Liquid series or AIO?

[DavidDownes379]

I'm looking at a new gaming rig, and I'm trying to work out if the Hydro X (or similar) is 'worth it' over a simpler all in one CPU liquid cooling solution like the H115i (or similar).

Essential context: I've never had any form of liquid cooling before, and I'm far from an expert in PC building and/or maintenance. I mainly play racing games/sims, no competitive gaming, and no first person shooters. I have a Samsung C49RG90 (5120x1440 120Hz) monitor. My existing setup performs well on both the monitor an in VR on very high settings creating at least 'good enough' FPS in the games that I play. That was until Flight Sim 2020 came out - MSFS 2020 is the reason I'm looking to get a new setup. My existing setup is actually a laptop (Macbook Pro 16 with i9 9980HK, 64GB Ram), with a Razer Core X Chroma with an Aorus 2070 Super inside. I am currently CPU limited on MSFS 2020, but suspect if I could free up the CPU, the GPU won't be too far behind on Ultra settings. Oh, and I have no strict budget, happy for a good deal, willing spend the monies if needed - let's say anywhere between £1500-3500 for the 'right thing'.

So, to some specific questions I have ... How often do you need to drain these things? is it only when swapping out components, or am I supposed to change the coolant every X months? How finicky/risky is draining the coolant if I needed to? Does the liquid series (or liquid cooling in general) really provide much real-world benefits to gaming, or is it mainly about the looks (and bragging rights)?

I've spec'd 2 quite different machines that I'm loosely deciding between. Both are the i9 10900K, one is the overclocked flavour coming in under £2000 which has the corsair H115i Platinum AIO liquid cool and no GPU (I'll use my 2070 super for now and upgrade later), and then the Liquid Series one is coming in around £3500 with the 3080 GPU, and the Hydro X High kit cooling both.

So if we ignore the fact that if I could somehow get my 2070 Super in the latter machine and get it hooked up the cooling, OR if I were to get the 3080 card in the cheaper machine, the price difference comes down to about £700-800 so long as they broadly have the same specs otherwise (motherboard, PSU, RAM, etc). Now I'm happy to pay a little extra for the glitz of a full liquid cool setup, but I wouldn't pay that much JUST for that, especially if it's going to also be a maintenance nightmare. So really, my question is, what would the real world benefits be (if any) for the fancier cooling system? Right now, I need a better CPU to get better results on MSFS2020, and the i9 10900 overclocked will certainly do that. With just a AIO CPU liquid cool, I could easily use my current GPU, and then easily add to it, or swap it out later without having to worry about 'plumbing', and on top of that, £2000 seems like a pretty good deal for a very highly spec'd machine. On the flip side, the liquid series looks sexy as hell, and I want it, but will it actually benefit me or just give me hassle?

Sorry for the long post, if you got to the bottom here, thanks. I needed to brain-dump, and I'd really appreciate some opinions.

P.S. The reason for the 10900K, is that MSFS 2020, is directx 11, so basically limited to 4 cores. Hence I won't benefit from an umpteen core system, I just need raw speed from the cores that will be used, and I think the 10900K fits that bill best.

 

[DavidDownes379]

I read the link with interest, and I can understand the points raised.

What are the 'new AMD chips' that you mention, so I can look out for them?

I don't especially want this to turn into a CPU Intel vs AMD discussion - and CERTAINLY not an argument - but I'm actually now quite interested in this. The following is just a take on my own logic, and it's not meant confrontationally, I'm happy to have any logical fallacies pointed out to me.

I will admit that I'm a sucker for cpubenchmark, and indeed I used it to try and figure out my best bet. And maybe I'm being foolish old man, but I must say that I take the premise of "they are intentionally Intel biased" with a a few grains of salt, since if you take look at the site today (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html) you have to go down 14 spots to even find an Intel CPU in the list, and AMD make 15 of the top 20 CPUs. Maybe they've updated their maths in the past month since that post was written?

I would also say that stating that Intel are only good for one specific task of 1080p at 360Hz seems odd to me ... why/how could that be? My understanding would be that the CPU is mainly responsible for things like keeping a track of the objects in the space, downloading scenery (MSFS 2020), physics calculations (again, MSFS 2020), AI, etc ... I'd have thought resolutions and monitor refresh rate are pretty much entirely in the domain of the GPU.

