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Comment by karpodiem | Hacker News Reader

Does this require liquid cooling?

Not at all. I've got an air-cooled 1920X, which works just fine. Noctua makes good fans.

The downside is, a fan capable of cooling a 200W CPU is going to be huge; mine only has a few millimeters of clearance, and that's in an EATX case. AIO water-cooling is easier to fit.

Can motherboard break from the fan weight? Those huge coolers have solid weight.

These days there's usually a back bracket which helps distribute the weight of the cooler over a large part of the board as opposed to earlier coolers which would only mount to a few screw holes. Extra large aftermarket coolers usually come with extra large mounting brackets. I wouldn't be too worried about any name brand cooler causing damage to the board. Follow the directions from the kit and it will probably be fine.

Maybe at sufficient g-forces.

I might unmount the cooler before shipping the box somewhere, but if it's just sitting there you will generally be alright.

If you get a giant cooler it's usually recommended to uninstall it before transporting the computer (which means having rubbing alcohol and new thermal paste to reinstall it after transport), but stationary it's perfectly fine. They also have to hold up high end gaming GPUs which weigh equally much (and also recommended to be removed for transport).

The TR4 socket is extremely sturdy, and can take a great deal of weight - far more than you may be used to for more home desktop oriented parts. Given that the new socket needs even more cooling I think it's a reasonable assumption it'll be at least as sturdy as before.

Same here with a 1950X. I use a Noctua NH-U12S and it usually operates around 45-50C with a few VMs and a IDE running. Mine is crammed into an old SUN Ultra 24 case with a few mm's to spare.

You should definitely share pictures of that setup. At least, I would like to see it!

Agree - would love to see the build

Is that at base speed? I just recently got the parts for a 3900X build and while I orginally went for air cooling I switched out for a liquid cooler last minute worried about overclocking temps

I care about reliability a lot more than speed, so I'm not overclocking.

There's a few threadripper aircoolers on the market that perform fairly well. Here's a year-old guide to them: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/air-liquid-cooler-threadri...

I assume anything that's rated for 250watts will work fine with these chips. Probably not ideal for overclocking, but if your case has decent airflow you'll be fine.

The 3950X is suggested to use with a liquid cooler, but I would be amazed if one of the dual tower coolers like the Dark Rock Pro4 or Noctua DH15 didn't work fine in a case with good airflow.

threadrippers don't require liquid cooling, they have a larger heat spreader and lower peak clocks so heat is more manageable.

The 3950X has the same TDP as a 3900X. Both should be fine with good air coolers. I recently built my first new desktop system in years: A 3900X with a Dark Rock Pro 4 - in a slightly more spacious Mini ITX case (Lian Li TU150). Works great!

The AMD TDP number are much closer to real world figures compared to Intel which is pretty much an imaginary number that is only valid at its base clock.

Just a word of caution. Although this is generally true at the moment, AMD's definition of TDP has nothing to do with electrical power or heat output. It's just a marketing number that happens to come close to electrical power. Here's a very good source if you want details: https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3525-amd-ryzen-tdp-explai...

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