Modding My: CPU Cooler
Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for another chapter of the Modding My series. Today, we will be taking a look at upgrading my desktop's CPU cooler in the pursuit of improved thermals and acoustics. The parts that we will be using today are ID Cooling's IS-50X, Noctua's NF-A12x15 and the Phanteks Halos 120mm RGB Fan Frame. Accompanying these parts are the usual host of peripheries such as a screwdriver set and some additional screws (which will see comes in very important later on).
Those of you who follow the blog may notice me mentioning the specs of my desktop in passing briefly. It is a middle of the road gaming system which is powered by a modest AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD and, keeping things in the AMD camp, a Radeon 5600 XT graphics card. All of these parts are wrapped up in Fractal Design's Node 202 case which served as the basis/test bed of my first ever ITX build. Prior to this, I had mostly done builds in ATX and micro-ATX cases and this rig served as a great learning experience and gateway into small form factor computing.
The first step of the process is disassembly which starts with removing both the Node 202's top and bottom covers revealing the central metal frame which holds all the components together. In hindsight, one of the best decisions I had ever made was to opt for a modular SFX power supply, the Corsair SF series, to help keep all of the cables neat and tidy. There is little doubt in my mind that I would be sticking with a similar power supply albeit a higher wattage for my next ITX build.
Popping the case open, it is immediately apparent that this is not AMD's stock Wraith Stealth cooler. Rather it is Noctua's LH-L9a, the AM4 compatible version of Noctua's venerable 37mm low profile cooler. While the cooler has been doing an admirable job of keeping the 6-core Ryzen CPU in check, the thermals and acoustics had always left me wanting. With the aid of undervolting and custom fan curves, the entire system is barely audible at normal computing. But as soon as heavy loads, such as gaming, are involved the 92mm fan would spin up to 1,400rpm with CPU temperatures of 75-80C. Prior to tuning the voltages and fan curves, the results were far worse still.
Part of the issue was the Noctua cooler's height which did not fully meet the height of the case thus, causing recycled hot air to be circulated within the case. With the new cooler going flush against the case side, the hope was that this issue would not persist. Removing the 92mm Noctua fan, we can see some fine dust accumulating between the fin array. Nothing too serious and indeed pretty good after 6 months of heavy use.
The Ryzen 5 3600X CPU has been nothing is not reliable and I can certainly see why it is a good choice for many ITX system builders out there. It strikes a very good balance in between thermals and performance. The one in my personal build is undervolted to 1.15 volts and overclocked to 3.9 GHz when gaming. While there may have been headroom for pushing more performance, that would have been wholly unnecessary for gaming at 1080p.
Moving onto the new CPU cooler, we have ID Cooling's IS-50X. ID Cooling is a fairly new company based in China which have made a name for themselves by making affordable cooling solutions in the past few years. Since their inception, I have installed several ID Cooling AIO liquid coolers and found little issues with them. Performance is generally pretty good too albeit the obvious cuts in packaging, documentation and quality control. I would have loved to have chosen a cooler made by a different manufacturer but, unfortunately, ID Cooling seems to be the only one making a cooler that would fit the Node 202's dimensions.
Comparing the outgoing Noctua cooler with the incoming ID Cooling one, the difference in size is immediately apparent. Where the Noctua is a 40mm in height with a 92mm fan, the ID Cooling one is 55mm in height with a 120mm fan. Both use low profile 15mm fans in order to minimize the overall height of the complete package.
The Noctua cooler uses two heat pipes while, the ID Cooling one has it beat with 5 cooper heat pipes. This particular version, the IS-50X, is painted all black. If you take a closer look though, you would notice how much denser the fin array stack is on the Noctua cooler and generally how the fit and finish is just that much better. Not only that, the Noctua cooler is actually significantly heavier than the ID Cooling one! This left me initially concerned regarding the IS-50X's true cooling potential but, I had confidence the more than two times increase in heat pipes would make up for it.
The concerns only continued to grow when I found out that the screws included by ID Cooling to mount the heat sink to the AM4 brackets (or even the Intel one for this matter) did not fit! This cause me a serious headache and ended up consuming the most time on the entire process as I scrambled to find suitable replacement screws for the job. Fortunately, I was able to find four identical screws which allowed me to lock the brackets securely into the heat sink.
My problems did not end there though as the IS-50X did not come with any included base plate or mounting plate to the motherboard. Instead, it relied on the per-existing one that came with AMD AM4 motherboards. This was another really bad mistake on ID Cooling's part as the original AMD back plate did not secure the heatsink to the motherboard properly. There was a several millimeter gap which meant the heatsink was loose! Just like the screws, I ended up using the Noctua LH-9a backplate which, fortunately, seemed to work. If there was one positive thing I could say about this heatsink, it was the brackets for the 120mm fan could be removed and repositioned such as my configuration above which steered it well and clear off the RAM modules.
With all that shoddy quality control issues out of the way, it was time to work on something that I knew would be built to extremely fine tolerances. There was no way, I was going to leave a big part of my cooling potential to chance. As such, I a made sure to get Noctua's NF-A12x15 fan to handle the active cooling side of things. Noctua are one of the best, and many would argue the best, fan manufacturer in the world and the A12x15 also happens to be one of the very few slim 120mm fans around in the market.
Before I securely mounted everything into place on the motherboard, I made sure to do a few test fits to ensure the Noctua fan would be seated in the most optimal position so as to reduce cable clutter. Comparing the Noctua fan and the ID Cooling one is almost a day and night difference and this would come as no surprise when you consider that this fan alone costs almost as much as the entire ID Cooling cooler!
With thermal paste reapplied (Noctua's NT-H1 is my go to for now) and the heatsink firmly secured, I was able to now mount the 120mm Noctua fan in place and plug it into the motherboard's CPU fan header. Before I buttoned everything back up though, there was one tiny issue that I wanted to address; lighting.
It has always been a sore point for me that my CPU cooler did not have RGB lighting or any lighting for that matter. In order to rectify that issue, I decided to include a Phanteks Halos 120mm RGB fan frame. Oddly enough, Phanteks uses its own proprietary 4 pin RGB header which did not fit my motherboard's RGB headers. Having seen pictures of the connector prior to making the purchase, it looked oddly familiar to the ones my Deepcool fans used and, lo and behold, it actually did fit. I plugged it right into my Deepcool fan hub, made a quick test run, and got the halo to light up nicely. Only catch, it doesn't quite send the right signals which results in different color outputs than the one on my RGB strips and fans. Small price to pay and one that I do not mind at all given the lovely contrast it creates.
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