Anyway, yes, my methodology for figuring out the CPU was:
1. I'm CPU bound in the game I'm specifically trying to fix
2. The game is also limited in it's core count
3. AMD Threadrippers look like great CPUs with their crazy high benchmark scores
4. Oh wait, this achieved due 24/32/64 cores, but each running at 'only' 3.7-4.3 GHz
5. Let's look at single-core performance then, and find one that doesn't have crazy numbers of cores (since I won't use them)
6. The i9 10900k is at the top, that makes sense since it boosts to 5.1GHz
7. Is it reasonable value? Yes, I can spec a machine for under £2k, we're golden, job done

So ... If you have an alternative recommendation that you honestly think will solve my specific problem (flight sim 2020) better and/or cheaper, yeah, please definitely let me know.

As for the original question in my initial post, I am now leaning towards a closed loop system. I don't think I'll be up for changing the coolant, and risking giving my system a bath when I want to upgrade a component. It makes me sad though, coz they look so good!

 

[SpyderTracks]

I read the link with interest, and I can understand the points raised.

What are the 'new AMD chips' that you mention, so I can look out for them?

I don't especially want this to turn into a CPU Intel vs AMD discussion - and CERTAINLY not an argument - but I'm actually now quite interested in this. The following is just a take on my own logic, and it's not meant confrontationally, I'm happy to have any logical fallacies pointed out to me.

I will admit that I'm a sucker for cpubenchmark, and indeed I used it to try and figure out my best bet. And maybe I'm being foolish old man, but I must say that I take the premise of "they are intentionally Intel biased" with a a few grains of salt, since if you take look at the site today (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html) you have to go down 14 spots to even find an Intel CPU in the list, and AMD make 15 of the top 20 CPUs. Maybe they've updated their maths in the past month since that post was written?

I would also say that stating that Intel are only good for one specific task of 1080p at 360Hz seems odd to me ... why/how could that be? My understanding would be that the CPU is mainly responsible for things like keeping a track of the objects in the space, downloading scenery (MSFS 2020), physics calculations (again, MSFS 2020), AI, etc ... I'd have thought resolutions and monitor refresh rate are pretty much entirely in the domain of the GPU.

Anyway, yes, my methodology for figuring out the CPU was:
1. I'm CPU bound in the game I'm specifically trying to fix
2. The game is also limited in it's core count
3. AMD Threadrippers look like great CPUs with their crazy high benchmark scores
4. Oh wait, this achieved due 24/32/64 cores, but each running at 'only' 3.7-4.3 GHz
5. Let's look at single-core performance then, and find one that doesn't have crazy numbers of cores (since I won't use them)
6. The i9 10900k is at the top, that makes sense since it boosts to 5.1GHz
7. Is it reasonable value? Yes, I can spec a machine for under £2k, we're golden, job done

So ... If you have an alternative recommendation that you honestly think will solve my specific problem (flight sim 2020) better and/or cheaper, yeah, please definitely let me know.

As for the original question in my initial post, I am now leaning towards a closed loop system. I don't think I'll be up for changing the coolant, and risking giving my system a bath when I want to upgrade a component. It makes me sad though, coz they look so good!

If you read through the links in that thread it explains all the questions you’ve raised.

 

[DavidDownes379]

If you read through the links in that thread it explains all the questions you’ve raised.

I'm working my way through them now Although some of it goes over my head.

I'd be interested to know (and I've just seen @Nursemorph suggest a build, which I'll check out), what you think would be a good (the best) CPU for a game like MSFS 2020, which in most people's system is cpu-limited, due presumably to the heavy physics engine (and maybe the streaming of scenery), whilst being only running on DX11 and so being limited to about 4 cores.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'm working my way through them now Although some of it goes over my head.

I'd be interested to know (and I've just seen @Nursemorph suggest a build, which I'll check out), what you think would be a good (the best) CPU for a game like MSFS 2020, which in most people's system is cpu-limited, due presumably to the heavy physics engine (and maybe the streaming of scenery), whilst being only running on DX11 and so being limited to about 4 cores.

Basically sites like userbenchmark are comparison sites, they don’t refer to any real world testing whatsoever, instead they apply a value to a metric and then add up the total to reach a score.

They changed their metrics as soon as Ryzen 3000 were released “because Ryzen was too fast” and destroyed every intel chip by quite a margin. Now their metrics are fewer cores betters multicore, single threaded speed is more important despite IPC, and various other nonsensical values that have absolutely zero relevance in today’s CPUs other than to boost intel values.

They are literally disinformation sites and should be avoided at all costs. Any pro will say the same thing.

 

[DavidDownes379]

@SpyderTracks so ... is there any good way to properly compare these things? It'd be pretty inconvenient if the thing everyone uses is apparently shill, but there's no other alternative.

