Michael Nager
New member
Below I will be posting a short guide on how to configure the 3950X (and basically any Ryzen 3000 Series CPU and I have tested it out on a R5 3600X as well) but my question is with regard to the AlphaCool Eisbaer LT360 and the Eisbaer 360.
With the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs AMD introduced a game-changer, not only with regard to CPU performance but unfortunately also for cooling.
The hottest spot of the CPU is no longer in the middle of the IHS and because the Chiplets are offset to the side, the actual business end of an AIO, namely where the fins are, only covers about 50%, if that, of the hotspot(s).
Prior to buying the Eisbaer LT360 I was cooling the 3950X with a Noctua NH-U12A air cooler. The temps were going uncomfortably high when the system was under load and I decided to buy the Eisbaer LT360 cooler. I replaced the fans that came with the AlphaCool cooler with three Noctua NF-12Ax25 fans (the best 120mm fans bar none on the market) and although the temps were lower than with the Noctua air cooler they were not dramatically lower.
The TIM I am using is Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, and I have spread the paste thinly onto the IHS (not just put a blob in the middle) so all of the IHS is optimally transferring heat to the cooler.
A question/suggestion I would have for AlphaCool is whether or not they would consider bringing out a baseplate for their Eisbaer series which would have a larger fin area in the cooler head, which would cover more of the Chiplets. It would be no problem to unscrew an existing baseplate and replace it with another one.
The Ryzen Chiplet design will not be disappearing and presently Ryzen CPUs in the enthusiast market are outselling Intel CPUs by at least four to one, and I think that a company which can bring out an AIO optimised for the new architecture will have a definite advantage over its competitors.
I know that some will say, "Why not go full custom loop?", and the answer to this is that I have had two spine operations and have spinal arthritis, and building in a custom loop would add extra complexity - which for me translates directly to excruciating agony - to something which is already becoming harder for me to accomplish, namely building a computer.
For this reason I am personally pretty much limited to what is available in the AIO market if I want to liquid cool my CPU.
Now for the Ryzen 3000 series configuration guide:
I have the X570 AURUS XTREME motherboard and had until the beginning of this week a 3600X in it and now I have a 3950X.
My experience - and this is not just with GigaByte mobos, but with other mobos as well - is that you have two choices, both of which are mutually exclusive.
1) You can configure your BIOS manually and NEVER use the Ryzen Master utility for anything
2) Configure your Vcore LLC (Load Line Calibration), in my case turbo, and SOC LLC, in my case high, and getting rid of the logo at boot. Don't configure anything else. After booting into Windows configure the system with Ryzen Master.
For God's sakes don't try to configure the motherboard with the utility Easy Tune - your system will hate you for it.
If you try to mix and match the two options you will be headed for a world of pain and frustration.
The crazy thing is that even if you set the parameters exactly the same in both the BIOS and Ryzen Master, you will have nothing but problems.
Now as always there are exceptions to the rule, and in my case there are two of them:
A) When I wanted to overclock my RAM to MCLK and FCLK 1867 from 1800 I had to go into "Settings" and "AMD Overclocking" then, "DDR and Infinity Fabric Freqencies/Timings" portion of the BIOS and set the FCLK value to 1867 there. Ryzen Master will change the MCLK but not the FCLK if you are overclocking your RAM.
B) With the 3950X being a 16 Core/32 Thread CPU, I don't need SMT for most of the things I do - especially gaming. By turning SMT Off you can take the max clock you achieved previously with SMT On and add 100 MHz clockspeed to each core. The only problem is that Ryzen Master will not actually change from SMT On to Off (or vice versa) as it does with other motherboards I have worked with, so I have to do it manually by going into "Tweaker" then "Advanced CPU Settings" and then set "SMT Mode" to "Disabled.
I made the mistake of listening to the advice of the Tech YouTubers and of the Tech Media and found out, after a number of weeks of frustration, that as far as the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs is concerned they haven't got a bloody clue.
Also ALL motherboards will punt way too much voltage into the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs. Even Ryzen Master on any of the profiles puts an amount of voltage into the CPUs that will damage them over a relatively short period of time (measured in months, not years).
To this end, if you want to configure your CPU correctly, then, in Ryzen Master, create a Manual profile and under "Voltage Control" set the "Peak Core(s) Voltage" to 1.3 Volts, and see how far you can clock it stably.
When you have reached a stable clock at that, then you can try lowering the voltage in increments (in my case it was one increment to 1.29375 Volts) and enjoy a system which will give you good performance, low temps and above all last a long time.
On my system, using a Noctua NH-U12A air cooler, my system runs stable - and I designate stable as being able to do multiple runs of CineBench R20 back to back - with SMT On (i.e. 16 Cores/32 Threads) at 4.3 GHz and a CineBench R20 score of 10,110 at 1.29375 Volts and with SMT Off (i.e. 16 Cores/16 Threads) it runs at 4.4 GHz for a CineBench score of 7,754 at exactly 1.3 Volts.
Having tested the AlphaCool Eisbaer LT360 AIO with three Noctua NF-A12x25 fans instead of the fans that came with it, I will say that the temps are lower than with the NH-U12A but not by all that much.
To summarise, every Ryzen 3000 series CPU I have been able to test extensively (my own 3600X and 3950X and my friend's 3900X) have their "sweet spot" for performance/voltage at 1.3 Volts. Whatever you achieve with regard to a stable clockspeed at that voltage, if you go even 25 MHz per core higher than that, you will have to punt in a disproportionately higher voltage.
On my 3600X for instance, just to go from 4.225 GHz at 1.29375 Volts to 4.25 GHz required me to put in 1.35 Volts.
