air cooled vs liquid cooled PC

davesodaveso Posts: 7,014

Unfortunaely the system I was going to buy has sold out, but there is naother that I would buy other than the fact it is air-cooled. It comes with a 4080 GPU and intel i7-13700KF CPU ..

  • Cooling System : 150W 120mm Air Cooling + 1 x Rear + 3 x Front + 2 x Top with ARGB Fan

    Do you think this will stay cool during rendering or would liquid be a lot better. 

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Comments

  • AgitatedRiotAgitatedRiot Posts: 4,437

    I got Liquid cooling, which works wonders, and I also have air cooling, with six fans 120mm. I don't have liquid for my RTX 3090, which is Louder than the case fans.

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,755

     

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014

    FSMCDesigns said:

     

    thanks. Kind of a toss up from this one, but I know a whole lot more for sure.  

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,755

    the 4080 runs hot, so whatever you choose keep that in mind. Where are you getting your new PC from?

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,588

    I don't think the 150W of cooling will be enough, even if Studio does not use the CPU itensively.

    In a case with a very similar fan arrangement I found I had to replace the supplied 120W Artic Freezer with a 210W Noctua.

    ...but It is a trivial upgrade and once it's done it not far off from water cooling performance with none of the hassle or unreliability.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,057

    ...as I mentioned in my comments to the video, etaying with aircooling as I'll be running a Ryzen 7 5700X (65 W) with an Arctic Freezer 34D cooler (twin heat sink with fans)  an EVGA RTX 3060 (12 GB) which has a TDP of 170 W for rendering and my old Titan-X (blower) to run the displays. 

    As the case itself has 7 fans (4 filtered intake and 3 exhaust) it will have enough airflow  Moving to an AIO CPU cooler radiator would take away the two exhaust fans on the top of the case just for the CPU meaning that I would only have one fan to exhaust the heat created by other components (including the axial fan 3060) from the case.

    The only water cooling I would trust is a custom closed loop system but those would likely require a new case, and usually are only available with custom prebuilds which is pretty much out of my budget.

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014
    edited August 2023

    FSMCDesigns said:

    the 4080 runs hot, so whatever you choose keep that in mind. Where are you getting your new PC from?

     its a Lenovo. Intel 13700KF, RTX 4080 16gig vram mfg unknown, 32gig DDR5 5600ghz, 1TB SSD (which i would rather have 2 at least), AX Motherboard, The price to me is real good and maybe offsets the weakness with the air cooling, no HDD, and only 1TB SSD. Another factor is the MB is listed as nly 2TB HDD compatible which seems not right, as well as the SSD list as 2 mqx. Also ram max at 64gig. The price - $2032.99 with discounting. I think its pretty hard to get a 4080 system for that, as long as it doesn't suffer a meltdown.. I looked up RTX 4080 pricing and $1200 is pretty normal, so an entire system speced pretty well at 2032 isn;t too bad. what i dont like about a lot of the prebuilts is that they do not tell you who makes the parts. Like the cooler, but being what it is, I wouldn;t expect much, as long as the CPU doesn;t fry. 

    What you think?

    Post edited by daveso on
  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014

    and this will probably the end of my DAZ purchases for quite some time. 

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,755

    That is a decent deal for a 4080. I ordered a i7 13700K, 32 DDR, an Asus 4070ti, 1 TB M2 and a 2TB HDD for $1900 before tax to replace my 8 yr old 6700K, 2080ti rig. can't wait to try out those CUDA cores, LOL

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014

    FSMCDesigns said:

    That is a decent deal for a 4080. I ordered a i7 13700K, 32 DDR, an Asus 4070ti, 1 TB M2 and a 2TB HDD for $1900 before tax to replace my 8 yr old 6700K, 2080ti rig. can't wait to try out those CUDA cores, LOL

    thats pretty much what I have been looking a. You got a great price there for sure.  I still might try somewhere else, and perhaps save a couple hundred more.I've had numerous systems in my cart but then wait, and when I decide they're sold out.  It is shocking the 3080 systems are still this high or more. Most 4080s are pushing 3 grand. this system scares me a bit though with the shortcomings that could cost me a lot in the future. they have another system that is $ 300 more with the i9 13900 cpu, 4080, and liquid cooling. 300 more is over my price point, but I could skip food for a couple months. most difficult decision. I think overall I really dont need suck a system, either one, but when I see nearly same prices for 4070Ti its hard to resist. Even a 4060Ti would be more than enough for what I do. You wouldn;t believe the amount of coin tossing and second guessing I'm going through. 

