i9 7900X and/or X299 Motherboard water blocks?

[Guest]

I'm replacing my aged 5960X - Asus RAMPAGE V Extreme with EK monoblock (CPU, VRM, PCH) with an i9 7900X and Asus Prime X299.  I'm struggling to find anyone with water blocks.  Any suggestions for sources (US preferred but willing to get outside US, like EK in UK)?

Cheers, Rob.

[Sartanius 399]

Hey Rob.  I'm on the verge of a new build as well and thought I'd wait to see what Coffee Lake has to offer later this year.  Can you briefly describe the decision to go with Skylake-X right now?  I need all the information I can get.

PM me if you'd prefer so as not to derail your original question about cooling blocks.

Thanks!

[Guest]

I expect very minor/marginal improvements in terms of FPS over my 5960X so my decision points are:

1.  Less heat
2.  Looks to be relatively easy to hit 5Ghz and is very OC friendly
3.  Improved chipset (X299) with slightly improved bandwidth and lower latency
4.  Less expensive than the 6950X and seems to perform single thread faster with OC

I thought Coffee Lake is primarily focused at Laptops and/or lower power devices (i.e. iMacs)?  IF Coffee Lake proves to be a good performance CPU with good OC, I'll relagate 7900X to a render PC and shift to Coffee Lake for my main FS PC.

My concerns with the 7900X is the size of the L3 cache (40% smaller than my 5960X and more threads 10c/20t that could fill it).  Other concern is ASUS's tradition of not providing enough power to their USB ports (especially when overclocking).

BTW, 7900X and Asus X299 are both Pre-Order so don't know how long it'll take before I actually get them, hopefully enough time for water block vendors to get upto speed with the various motherboard flavors.  I've also considered the EVGA "Dark" X299 motherboard but that's a bit of unknown for me and I doubt EVGA have the level of experience ASUS does, especially around OC.

Cheers, Rob.

[Sartanius 399]

13 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I thought Coffee Lake is primarily focused at Laptops and/or lower power devices (i.e. iMacs)?  IF Coffee Lake proves to be a good performance CPU with good OC, I'll relagate 7900X to a render PC and shift to Coffee Lake for my main FS PC.

Good point.  I should have specified the rumored Coffee Lake-X (CFL-X) series expected in early 2018.  The CFL-S/U series will be released earlier and are for mid-range desktops and laptops.  CFL-X are also rumored to use Socket 2066 and X299 chipsets.  

That might just be too far out for me to wait for a new build.  I'll start studying the 7900X now with water cooling like you're planning.  I've read the Skylake-X series are a bit toasty.  I'll follow this thread with interest... thanks.

[OneWhoKnocks53 51]

I know this has probably been beaten to death, but I think it would be wise to see what threadripper has to offer.  We all know that the high core count x299 are going to have minimal benefit to flightsim.  Especially kaby lake x.   Sure, high clock speeds but the pci express lanes are neutered, the memory is cut to two channels, and you need to put it on a hedt Mobo($$$$$).  

33 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

My concerns with the 7900X is the size of the L3 cache).

The L3 has been replaced by much bigger L2, and L3 is now a "victim" cache, so that could be good or bad.

[jafferhussain11 34]

The mounting bracket is the same ; if you had lga2011 compatible water blocks in use before , you may continue to use the same ..

Got this from ekwb, please do verify it on their shop/site too :) 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, OneWhoKnocks53 said:

The L3 has been replaced by much bigger L2, and L3 is now a "victim" cache, so that could be good or bad.

L3 is shared, I don't think L2 is ... the shared L3 was beneficial when disabling extra cores giving more cache for fewer cores to use.  Asus are claiming 69GB/s for memory bandwidth, which is higher than my 65GB/s OC quad channel setup for the X99.

5 hours ago, jafferhussain11 said:

The mounting bracket is the same ; if you had lga2011 compatible water blocks in use before

Good to know, but I can't use my EK mono-block since it covers PCH and VRM and CPU, however, if LGA2011 might work, I'll look into that option until mono-block becomes available.

Cheers, Rob.

[Uteman 51]

Quote "We all know that the high core count x299 are going to have minimal benefit to flightsim."

