleared CMOS before hand to make sure everything was at stock. Purely passive cooling.
- After 30min: 85 degree Celsius
- After 90min: 88 degree Celsius
This is better than my first attempt where the test would fail and shut itself off after about 30min. I will also add that the cpu kept jumping between 3.2GHz and 2.4GHz after passing 86 degree Celsius.
After the cpu had stabilized on 88 degree Celsius, I logged the temperature after quitting the test:
- After 1min -> 62 degree
- After 2min -> 60 degree
- After 3min -> 59 degree
- After 4min -> 58 degree
- After 5min -> 56 degree
- After 6min -> 56 degree
- After 7min -> 55 degree
- After 8min -> 54 degree
- After 9min -> 54 degree
- After 10min -> 53 degree
- After 11min -> 53 degree
- After 12min -> 52 degree
- After 13min -> 51 degree
- After 14min -> 50 degree
- After 15min -> 50 degree
So it falls fast after one minute. After that we see what I will round off to 1 degree Celsius per minute decrease. Can someone say if this is a expected behavior on a healthy passively cooled system?
Images for reference:
Second run: CPU(3.5Ghz), Fans(off).
I shut this down myself since this would never hold in the long run.
Third run: CPU(3.5Ghz), Fans(on).
- After 30min: 84 degree Celsius
- After 60min: 85 degree Celsius
This shows that the fan really helps out a lot. It kept a stable 3.5GHz all the way.
Images for reference:
Now, over to something I will like to discuss with you all:
These numbers aren't good at all. I will break it down like this: The Ryzen 7 1700 is a 65W tdp cpu. The Streacom kit (6 heatpipes) is rated for 105W tdp. I use 8 heatpipes, so transfer of heat should be better, but still, it will hit 88 degree Celsius while throttling the cpu. I find this strange in every possible way. To further back up that this is not good numbers: Paul, over at
Paul's Hardware tested the same cpu with a NoFan CR-95C Fanless CPU Cooler. He ran the same test, but only for 15min, but his stock configuration only hit 78 degree Celsius.
The NoFan CR-95C Fanless CPU Cooler is probably a good cooler, but I believe that this has less surface area and less metal in total than two panels on the this case.
I will also add another strange observation. 85 degree Celsius with just passive felt very different on the panels than 85 degree Celsius with the fans on. 85 degree Celsius, passive, was like burning hot for the hand. Could not hold it there for long. 85 degree Celsius, active, was comfortably hot. I could hold my hand there for as long I as wanted. In short, they where very different.
Seen from another angle - when I run it at 3.5Ghz, the VCore draws 1.210V. I have read that the 1700X draws 1.2V at 3.5Ghz stock. And that cpu is rated at 95W tdp. I had to terminate that run because the temperature raised so fast, so in other words, we could say that this setup can not handle a 95W tdp cpu.
This is strange as the Streacom kit is rated for 105W. We should have a tiny headroom to spare even for an 95W tdp cpu, but we clearly don't have that.
To further add to this, as I have said before in one of my posts, while testing with the 6700K(92W tdp) that I have, at stock, on one panel gave me surprisingly good numbers, but then again that was only when stress testing it with the build in stress test tool in Intel XTU. So this could be a bit misleading, but still, that was only one panel.
The panels where also really hot during the test. This time around, compared to the first time I tried, the panels are evenly hot from top to bottom. They feel saturated and by this very fact, one can ask if this case is any good at passively cooling a cpu?