    My current rig has a 2070 Super, 32gig DDR4, and an AMD Ryzen 7 3800X. it still does its job but obviously getting a bit slow. I bought it in 2019 so its not that old but its always had strange problems like hard drive disappearing, bad cables I've found, Windows going wonky, not booting up, etc. I wait everyday for it to just croak and its over. It would need pretty much everything but the case to be replaced, so I might as well get new. 

     

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,755

    My current system is still working great also, but looking at it's lifespan, i am expecting things to start having issues, especially the HDs (no SSDs) and the MOBO is PCIE 3.0, which means if I just upgraded and got any rtx 4000 series card, it won't take full advantage of it since they are PCIE 4.0 (twice as fast) cards.

    I wanted the 4080, but cost, size and cooling nixed that idea. The big difference between the 4070 and the 4070 ti is CUDA cores, so I choose that.

    I decided against the i9 because it isn't much faster than the i7 for the price. I wish I could afford a better mobo, but it has enough features for me and I am on a budget. I thought about going Ryzen since I found a good deal on a system with the 7900X in it

    NOT looking forward to Win 11 though.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,057

    ...coming from W7 Pro I have the same trepidation about W11. Probably going to take hours (days?) to scour out all the feature "fluff" I don't want or need after I get it installed.  Then I have to make sure updates don't interfere with my work (last thing I need is an auto reboot occur while in the middle of what I am doing).  I'm betting tt probably won't take much time for me to start longing for the simplicity and elegance of 7.

    As to PCIe slots, I've been running my Titan-X (PCIe 3.0) on a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and it renders fine.  Yeah, takes a slight bit longer to load a scene, but once that's done the rendering itself is all on the GPU.

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014

    FSMCDesigns said:

    My current system is still working great also, but looking at it's lifespan, i am expecting things to start having issues, especially the HDs (no SSDs) and the MOBO is PCIE 3.0, which means if I just upgraded and got any rtx 4000 series card, it won't take full advantage of it since they are PCIE 4.0 (twice as fast) cards.

    I wanted the 4080, but cost, size and cooling nixed that idea. The big difference between the 4070 and the 4070 ti is CUDA cores, so I choose that.

    I decided against the i9 because it isn't much faster than the i7 for the price. I wish I could afford a better mobo, but it has enough features for me and I am on a budget. I thought about going Ryzen since I found a good deal on a system with the 7900X in it

    NOT looking forward to Win 11 though.

    i switched over to W11 about 6-7 months ago. I honestly see no difference, other than a few things looking different. The start/shortcut page is a lot different, function the same. Click.  It was free, an upgrade. I guess its possible to make it look like Win 10 but I dont see why you would. It doesn;t take long to get used to it. I'm no longer an under the hood guy, so don;t change up anything really.  

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014

    anyway, i grabbed that 4080 system for that pretty low price. Will deal with the reast if needed. I think I'll spring for an HDD though on next payday, if i have any money left after bills. Othwise I have an external that I'll hook up/ 

  • outrider42outrider42 Posts: 3,679

    Many 4080s have overly engineered coolers on them. Many of them have coolers that are basically 4090 coolers. Rumor has it they were intended to use more power than the final release, but who knows. Either way most 4080s will run extremely cool (for air) because of this.

    I've got a 3090 FE and a 3060 EVGA Black on air and don't have issues. That 350W plus 160W. Before that I ran two 1080tis which were 250W each. My 3090 never goes over 65C. Its fairly quiet, too. The noise comes from the 3060, which has a cheap cooler. Again, your 4080 doesn't have a cheap cooler. It may not be water quiet, but sometimes those water pumps are pretty loud!