Can't say as I agree with that comment. Might have had some believers for much of the 32 bit days however my experience with quad cores and six core cpus in 64 bit flight sim is just the opposite. With a core manager employed that allows you to hive off for example Trackir, Moving map, Fraps, Chaseplane, Weather programs that all run their own independent exe separate to the sim and communicate to the net as well to pull data, I can see 8,10 12 16 or 18 cores being used  to the full limit of your terrain settings and getting a smooth flight with extensive LOD and quality. Hooray - can only see good times ahead for immersive simming.

Before anybody steps in a says they can do that on 4 cores (or a single thread)  we know that it works, however I believe P3D v4 can bring any CPU, GPU and big screen to its knees if you crank the visual/ performance settings high enough, (HDR lighting and speed trees anyone) there is a section of the sim community that want to enjoy the experience to the maximum available other will continue to wind the settings back to suit their setup. Of course that is just my opinion based on personal experience.

I will be upgrading in about 2-3 months once the Bios has matured  (and we know what Threadripper is about) as that seems to be the major issue at the mo (as it was for Ryzen). Heat isnt a problem with a decent cooler and as for power, the old i7 3930K I have chugging away at 4.3MHz and using all 12 virtual cores in Process Explorer is seemingly in the same power consumption range for about 40% of the performance of a i9 7900K.

There is no doubt we have AMD to thank for the halving in price from the previous Intel 10 core and that is great also - we wanted faster and bigger CPUs - may the battle continue.

Rob I hope you find a good CPU block because I will be interested also to see your feedback on here as to how the new system performs.

Cheers all

[Driverab330 74]

Numerous reviews had mentioned the diffitulty they had experienced on cooling the 7900x which was partly due to the fact that thermal paste is used instead of soldered tin between the processor die and the heat spreader. 

this review is one of them from tomshardware

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-7900x-skylake-x,5092-11.html

I was interest in upgrading as well, however the potential performance gain was quite minimal and probably not worth the effort of doing it. 

Hopefully Intel will be able to iron out a few bugs before the final product is released. 

At the moment, I sincerely hope that the Threadripper will be giving out at least comparable flight sim performance as what the i9 is expected to give. 

[swiesma 625]

I personally am an Intel user for years, but at the moment I would not go with Intel. Just my 2 cents :-)

[Guest]

Well it looks like my pre-order missed the first batch of 7900X, more listed as coming next week.

I'd love to see AMD succeed, consumers need to see some competition.  Intel's X series CPUs are definitely "out there" in terms of profit margin (i7 6950X comes to mind) as are some of their server CPUs.

Cheers, Rob.

[Noel 4,484]

On 6/20/2017 at 0:34 AM, Uteman said:

I will be upgrading in about 2-3 months once the Bios has matured  (and we know what Threadripper is about) as that seems to be the major issue at the mo (as it was for Ryzen). Heat isnt a problem with a decent cooler and as for power, the old i7 3930K I have chugging away at 4.3MHz and using all 12 virtual cores in Process Explorer is seemingly in the same power consumption range for about 40% of the performance of a i9 7900K.

My plan was to keep my 3930K which has run flawlessly at 4.42Ghz on a Noctua air cooler and another trick another 6mo or so to see where 7900X or K if there is to be a K model, but the box just recently stopped in mid flight w/ no BSOD, just shut itself down, and now does not even post, and sometimes doesn't start the fans running.  I'm thinking it's the mainboard but haven't completed troubleshooting.  

I'm reading about massive wattage when you o'c all cores on the 7900X:  pushing 300-400watts, hence the  need for massive cooling which I'm not going to do--and that kind of power draw is just flat rediculous, but perhaps that is only running Prime95 not P3D.  My 3930K never used more than 130W if memory serves me, at 4.42Ghz.  I see the max turbo setting is 4.5Ghz, but this is w/ just two cores--the others are maybe running peak at 4Ghz or something like that.  In this scenario, can one choose which two cores run at 4.5?  If so you could assign the main thread to one of those and leave the rest for everything else including terrain loading and it could work.

Unless I find out its my Titan GTX or PSU which I can replace and be good to resume, if it's mobo or CPU then I'm out of the game until I can settle on a 6+ core highest end CPU and start anew, which might take a while.  Never had to use water cooling but maybe that's now what has to be. 

