Moving our GPU testing to AMD Ryzen

CPU Cooling – Corsair H150i RGB Pro XT All-in-One Liquid Cooler

Our cooling requirements are simple; we need a solution which can keep AMD’s Ryzen 9 3950X cool and quiet under load without generating much noise.

With AMD themselves recommending 280mm (or larger) all-in-one liquid coolers for their Ryzen 9 3950X processor, it makes sense for us to go large with our cooling selections. For that, we decided to use Corsair’s H150i RGB Pro XT, matching the other Corsair components in our system while giving us plenty of thermal headroom for our Ryzen 9 3950X processor.  

One benefit of larger AIO liquid coolers is that they offer enough surface area to allow users to run their fans at lower RPMs without much consequence. In our case, this will enable us to keep our fans at 1200 RPM at all times, offering us practically silent operation and great cooling performance.  
  

  

Within our test system, we have decided to install our Corsair H150i on the roof of our Obsidian 500D SE RGB chassis, allowing the cooler’s three fans to act as an exhaust for the system. 

The benefits of this mounting system are obvious, as it allows all heat from our Ryzen 9 3950X processor to be exhausted out of our GPU test system. Front mounting this radiator would be sub-optimal thermally, as it would push the heat from our processor into our test system and onto the graphics cards that we are testing. 

  
 

When installed within out test system, Corsair’s H150i RGB Pro XT looks great beside our other RGB components. Using Corsair’s iCUE software, we can control the RGB LEDs within this unit to display whatever colour we desire. RGB haters can simply turn their lights off if they want an RGB-free system.