    Additionally, the 4000 series sips power with Iray. The 4090 uses just 283W even though it is rated 450W. I would assume the 4080 uses much less than that.

    I wouldn't be concerned unless you have a junk case that has no airflow. More fans don't mean better. If the case has a glass cover on the front where the intakes are, that's very suspect. I like cases with mesh on the front, allowing for the most airflow. 

    It would be a good idea to research the specific case and 4080 model used. Gamersnexus doesn't test Iray, but they test thermals and noise under stressful loads (more stressful than Iray). They even have testing equipment to show the airflow pattern.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,057

    ...moving from W7 to W11 will be a major difference.  I prefer the more "clean and simple" UI of 7.

  • PitmaticPitmatic Posts: 899

    I have air colling and have a wacking great big cooler master block of metal and fan thing on the cpu I will let you into a secret its complete overkill cpu utilization never gets over 15% (you still see short duration spikes such as when a scene is being prepared for the GPU) even when rendering on my system and thats running daz studio, photoshop, lightroom, chrome with a gazillion tabs open, word, excell, literaly everything going at once.

    The 3060 i have can be heard spining faster when rendering but frankly a causual observer would not know it was and temps never get over 68c.

    Now if i was gaming I suspect things would get hotter or if i was CPU rendering which i dont. 

     

  • oddboboddbob Posts: 396

    daveso said:

    anyway, i grabbed that 4080 system for that pretty low price. Will deal with the reast if needed. I think I'll spring for an HDD though on next payday, if i have any money left after bills. Othwise I have an external that I'll hook up/ 

    I don't think you'll have anything to deal with. Just had a look at the current Lenovo range and they look pretty solid. There's plenty of airflow in and out of the case and if your primary use is DS then you're not going to be hitting the parts as hard as some other use cases.

    I've got a 13700k and you get very brief power spikes up to about 200w when loading stuff but just having a chunk of metal strapped to the cpu will mitigate that. During a GPU render the CPU only pulls about 50w. Gaming it's about 100-125w. Full core full utilisation is 250w so stay away from CPU rendering, it''ll only get you 1.6 itterations with the scene in the benchmark thread anyway, I tried.

    Wouldn't get too hung up over brand names either, when you start to dig there are less actual manufacturers than you might think and an awful lot of the name brands either build oem stuff as well or have their stuff built by the same factories that build oem stuff.

  • oddboboddbob Posts: 396
    edited August 2023

    kyoto kid said:

     Moving to an AIO CPU cooler radiator would take away the two exhaust fans on the top of the case just for the CPU meaning that I would only have one fan to exhaust the heat created by other components (including the axial fan 3060) from the case.

    The only water cooling I would trust is a custom closed loop system but those would likely require a new case, and usually are only available with custom prebuilds which is pretty much out of my budget.

    The fans are still intake/exhaust fans whether there's a radiator next to them or not, fan design makes a difference but the manufacturer will account for that. I've got a pc with conventional cooling, two intake, two exhaust and air cooled parts and one with a custom loop using five exhaust fans blowing through rads no intake fans and watercooled parts. Both do just fine for temps but the watercooled one is quieter.

    Edited to add - an AIO is much safer then a custom loop when it comes to the chance of leaks, and pumps can go bad with either.

    Post edited by oddbob on
  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,588

    When it comes to GPU temps in an air-cooled system it will be those front fans doing most of the work.

    My case has one of those cover plates over the PCIe card screws that stick out the back of the case.
    By removing that plate it made a very convenient opening, allowing a direct path for the hot air from the GPU. Shaved of 2 degrees! cool

  • kyoto kid said:

    ...coming from W7 Pro I have the same trepidation about W11. Probably going to take hours (days?) to scour out all the feature "fluff" I don't want or need after I get it installed.

     I recently built a new desktop system and sadly had to finally move from Win7 to Win11. Took me a couple of days to comb through all the settings with a fine tooth comb and get rid of the crap I didn't want.