[Guest]

Just a quick update, my 7900X shipped and will arrive Tuesday, the Asus PRIME X299 Deluxe MB will arrive Wednesday, and G.Skill DDR 32GB 4266 Wednesday also.  I was able to locate a water block from EK A240 kit (EK-Supremacy AX) ... I really only need the CPU water block from kit, supposed to ship today.  The EK CPU water block is probably just temporary as I'm hoping EK (or someone) provides a full coverage mono-block (CPU, PCH, VRM) similar to my Rampage V Extreme mono-block.  EDIT: once more water cooling block options are available, I'll also try out an external water chiller if I can find one quiet enough.

I've heard good and bad regarding the 7900X in it's default mode "Auto" (everything) it out performs the 6950X in both single thread and multi-thread operation.  I've read about no problems reaching 5Ghz but again no actual details on exactly how that was done and what BIOS/EFI settings were used ... have you ever wondered why some people who claim higher GHz never actually publish their settings (all of them)?  I publish my EFI/BIOS settings for others to use, but it does raise BIG doubts why others claiming to be "experts" don't ... they just show frequency results and "look it booted" (for 30 seconds).  Anyway, once I get the 7900X up and running and spend some time reaching my OC goals, I'll post some detail results and settings.

But like I said before, I have fairly low expectations it will perform that much better than my existing 5960X @ 4.6Ghz ... but who knows, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, trying to stay optimistic.  Objective is to have all 10 real cores (HT disabled) running at 5Ghz.

Cheers, Rob.

[Noel 4,484]

51 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

But like I said before, I have fairly low expectations it will perform that much better than my existing 5960X @ 4.6Ghz ... but who knows, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, trying to stay optimistic.  Objective is to have all 10 real cores (HT disabled) running at 5Ghz.

Cheers, Rob.

Good luck on that!

"At a Vcore of 1.4V, the system stayed stable for 10 benchmark runs. Intel's Core i9-7900X consumed an average of 261W, while individual peaks jumped as high as 293W. A test at 4.8 GHz using 20 instances of a year-long shading computation for a rooftop photovoltaic array, including profit calculation, pushed power consumption all the way to 335W. The motherboard shut down after we started Prime95 without limiting AVX. The last recorded value was 364W."   Tom's Hardware

No way I would take a $999 proc and put 1.4V on it!   Maybe i7-7800 for the much lower cost.  For I9-7900X to reach its 4.5Ghz max turbo only 2 of 10 cores run at that clockspeed, and apparently the system determines which of those cores to use.  This being said, I guess one could look at CPUeze to see which are running at that speed, and then route P3D's main thread to one of those cores provided it was always that core that met the test.  If so, perhaps that's a way to go for me.   I won't be putting much of a voltage increase to achieve o'c it's just not worth it.

Can't wait to hear of your initial reports.  I've done everything possible to test my dead PC now so I'm side-lined until I can pick out parts.  Which reminds me, I do have another box w/ an older nV card in it I can at least see if the Titan GTX has died.  Do you know on a system w/o any graphics component *should* complete POST, even though you can't see it on a display screen?  I doubt it's Titan as it's never been o'clocked.

[Guest]

Hi Noel,

Haha, you know I don't believe in luck or the silicon lottery.

Reports I saw were 1.13v at 5Ghz, but again without knowing the details hard to separate fact from fiction.  I would have no problem running 7900X at 1.4v or higher so long as Thermal protection is active and CPU temps are acceptable ... my water cooling setup is pretty good (not a chiller) two 2" thick 480 radiators and two pumps with water flow and water temp sensors.

As to your POST issue, does your motherboard have error reporting LEDs, if so consult the manual to see what they are reporting.  I assume you haven't added anything to your system recently on the hardware side?  A few months back I tried to add my 3rd USB 2.0/3.0 card and my system just wouldn't boot, wouldn't even power on.  Removed the 3rd USB card and all was good, booted backup.  If you suspect the GPU, move it to a different PCIe slot.  Also, some motherboards provide the option to disable PCIe slots via jumpers, try to disable those you don't use.

Failing that, use a peripherals jumper on the power supply MB cable, this will allow you to PSU on peripherals only without powering up the motherboard ... most newer PSU provide a jumper connection, but if you don't have one I think it's pins 15 and 16 (see here: http://www.smpspowersupply.com/connectors-pinouts.html).

Cheers, Rob.