Now to someone who has read this and is going to make the obvious objection with regard to Ryzen 3000 series CPUs, please sit back, consider what you are going to write and you will quickly realise why you are wrong.
With the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs AMD introduced a game-changer, not only with regard to CPU performance but unfortunately also for cooling.
The hottest spot of the CPU is no longer in the middle of the IHS and because the Chiplets are offset to the side, the actual business end of an AIO, namely where the fins are, only covers about 50%, if that, of the hotspot(s).
Prior to buying the Eisbaer LT360 I was cooling the 3950X with a Noctua NH-U12A air cooler. The temps were going uncomfortably high when the system was under load and I decided to buy the Eisbaer LT360 cooler. I replaced the fans that came with the AlphaCool cooler with three Noctua NF-12Ax25 fans (the best 120mm fans bar none on the market) and although the temps were lower than with the Noctua air cooler they were not dramatically lower.
The TIM I am using is Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, and I have spread the paste thinly onto the IHS (not just put a blob in the middle) so all of the IHS is optimally transferring heat to the cooler.
A question/suggestion I would have for AlphaCool is whether or not they would consider bringing out a baseplate for their Eisbaer series which would have a larger fin area in the cooler head, which would cover more of the Chiplets. It would be no problem to unscrew an existing baseplate and replace it with another one.
The Ryzen Chiplet design will not be disappearing and presently Ryzen CPUs in the enthusiast market are outselling Intel CPUs by at least four to one, and I think that a company which can bring out an AIO optimised for the new architecture will have a definite advantage over its competitors.
I know that some will say, "Why not go full custom loop?", and the answer to this is that I have had two spine operations and have spinal arthritis, and building in a custom loop would add extra complexity - which for me translates directly to excruciating agony - to something which is already becoming harder for me to accomplish, namely building a computer.
For this reason I am personally pretty much limited to what is available in the AIO market if I want to liquid cool my CPU.
Now for the Ryzen 3000 series configuration guide:
I have the X570 AURUS XTREME motherboard and had until the beginning of this week a 3600X in it and now I have a 3950X.
My experience - and this is not just with GigaByte mobos, but with other mobos as well - is that you have two choices, both of which are mutually exclusive.
1) You can configure your BIOS manually and NEVER use the Ryzen Master utility for anything
2) Configure your Vcore LLC (Load Line Calibration), in my case turbo, and SOC LLC, in my case high, and getting rid of the logo at boot. Don't configure anything else. After booting into Windows configure the system with Ryzen Master.
For God's sakes don't try to configure the motherboard with the utility Easy Tune - your system will hate you for it.
If you try to mix and match the two options you will be headed for a world of pain and frustration.
The crazy thing is that even if you set the parameters exactly the same in both the BIOS and Ryzen Master, you will have nothing but problems.
Now as always there are exceptions to the rule, and in my case there are two of them:
A) When I wanted to overclock my RAM to MCLK and FCLK 1867 from 1800 I had to go into "Settings" and "AMD Overclocking" then, "DDR and Infinity Fabric Freqencies/Timings" portion of the BIOS and set the FCLK value to 1867 there. Ryzen Master will change the MCLK but not the FCLK if you are overclocking your RAM.
B) With the 3950X being a 16 Core/32 Thread CPU, I don't need SMT for most of the things I do - especially gaming. By turning SMT Off you can take the max clock you achieved previously with SMT On and add 100 MHz clockspeed to each core. The only problem is that Ryzen Master will not actually change from SMT On to Off (or vice versa) as it does with other motherboards I have worked with, so I have to do it manually by going into "Tweaker" then "Advanced CPU Settings" and then set "SMT Mode" to "Disabled.
I made the mistake of listening to the advice of the Tech YouTubers and of the Tech Media and found out, after a number of weeks of frustration, that as far as the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs is concerned they haven't got a bloody clue.
Also ALL motherboards will punt way too much voltage into the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs. Even Ryzen Master on any of the profiles puts an amount of voltage into the CPUs that will damage them over a relatively short period of time (measured in months, not years).
To this end, if you want to configure your CPU correctly, then, in Ryzen Master, create a Manual profile and under "Voltage Control" set the "Peak Core(s) Voltage" to 1.3 Volts, and see how far you can clock it stably.
When you have reached a stable clock at that, then you can try lowering the voltage in increments (in my case it was one increment to 1.29375 Volts) and enjoy a system which will give you good performance, low temps and above all last a long time.
On my system, using a Noctua NH-U12A air cooler, my system runs stable - and I designate stable as being able to do multiple runs of CineBench R20 back to back - with SMT On (i.e. 16 Cores/32 Threads) at 4.3 GHz and a CineBench R20 score of 10,110 at 1.29375 Volts and with SMT Off (i.e. 16 Cores/16 Threads) it runs at 4.4 GHz for a CineBench score of 7,754 at exactly 1.3 Volts.
Having tested the AlphaCool Eisbaer LT360 AIO with three Noctua NF-A12x25 fans instead of the fans that came with it, I will say that the temps are lower than with the NH-U12A but not by all that much.
To summarise, every Ryzen 3000 series CPU I have been able to test extensively (my own 3600X and 3950X and my friend's 3900X) have their "sweet spot" for performance/voltage at 1.3 Volts. Whatever you achieve with regard to a stable clockspeed at that voltage, if you go even 25 MHz per core higher than that, you will have to punt in a disproportionately higher voltage.
On my 3600X for instance, just to go from 4.225 GHz at 1.29375 Volts to 4.25 GHz required me to put in 1.35 Volts.
Now to someone who has read this and is going to make the obvious objection with regard to Ryzen 3000 series CPUs, please sit back, consider what you are going to write and you will quickly realise why you are wrong.