    Some things took me by surprise. For example, by default your system will be enrolled in a bit-torrent-like peer-to-peer setup so other random people can grab Windows update files from your computer. Sure, saves MS some bandwidth, but not so good if you're still on a metered data plan with your ISP. This "feature" can be turned off but you really have to be thorough going through Win11's settings to discover it. And of course there's the whole business of getting rid of all the ads and minimizing telemetry.

    I also replaced my laptop recently and tweaking Win11 went much faster since I knew what to look for, but the first time you switch it will take some time. There are still a few things that annoy me by taking extra clicks to accomplish the same thing.

    Back to the topic at hand, I stayed with air cooling rather than an AIO cooler. A nice big, but not too big, Noctua NH-U12A. I've always had good results with Noctua.

  • edited August 2023

    I'm running a 12-core Ryzen and a pair of 1080tis now, no water, no problem. I will soon install my new 4080. My 850W PS is more than enough, a 750 would be adequate. I monitor the temps using Argus. The 4080 will run cooler and quieter, and use less power, than the 1080s. I build these, I recommend it.

    I never put water and electricity in the same place if I can help it. They don't always get along.

    As for Windows, it's on a bad road, as are many of the programs we rely on. Ubuntu may eventually be a wise choice.

    I say no to rentware.

    Post edited by laststand@runbox.com on
  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,057
    edited August 2023

    ColinFrench said:

    kyoto kid said:

    ...coming from W7 Pro I have the same trepidation about W11. Probably going to take hours (days?) to scour out all the feature "fluff" I don't want or need after I get it installed.

     I recently built a new desktop system and sadly had to finally move from Win7 to Win11. Took me a couple of days to comb through all the settings with a fine tooth comb and get rid of the crap I didn't want.

    Some things took me by surprise. For example, by default your system will be enrolled in a bit-torrent-like peer-to-peer setup so other random people can grab Windows update files from your computer. Sure, saves MS some bandwidth, but not so good if you're still on a metered data plan with your ISP. This "feature" can be turned off but you really have to be thorough going through Win11's settings to discover it. And of course there's the whole business of getting rid of all the ads and minimizing telemetry.

    I also replaced my laptop recently and tweaking Win11 went much faster since I knew what to look for, but the first time you switch it will take some time. There are still a few things that annoy me by taking extra clicks to accomplish the same thing.

    Back to the topic at hand, I stayed with air cooling rather than an AIO cooler. A nice big, but not too big, Noctua NH-U12A. I've always had good results with Noctua.

    ...thanks for the info, particularly about the peer to peer thing. Definitely going to turn that off as my system is a graphics workstation, not a server for the general public. The one good part about 11 Pro is  I can defer feature updates for up to 2 years.  I don't need more "fluff" on my system.

    Adverts and the telemetry are two more things that will end up in the dustbin, as will any "introductory" versions of other MS software. their app store, as well as the  X-Box and other gaming stuff.(I deleted the entire games folder after I installed W7 and again upgraded to the Pro edition).  I even turned off the Aero UI (I like a nice basic no "nonsense", "functional" UI for my desktop instead of some kind of "digital experience").  

    I have a second W7 computer not conected to the net on which I can still run older software like my old version of Office 2K.(which still has the original menu bar instead fo that stupid "ribbon" in later versions of Word and Excel),

    Yeah I can see the argument about "overkill" on CPU cooling but it's a nice backup if a scene does exceed VRAM. I've tended to do rather "epic" sized scenes when I was still working with 3DL and "only" have 12 GB on the 3060 (I've hit 9 - 10GB on my Titan X on a few scenes, even ones that were no where near as complex as some of the 3DL stuff I did, though mesh lights and ray bounces as well as 4k textures to demand a lot of horsepower).  Hence a fast 8 core 16 thread CPU along with a brick of heat sink that has dual fans of its own is still worth it  just in case (I also still dabble in Carrara as it's designed for creating large scale environments and is compatible with Daz content).

    ETA:

    @his x:  

    As for Windows, it's on a bad road...

