Talon

Next gen I think I'm going full custom water for the CPU, but likely not the GPU since it seems those blocks are a lot less reusable like a CPU block. The Artic cooler was definitely a simple setup and no terrible Corsair software, but the lack of pump control/speed may have been the issue. The rad block was impressive, and may have benefitted from beefier fans to push air through it.

After using the Artic 420mm AIO for a month, I have given up on it being better than my previous 280mm Corsair AIO and decided to try out Corsair again and decide on which to send back. I grabbed a Corsair H170i 420mm AIO "Open Box" on Amazon for a significant discount figuring I could send it back if it was truly defective. It arrived this afternoon and it was BRAND NEW. I think someone returned the item after deciding against it. The factory seal had never been broken and all parts inside the box were still factory wrapped and still had the factory thermal material on the cold plate. Unreal deal! I quickly swapped out the coolers, but not before doing some testing pre and post new cooler. The Artic Liquid Freezer for my setup is decidedly worse. Same thermal paste was used. Same ambient temps controlled with AC. Both kits were using their respective LGA 1700 Kit. The Corsair cooler even had it's gamer boy, hello kitty LCD upgrade attachment which can't help temps. The difference is shocking. Artic 420mm AIO - Corsair 420mm AIO -

Haven't tried the paste myself. Can you please report back with your results and laptop you used? Really curious to see if the paste works as well as the pads.

I can tell you without shred of doubt that W/mK doesn't mean jack. Those ratings depend on a lot of factors. It may be a thermal putty, but it does not look like a putty when it heats up. It creates this thin greasy layer that has some crazy thermal transfer properties for laptops. There is a reason why Lenovo went with this over liquid metal, or liquid metal pads like the other brands are now using. I've used a LM laptop and I wasn't impressed by the OEM job. I have used LM in the past on delidded CPUs and the results are great, and I've also used it on bare die laptops and it definitely works but not that much better than this stuff for all the mess and risk. LM is better, but I would bet it's not more than a 5c difference. This is after I opened the laptop and didn't bother redoing the PTM stuff. I sort pushed more towards the middle and left it. The temps are still great. That is with a 105w sustained load in a HP Omen 16" jokebook. Before doing this the laptop could barely sustain 75w without thermal throttling near 100c. 105w would have immediately shut down lol. No traditional thermal paste even comes close to this stuff regardless of how many W/mK they put on the label.

You cut it out to fit die size and lay it on the die like a blanket. It's kinda sticky stuff that sort of melts in your hands if you handle it too long so you need to kinda place it quickly and not fuss around. I have not experienced any pump out effect. My previous experience with LM was that it would get absorbed into the copper heatsink over time and you would need to reapply it eventually. Then there is the risk of spillage, etc. The Honeywell stuff is expensive, but worth it IMO. I bought the 80x80mm pads and you can easily do a laptop CPU/GPU die a few times with that sheet.

I've been using Honeywell PTM 7950 thermal pads in my laptop on the CPU/GPU for a few months now and the stuff is absolutely incredible. Best temps I've ever had for a laptop outside of using liquid metal, and even then it's better IMO because it doesn't seem to dry out/pump out. I was so impressed with the stuff that I decided to use it on my desktop CPU and that was a huge NO GO. The pad seems to be too thick/mounting pressure isn't sufficient. Or it's almost as if the IHS doesn't let the thermal pad melt properly and acts like a huge insulator. When the pads are used on bare die CPU/GPU it melts and transfers heat like no other. I have not used the paste, but opted for the 0.2mm pads instead. https://www.ebuy7.com/buy/jd/10043742472432 I purchased from this website, not this exact seller but this website. Kinda looked shady but the item arrived in about 10 days. Don't even waste your time with anything else. There is no paste that even comes close to the performance this stuff offers. It's on par with LM with none of the risks.

Pushed the 115w 3070 a bit further with a vBIOS flash. Works 100%. All outs, Advanced Optimus and G-Sync all work and the laptop runs nice and cool with the Honeywell 7950 phase change. https://www.3dmark.com/spy/28094550

vBIOS flash to a higher TDP. HP uses a MUX switch so you need to flash a card with similar display outs and a MUX switch. I think most MSI vBIOS should work since they have Thunderbolt DP, a mini DP, HDMI 2.1 and MUX. https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/241044/241044 This 3060 vBIOS is 115-130w for 11th gen CPU. I would probably use this one myself. Of course you need to know the risks of it not working and needing to flash back. Flash in iGPU mode so you still have the Intel GPU to see if you need to flash back. You should also have the option to use an external display out via the HDMI, Thunderbolt usbc cable or Mini-DP cable. Last resort is a usb/clip programmer if you truly soft brick. Edit: Always make a backup of your original vBIOS and email it to yourself or save on a google drive or similar.

I'll try and give it a fair shake and see if I can manage the cables a tad more, but honestly I am likely to return the case and go with something lighter that has room for the 420mm AIO. The AIO, I may have been a bit too harsh on it initially. Seems like the temps are actually pretty decent and what I am seeing is that the 420mm has the ability to sustain the temps over the long haul which is nice.