Either way, the methodology does still kinda seem to align with what I need: a small number of very fast cores rather than 64 or 128 'fairly fast' threads. I'm still working through the material in your post, but on the face of it, it is at least plausible to me that AMD are getting to the top of the benchmarks by handling crazy amounts of parallelisation that real-world games may never make use of.

I still may be misunderstanding this, but AMD currently take all the top spots, so how it's biased against AMD is confusing to me.

 

[DavidDownes379]

Awesome, thanks for that @Nursemorph. I can wait a couple weeks to see if that turns out to be true. And then for sure, if it is as it seems, and I can get a 5950X that outperforms the 10900K in single core performance for less or similar money ... it's a no-brainer!

 

[DavidDownes379]

As I say, I've been working my way through some of the material in this post:

AMD Vs Intel

So some of you aren't aware of the reasons why so many people are heading away from Intel to AMD, so thought it would be important to lay that out for people to refer back to. A lot of you will go to cpubenchmark or userbenchmark to find performance metrics for CPU's. These sites are complete...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

And in one of the videos linked:

... the guy actually says (6m10s) that the IPC improvement of the 3900X/3950X doesn't actually make up for the 0.5GHz speed advantage of the i9 10900k in single core performance - which is what I'm after.

So it's all seems like swings and roundabouts to me. And still going back to my original use case, for a core-limited CPU bound game like MSFS 2020, perhaps the i9 is actually better for me. Or perhaps there's naff all in it.

 

[ProEnigma]

As I say, I've been working my way through some of the material in this post:

AMD Vs Intel

So some of you aren't aware of the reasons why so many people are heading away from Intel to AMD, so thought it would be important to lay that out for people to refer back to. A lot of you will go to cpubenchmark or userbenchmark to find performance metrics for CPU's. These sites are complete...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

And in one of the videos linked:

... the guy actually says (6m10s) that the IPC improvement of the 3900X/3950X doesn't actually make up for the 0.5GHz speed advantage of the i9 10900k in single core performance - which is what I'm after.

So it's all seems like swings and roundabouts to me. And still going back to my original use case, for a core-limited CPU bound game like MSFS 2020, perhaps the i9 is actually better for me. Or perhaps there's naff all in it.

Hi DavidDownes379, there is an article here about the new Zen 3 "AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 Price, Specs, Release Date, Performance, All We Know" i says it has improved the IPC improvments by 19% over Zen 2, I believe thats at 1080p gaming, now I must admit, i'm not the best person to ask about this kind of thing, this may help you get more information.

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 Price, Benchmarks, Specs and More

The Zen 3 cometh

www.tomshardware.com

 

[Scott]

It's a difficult discussion to enter as it's all been said and, not at all directed at the op, I'm honestly sick to the back teeth with it all. I'm now at the point where if someone wants to buy something and a prod in the right direction doesn't get them on the right course then I'm going to be happy to let them go with it.

So, without further adieu... here is my "2 cents".

If you handed me 3k right now for a system, I would spec up one with an AMD CPU and a Nvidia GPU. This may change after the RDNA2 launch, but lets just keep it simple for now.

I'm a HUGE FS2020 fan, simulation fan, VR fan and all things geek/tech. At the time I purchased my system, the 9900k was king of the hill with the AMD lineup looking promising... but not quite there yet.

FFWD to now and AMD have absolutely knocked it out of the park. The irony is that an AMD system purchased at the time I got the 9900k, at an enthusiasts level, would allow a CPU drop in for an upgrade. Where am I at with my 9900k??? No mans land. I've got absolutely nowhere to go with my rig so it's destined for a full on trade-in. I can, of course, make do with my overclocked 9900k (5.2Ghz when I fancy it) but that's still not going to come close to what AMD have planned.

There are TONNES of things in AMDs favour and similarly are the reasons enthusiasts, who aren't biased, will always recommend them.

AMD is WAY better value for money
AMD is 7nm, miles ahead of Intel for efficiency
AMD is ahead of Intel for IPC efficiency
Current modern AMD systems have a future upgrade potential

Intel had one trick left in the 2014 hat..... single core performance/frequency.

If the claims are true, and with AMDs history on their claims we have no reason to doubt, the single core performance has been smashed by AMD. Intel seem to be significantly behind. Don't get caught up in frequency numbers, it's like having a 17" alloy wheel vs a 15" steel wheel. The 15" wheel may spin faster but the 17" alloy will ease past it with far more efficiency while looking dapper.

Even with the single core gaming potential, the higher level you go..... the less of a difference it makes. When you're GPU bound you could run a 3300X vs an overclocked 9900k and it ain't going to make any odds as it's not the CPU that comes into it.