    ...I hear you on that.  Unfortunately many software developers besides Daz  (even the big ones) shun Linux because there is no one "standardised" version (kind of like the old BASIC programming language back in the 70s and 80s)  It would also mean having to hire additional development personnel (or overworking the ones you have) to support it.  Some people are running Daz in Linux via Wine, but YMMV going that route.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • RL_MediaRL_Media Posts: 339

    O&O shutup and O&O appbuster are goodies that make taming win10/11 a lot easier

    Another thing worth considering on a build for DS is single core speed. A lot of stuff in DS seems to rely on that. When I got my 12 core ryzen beast, I no longer have any dial lag when posing people anymore. I used to get this annoying lag, like I try to move a pose dial, it does nothing for a second or two, then catches up and becomes realtime, whenever there was like more than one or two people in the scene. That was with a 8 core ryzen, that had much weaker single core performance. Now DS will crash altogether before I see any dial lag, and if I remember right, the crash only happened after loading my 51st figure into the scene. All different characters too, not like 51 default G8's lol.

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014

    RL_Media said:

    O&O shutup and O&O appbuster are goodies that make taming win10/11 a lot easier

    Another thing worth considering on a build for DS is single core speed. A lot of stuff in DS seems to rely on that. When I got my 12 core ryzen beast, I no longer have any dial lag when posing people anymore. I used to get this annoying lag, like I try to move a pose dial, it does nothing for a second or two, then catches up and becomes realtime, whenever there was like more than one or two people in the scene. That was with a 8 core ryzen, that had much weaker single core performance. Now DS will crash altogether before I see any dial lag, and if I remember right, the crash only happened after loading my 51st figure into the scene. All different characters too, not like 51 default G8's lol.

    51 wow 

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,014
    edited August 2023

    I truly appreciate all the information here. I feel a lot better now on buying the system with air cooling. Now I just need to wait for arrival. I've noticed that my current system is getting a lot slower. Could be hair, but something. I used to do simple one character portraits in under 5 minutes, usually 2-3, but now its 10-15 minutes. Not always but often. My USC scenes all take close to 30 minutes. Used to be 15 or so. Not at all sure whats up, but the new unit will be a welcome acquisition for sure/ I would assume a 4080 should be a bit faster than a 2070 Super, getting hot or not. 

    Post edited by daveso on
  • AgitatedRiotAgitatedRiot Posts: 4,437

    RL_Media said:

    O&O shutup and O&O appbuster are goodies that make taming win10/11 a lot easier

    I concur.

  • ColinFrenchColinFrench Posts: 647
    edited August 2023

    kyoto kid said:

    I even turned off the Aero UI (I like a nice basic no "nonsense", "functional" UI for my desktop instead of some kind of "digital experience").  

    Yup, in Win7 I turned off Aero as well as the animated effects for stuff like menus sliding open etc. Just show the darn menu so I can continue working! Win11 doesn't seem as bad in that respect although certain features like their silly desktop widgets I ditched immediately. At least it's possible to turn things off, so I'll credit MS for that.

    A couple of links you may find of interest. First, if you're like me you probably don't want to be forced to create an online MS account just to install Windows. MS tries its best keep you from using a local account but I used the instructions on this site. About 1/3 of the way down the page is the section "Out-of-box experience (OOBE) disable internet requirement" which explains how to do it. Note that there are a lot of other sites providing info about using a local account but the tricks they document no longer work with the latest version of Win11. Like I said, MS is trying their darnest to force you to use their cloud services.

    Secondly, this page provides some useful tips on eliminating ads in all the various spots where MS displays them. Some of those you could have discovered yourself as you go through Win11's settings but it's handy to have in one spot. That site has some other good info. They do make a Windows tweaking tool that they sometimes push, but they provide tips that don't depend on it. They also often provide ways to accomplish the same thing via Registry editing, which may come in handy if MS decides to eliminate certain user-accessable settings.

    Sorry to ramble on, hope some of this useful.

     

    Edit: RL_Media -- 51 figures?  surprise Wow.