Just got the Corsair 7000D and Artic Freezer II 420mm setup and I am.. Less than impressed unfortunately. I really expected such a huge AIO with push/pull fans to perform a bit better than what I am seeing here. It seems to match or barely beat out my Corsair 280mm with push/pull artic fans. And this case is ridiculously huge with very little benefit other than being able to fit a 480mm rad. The cable management system on the back of case is just terrible. They seriously wasted so much space on the front of the case, literally open air, and then force you to somehow manage all of your cables and shut the back with wussy click shuts. It's so terrible. I pulled my hair out trying to get the damn cables to fit and not be bulky enough to open the wimpy door. Lian Li ran circles around this case in that department. They actually thought about cable management and gave adequate space to manage your cables, and then provided a sturdy way to slam those bad boys in there. This is just bad. Why the heck do I need all that space in the front of the rig but seriously bare minimum space to run cables? Ugh, still deciding if I'm going to just break this down and return it. If it wasn't my wifes birthday tomorrow I would likely pull and all nighter and do just that, but I want to be useful tomorrow lol. One upshot is that if someone ever decided to break into my home and wanted to steal this thing, they wouldn't be able to. Seriously this thing is huge and heavy AF. I go to the gym 4-5x a week and my god I am dreading trying to carry this thing to my garage down stairs to give it a bi monthly dust blowing.

Very nice! Seems like you got a golden chip for sure. Great SP, good VID balance and the IMC is strong. It's weird that the IMC seems to be improved across the board, like what under the hood changes have they made?

Nice! If the DDR4 side improved as bit too you should have an slightly better IMC.

LOL looks like my hardware closet right now. I am sitting here with a Corsair 7000D and the LF 420mm AIO in my cart on Amazon. Thinking about pulling the trigger and building it. I'm going to need the cooling when Raptor Lake arrives looking the leaks with more E cores and higher clocks. I have a feeling you're going to get an SP98.

Sorry I meant to type 5000. I used to have a Corsair 450d, still have it in the garage actually. Then I looked into it a bit more and found it can’t house a 420mm officially. So I may need to spring for the 7000 airflow. I think the 420mm cooler could really help though so I may go for it.

Thanks. Thinking about picking up the Corsair 6000D and grabbing an Artic 420mm AIO. I think it would be an absolutely huge case though.

Actually the stock RGB 140mm fans at the top are now gone. I have gone to some cheap-o basic black Artic P14s I got on Amazon in a 5 pack. I have them setup in push/pull so it's a tight fit in there lol. I have a lot of air moving through this tiny case. I want to change the Noctua fans to the new Chromax black version, but at $33 a fan I can't justify the cost yet lol. They work and that is what I care about most.

100% agree. They need to do a SKU with binned P cores, no E cores at all, and massive cache. His conclusion is basically how I see the chip. Also looks like you lose some of the performance if using an older motherboard which is interesting.

6Ghz out of Raptor Lake with light boost would be cool to see on regular cooling but I don't think were close to 6Ghz all cores anytime soon, or even 5.8ghz unless something has radically improved with Intel "7". For gaming that cache is going to be a nice improvement.. It's double the cache of a 12900K and will definitely help if you're chasing crazy high fps when looking at the sky or blank scenes during a benchmark that can all fit into the cache. I watched the review of the 5800X3D from various outlets this morning and it definitely looks like a great gaming CPU, but a 5600X, 5700x, 12600K, 12700K, etc all perform very similarly in games. They all cost less, and 2 of them offer far higher performance in everything else for less money. I went back and watched a GN review of the 9900K where he basically shits on the 9900K in the conclusion stating that in a nutshell it's a CPU for those that are neurotic over FPS and yet the gap between Intel and AMD was larger back then. Yet today he's basically falling over himself with praise for the 5800X3D that gets absolutely curb stomped in everything not gaming and value. It's hard to take a channel them or HWU seriously with their obvious bias. 5800X3D looks interesting for sure, I wish it was unlocked, I think I'd likely buy one to tinker with, but just like a 12900K/KS, it's a bad value for just gaming.

https://www.newegg.com/evga-geforce-rtx-3080-12g-p5-4877-kl/p/N82E16814487553?Item=N82E16814487553 Prices are being slashed all over today. It's great to see the bottom dropping out as the free money ends and the hangover is setting in. Can't wait to pick up a 3060 Ti for $200.

It's locked down, and completely boring to me. I don't think you can even tune the voltage which is crazy. It certainly helps in some games and doesn't as much in others, but were looking at 720p and 1080p results. While completely valid for CPU testing, it starts to make a lot less sense when you consider the chip is $449 and has less multicore performance than a $269 12600K. Which by the way can be overclocked to match a 12900K in gaming for the most part and at stock is shown to be only 6% slower than the 5800X3D AT STOCK. This chip is a Frankenstein failed experiment unless it is sold at a far lower price. It's no wonder why AMD is only doing this single chip and no releasing it for 7000 series. I guess where I can see this chip making more sense is for drop in upgrade for existing AM4. But then why not get a 5900X or 5950x since they're getting so cheap?

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d/15.html Not the gains I would have hoped for. Backwards progress on multicore and single core performance. You can pay for this experiment or you can buy a 12600K or 12700K

That is a great looking budget build that likely still performs excellent for 1080p gaming even in 2022. Shame it's not supported by Nvidia anymore. I need to do something similar to this soon as I have so many "spare" parts just sitting in boxes. I am waiting for the GPU firesale that is likely going to happen on eBay or OfferUp soon enough. I will grab a good "slightly mined on" GPU to put together a cheap rig. Scary thing with those cables. Fire hazard for sure. I will have to take a look at mine, but I haven't noticed any damage when I was digging around in there last few days.

AMD has some serious ground to make up with Zen 4.

Run for the night. Unfortunately it's not cool outside so cracking the window isn't going to help. Decided to hold this one back for the leaderboard until I need to use it. 🙂