Now, let's specifically look at MS2020. You're going to be CPU bound no matter what you do, it's just one of these games with mathematical & physics calculation coming out its ears. If you want to game at a decent resolution, the GPU is going to get hammered and you're going to be back onto the CPU limitation..... no matter what. At the moment, if I use sensible settings, I see 60fps most of the time. I've tuned it not to drop below 40fps in any scenario (normally 50-60). This is with me at 1080p on an overclocked 9900k. It doesn't matter what numbers you put in front of that "K" it's not going to make a blind bit of difference to the performance as that's just the limitation of such a game.

Now, lets look to the future....

Any Intel ecosystem you build has you on borrowed time. Intel don't care how many motherboards they force you to buy, they have lived off their reputation for years. Use me as an example, I'm sitting on a high end system from 2019 that's less upgradeable than a Nokia 3300. I could have built an AMD system in 2018 and be dropping a 5950X right into the system (with a decent cooler of course) and be absolutely laughing. Intel have really annoyed me of late, I was expecting a fight over 2019/2020 for the market but they have completely lost the battle/war and their shirt. It's going to be at least, IMO, 2022 before we see a proper drive from Intel again. It's not as if AMD are about to let their foot off the gas is it?

MS2020 is funded & marketed by, funnily enough, Microsoft. Microsoft have a console that they're bringing the game to... the Xbox. The latest iteration of the Xbox is going to have an 8 core 16 thread AMD CPU (I believe the PS5 is similar and that the GPU may be AMD too). Think about that logically for a second and then hazard a guess at which CPU the game is going to be optimised towards.

MS2020 is currently DX11. DX12 is in the works and they are working hard to release it. The reason for working so hard is that it brings a NUMBER of features that will increase the performance of the game, my money is definitely on core optimisation..... for 8 cores +. When I'm recommending a system for FS2020 I tend to suggest the 5900X (now) where the budget allows. My reasoning for this is few fold...... it's got the minimum 8 cores that I would recommend to be on par with the game, it's got another 4 cores in case further optimisations are brought to the PC and the 5900X is the sweet spot for everything IMO. It's a great price/performance/frequency match.

Oh, one thing to keep in mind with GPU selection is that with DX12, it's likely we will see some good use of the new ray tracing features being applied to FS2020. This is another reason to stick with Nvidia, but we will see what AMD bring to the GPU market.


Now that I've got to the end of this, and I hope you have stuck with me, you can maybe appreciate why we don't go into the depths of the why. There has to be a trust in this sort of community. I understand that respect and understanding is earned, but you should always consider peoples agenda. Every single link, video and website you view is funded somehow. I'm not saying there are outright bribes, but there are ways of saying things (accurately) while favouring an agenda that ends up being lucrative. We don't have this here, I get absolutely zero for taking the 20 minutes to write the above, in fact it actually pains me to do it all again. I do it because I'm enthusiastic about tech, I want to see people enjoying tech and getting the absolute best they can for their money. I wouldn't send you down the wrong path and I've done my homework and read between the lines with my knowledge to know what the wrong paths are. The community here grows with each other so we end up, mostly, understanding each others point of view even when we have different opinions and different strengths of knowledge.

There isn't a sales person among us, we do this all for free with nothing to gain but an appreciation of happy tech punters. I would do the same on any forum so it's not through allegiance to PCS that I do this, it's just where I've settled and am happy.

 

[AgentCooper]

Wow. Ace post, @Scott. Round of applause for that man. Logical, reasoned, well thought out... you technically shouldn’t be allowed on the internet 😆

 

[ubuysa]

It's a difficult discussion to enter as it's all been said and, not at all directed at the op, I'm honestly sick to the back teeth with it all. I'm now at the point where if someone wants to buy something and a prod in the right direction doesn't get them on the right course then I'm going to be happy to let them go with it.

So, without further adieu... here is my "2 cents".

If you handed me 3k right now for a system, I would spec up one with an AMD CPU and a Nvidia GPU. This may change after the RDNA2 launch, but lets just keep it simple for now.

I'm a HUGE FS2020 fan, simulation fan, VR fan and all things geek/tech. At the time I purchased my system, the 9900k was king of the hill with the AMD lineup looking promising... but not quite there yet.

FFWD to now and AMD have absolutely knocked it out of the park. The irony is that an AMD system purchased at the time I got the 9900k, at an enthusiasts level, would allow a CPU drop in for an upgrade. Where am I at with my 9900k??? No mans land. I've got absolutely nowhere to go with my rig so it's destined for a full on trade-in. I can, of course, make do with my overclocked 9900k (5.2Ghz when I fancy it) but that's still not going to come close to what AMD have planned.

