The £3000 Custom Loop PC – with Corsair Hydro-X and AMD 3950X!

1. Introduction2. Unboxing and First Look3. Testing Methodology: Thermal Performance4. Performance and Comparisons5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

To measure the performance of the Corsair Hydro-X CPU loop we devised an easily repeatable series of tests. The only variable is the coolers themselves to ensure the results can be accurately compared against one another.

Test Rig

• CPU – AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
• Motherboard – Asus ROG Strix X570-E Gaming
• Memory – 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO DDR4-3200
• Graphics Card – Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super Gaming OC
• Storage – 500 GB Corsair MP600 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD
• Power Supply – 850W Corsair RM850X
• Case – Corsair Crystal 570X
• System fans – 2 X Corsair QL120 RGB 120mm top/rear-mounted as exhaust
• Operating System – Windows 10 version 1909

Thermal Testing Procedure

The procedure will consist of several tests that will produce six temperature readings for each cooler. The data can then be used to compare thermal dissipation performance.

First, we will lock the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X at its 3.5GHz all-core base clock speed, with a 1.15V Vcore applied in the BIOS and level 5 load line calibration to ensure voltage remains consistent. Then load the CPU and measure the Tctl/Tdie temperature during the test which will provide us with hundreds of cells of data.

To simulate overclocked frequency, we will then lock the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X to 3.9GHz on all cores with a 1.20V Vcore and run the same load test again. To measure an extreme overclocking situation, we will lock the Ryzen 9 3950X frequency to 4.3GHz on all cores with 1.25V Vcore and run the test one final time – this should push the limits of the cooling performance of even the very best cooling solutions.

Admittedly, the overclocked frequencies/voltage may not be the highest achievable, nevertheless, it will give us a good set of data to compare the effect that frequency/voltage changes have on temperature.

The temperatures presented in the graphs will be average Delta temperatures measured over the length of the test. We will calculate the Delta temperature by deducting the ambient temperature in the test room from the measured CPU temperature under load. During testing the ambient temperature is between 19°C – 21°C

Load temperatures are achieved by running AIDA64 stressing CPU, FPU and cache for 20 minutes. This should give the CPU enough time to reach its maximum temperature. An additional 10-minute loop of Cinebench R20 multi-thread benchmark will then be run at each CPU frequency/voltage to simulate the thermal performance of each cooling solution during a real-world multithread workload. HWInfo will be used to monitor temperatures and system information during all tests and throughout testing, all CPU Fans/pumps are set to maximum RPM.

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