    Post edited by ColinFrench on
  • RL_MediaRL_Media Posts: 339

    I didn't try to render that many of course, but yeah, I fit that many in empty seen, and was not getting any dial lag trying random pose and movement sliders lol. Surprised the hell out of me, I was thinkin it was gonna be something like 5 before I started lagging

     

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,057
    edited August 2023

    ColinFrench said:

    kyoto kid said:

    I even turned off the Aero UI (I like a nice basic no "nonsense", "functional" UI for my desktop instead of some kind of "digital experience").  

    Yup, in Win7 I turned off Aero as well as the animated effects for stuff like menus sliding open etc. Just show the darn menu so I can continue working! Win11 doesn't seem as bad in that respect although certain features like their silly desktop widgets I ditched immediately. At least it's possible to turn things off, so I'll credit MS for that.

    A couple of links you may find of interest. First, if you're like me you probably don't want to be forced to create an online MS account just to install Windows. MS tries its best keep you from using a local account but I used the instructions on this site. About 1/3 of the way down the page is the section "Out-of-box experience (OOBE) disable internet requirement" which explains how to do it. Note that there are a lot of other sites providing info about using a local account but the tricks they document no longer work with the latest version of Win11. Like I said, MS is trying their darnest to force you to use their cloud services.

    Secondly, this page provides some useful tips on eliminating ads in all the various spots where MS displays them. Some of those you could have discovered yourself as you go through Win11's settings but it's handy to have in one spot. That site has some other good info. They do make a Windows tweaking tool that they sometimes push, but they provide tips that don't depend on it. They also often provide ways to accomplish the same thing via Registry editing, which may come in handy if MS decides to eliminate certain user-accessable settings.

    Sorry to ramble on, hope some of this useful.

     

    Edit: RL_Media -- 51 figures?  surprise Wow.

    ...thank you.  I put both links on the upper window bar to read later as it's late.  With regards to blocking all the adverts, I'm always leery of poking around in the registry as one false move and you can gimp your system. I dumped cable television over two decades ago because I was tired of paying a high fee to be bombarded with 5 minutes of adverts every 8 to 10 minutes.

    I am getting 11 Pro which as I understand I can also bypass having to open MS account by going through a workgroup (unless they plugged that one),  This is why I disliked the move to the "OS as a service" model as feels like subscription software, just without the monthly fee.  

    ETA:

    RL_Media said:

    O&O shutup and O&O appbuster are goodies that make taming win10/11 a lot easier

    Another thing worth considering on a build for DS is single core speed. A lot of stuff in DS seems to rely on that. When I got my 12 core ryzen beast, I no longer have any dial lag when posing people anymore. I used to get this annoying lag, like I try to move a pose dial, it does nothing for a second or two, then catches up and becomes realtime, whenever there was like more than one or two people in the scene. That was with a 8 core ryzen, that had much weaker single core performance. Now DS will crash altogether before I see any dial lag, and if I remember right, the crash only happened after loading my 51st figure into the scene. All different characters too, not like 51 default G8's lol.

    ...was your 8 core Ryzen a 3700X or 5700X?

    I checked the single core performance of the Ryzen 7 5700X (the CPU I am planning to upgrade to) and the Ryzen 9 5900X.  The single core speed is not that much slower than the 5900X. On PassMark's CPU tests the 5700X comes in with a single core speed of 3,384 MOps/Sec while the more expensive 5900X weighs in at 3,470 MOps/Sec for a difference of 0.086.  So not a "smackdown" by any means  For fun I also checked the 5950X and while it blows the 5700X out of the water in most operations (due to having double the core and thread count) its single core performance is the same as the less expensive 5900X, 3,470 MOps/Sec.

    The 3700X's single core performance is 2,663 MOps/Sec. for a difference of 0.807 between it and the 12 core 5900X which is a bit more significant

    Keep in mind these numbers are at the base clock speed of the CPU, not overclocked (since Il nit into gaming, I consider overclocking the equivalent of burning the candle at both ends for no reason)

    Unless the scene drops out of VRAM, I'm rendering in 3DL, or Carrara, when it comes to Iray GPOPU rendering, the minimal difference in performance does not warrant the extra cost.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
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