There are TONNES of things in AMDs favour and similarly are the reasons enthusiasts, who aren't biased, will always recommend them.

AMD is WAY better value for money
AMD is 7nm, miles ahead of Intel for efficiency
AMD is ahead of Intel for IPC efficiency
Current modern AMD systems have a future upgrade potential

Intel had one trick left in the 2014 hat..... single core performance/frequency.

If the claims are true, and with AMDs history on their claims we have no reason to doubt, the single core performance has been smashed by AMD. Intel seem to be significantly behind. Don't get caught up in frequency numbers, it's like having a 17" alloy wheel vs a 15" steel wheel. The 15" wheel may spin faster but the 17" alloy will ease past it with far more efficiency while looking dapper.

Even with the single core gaming potential, the higher level you go..... the less of a difference it makes. When you're GPU bound you could run a 3300X vs an overclocked 9900k and it ain't going to make any odds as it's not the CPU that comes into it.

Now, let's specifically look at MS2020. You're going to be CPU bound no matter what you do, it's just one of these games with mathematical & physics calculation coming out its ears. If you want to game at a decent resolution, the GPU is going to get hammered and you're going to be back onto the CPU limitation..... no matter what. At the moment, if I use sensible settings, I see 60fps most of the time. I've tuned it not to drop below 40fps in any scenario (normally 50-60). This is with me at 1080p on an overclocked 9900k. It doesn't matter what numbers you put in front of that "K" it's not going to make a blind bit of difference to the performance as that's just the limitation of such a game.

Now, lets look to the future....

Any Intel ecosystem you build has you on borrowed time. Intel don't care how many motherboards they force you to buy, they have lived off their reputation for years. Use me as an example, I'm sitting on a high end system from 2019 that's less upgradeable than a Nokia 3300. I could have built an AMD system in 2018 and be dropping a 5950X right into the system (with a decent cooler of course) and be absolutely laughing. Intel have really annoyed me of late, I was expecting a fight over 2019/2020 for the market but they have completely lost the battle/war and their shirt. It's going to be at least, IMO, 2022 before we see a proper drive from Intel again. It's not as if AMD are about to let their foot off the gas is it?

MS2020 is funded & marketed by, funnily enough, Microsoft. Microsoft have a console that they're bringing the game to... the Xbox. The latest iteration of the Xbox is going to have an 8 core 16 thread AMD CPU (I believe the PS5 is similar and that the GPU may be AMD too). Think about that logically for a second and then hazard a guess at which CPU the game is going to be optimised towards.

MS2020 is currently DX11. DX12 is in the works and they are working hard to release it. The reason for working so hard is that it brings a NUMBER of features that will increase the performance of the game, my money is definitely on core optimisation..... for 8 cores +. When I'm recommending a system for FS2020 I tend to suggest the 5900X (now) where the budget allows. My reasoning for this is few fold...... it's got the minimum 8 cores that I would recommend to be on par with the game, it's got another 4 cores in case further optimisations are brought to the PC and the 5900X is the sweet spot for everything IMO. It's a great price/performance/frequency match.

Oh, one thing to keep in mind with GPU selection is that with DX12, it's likely we will see some good use of the new ray tracing features being applied to FS2020. This is another reason to stick with Nvidia, but we will see what AMD bring to the GPU market.


Now that I've got to the end of this, and I hope you have stuck with me, you can maybe appreciate why we don't go into the depths of the why. There has to be a trust in this sort of community. I understand that respect and understanding is earned, but you should always consider peoples agenda. Every single link, video and website you view is funded somehow. I'm not saying there are outright bribes, but there are ways of saying things (accurately) while favouring an agenda that ends up being lucrative. We don't have this here, I get absolutely zero for taking the 20 minutes to write the above, in fact it actually pains me to do it all again. I do it because I'm enthusiastic about tech, I want to see people enjoying tech and getting the absolute best they can for their money. I wouldn't send you down the wrong path and I've done my homework and read between the lines with my knowledge to know what the wrong paths are. The community here grows with each other so we end up, mostly, understanding each others point of view even when we have different opinions and different strengths of knowledge.

There isn't a sales person among us, we do this all for free with nothing to gain but an appreciation of happy tech punters. I would do the same on any forum so it's not through allegiance to PCS that I do this, it's just where I've settled and am happy.

 

[Martinr36]

Well said that man