Is The Stock Cooler Enough For The Ryzen 3700X CPU?
With Ryzen 5000-series CPUs currently in short stock, the Ryzen 7 3700X remains a popular choice at the $300 price point. It offers 8 cores and 16 threads of powerful performance, all in a neat 65w TDP package.
Cooling is a hotly debated topic. And while the 3700X does come with a Wraith Prism cooler, the question remains: Is the stock cooler enough for a Ryzen 3700X? The short answer is: The stock cooler is enough as long as your ambient temperatures are low and your case has good airflow. However, better cooling may be beneficial for better performance.
Below, we’ll go through different usage scenarios where you may need more than stock cooling for your Ryzen 7 3700x, the benefits of using a better cooler, and the pros and cons of different types of cooling.
Contents
- How Hot is Too Hot for a Ryzen 3700X?
- How Much Cooling Does a Ryzen 7 3700X Need?
- Does the 3700X Need Liquid Cooling?
- What Cooler Do I Need for the Ryzen 7 3700X?
How Hot is Too Hot for a Ryzen 3700X?
Heat kills. No matter what you’re doing in the computing world, this is a reality we all have to face. Higher temperatures lead to components wearing out faster through degradation, as well as slower performance.
It is important to keep these temperatures in check to ensure optimal performance and longevity of your components, especially the CPU.95°C is the maximum temperature specified by AMD. Going any higher than this will lead to a severe decrease in your CPUs lifespan.
The stock cooler, while sufficient in most cases, is still a part that is made to be cost-effective and cheap to produce. While it does its job and keeps the Ryzn 7 3700x CPU below this threshold, it still has its limitations when it comes to performance.
Thankfully, the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X does have built-in thermal protections that start throttling the CPU (purposely slowing it down) so that it won’t exceed this temperature. You can disable this temperature limit, but it is not recommended to do so. We’d recommend staying under 78c for better performance and for longevity of the CPU.
How Much Cooling Does a Ryzen 7 3700X Need?
Depending on your ambient (room) temperatures, case airflow, and intended use, you can get away with using the stock cooler in some cases. Better cooling will lead to better performance, however.
The way AMD’s CPU frequency boosting algorithm works, lower temps will give you a higher all-core boost frequency, with reasonable scaling all the way down to 60c.
But you don’t have to go that far to see noticeable gains. Even dropping temps from 80c to 70c will give you a 100-150 MHz boost in sustained all-core boost frequency. A $25-$40 cooler with quality paste will see your temps drop by up to 8-10c over the stock cooling solution, while also being quieter.
Does the 3700X Need Liquid Cooling?
Liquid cooling can offer advantages over conventional air cooling and better overall cooling performance. But this comes with added cost and a few drawbacks. A properly sized setup can also offer more thermal headroom for overclocking, better cooling capacity in hotter conditions, or more stable temperatures over long durations of high CPU load.
While liquid cooling can outperform a heatsink. Air cooling is almost always a better choice vs 120mm/140mm liquid coolers as it offers a better price/performance ratio. A similarly priced air cooler will outperform these smaller liquid coolers.
Coming to the 240mm/280mm/360mm and above sizes is where liquid coolers can really stretch their legs. A good, high-end liquid cooler will see your temperatures in the low-mid 60s when not overclocking, or around 70c with a good overclock.
Liquid cooling is also attractive thanks to neat packaging, fewer RAM clearance issues, and in some cases, better aesthetics compared to air coolers.
The drawbacks of liquid cooling are that some solutions may be noisy, either due to fan noise or pump hum.
Leaks may also be a concern, however, chances are extremely low on high-quality models. Pump failure is also something to look out for, as most AIOs only last for about 5-6 years.
If you do own the 3700x and find yourself needing to lower its temp, I advise that you read our guide “how to lower Ryzen 7 3700x temps“.
What Cooler Do I Need for the Ryzen 7 3700X?
What cooler you need will ultimately come down to your usage and conditions. Do you live in a place with hot room temperatures? Do you want to overclock? Will you be rendering, editing, or otherwise see high CPU utilization for long periods of time? Your answer to these questions will determine your needs.
Other things to consider are the size of the case you have or intend to build in, and whether or not you want air or liquid cooling. Below, we have some of the best cooling options for your Ryzen 7 3700X at their respective price points.
For a baseline upgrade over the stock Wraith Prism, we recommend the Deepcool GAMMAXX 400 v2.
This will give you a good improvement in temperatures, as well as offering a boost in performance thanks to the boosting algorithms mentioned before. Anything lower than this and you might as well just use the stock cooler.
For a more understated and sleek look, there’s the ever-popular Hyper 212 Black Edition. Offering similar performance to the GAMMAXX 400 v2
For those considering a small form-factor build, like a mini-ITX case, the Noctua NH-L12s is the perfect low-profile cooler. It offers premium build quality, quiet acoustics, and good thermal performance for such a compact design.
If you’re wanting to overclock the Ryzen 7 3700x some, or if you are using your CPU for extended periods at high load, the Scythe Fuma 2 is one of the best bang for buck air coolers on the market. It offers serious cooling performance, quiet acoustics, and is designed with RAM clearance in mind. This will be the best option for most since it offers excellent thermal performance while still keeping costs reasonable.
Cooler Master’s MasterLiquid ML240L RGB V2 is a solid entry-level liquid cooler that has the performance to back up its looks.
Arctic’s Liquid Freezer II 280 is one of the best price to performance liquid coolers available on the market today. It is the epitome of “form follows function”. For a serious overclock, this would make a perfect choice.
If you want a more flashy look, check out Corsair’s h215i RGB Platinum, which offers good performance, quiet operation, great aesthetics, and is backed by a 5-year warranty and solid customer service to boot.
EK also offers a premium and unique solution with their 360mm AIO for those wanting the best of the best with no compromises.
Conclusion
After thoroughly going over the limitations of the AMD Ryzen 7 3700x stock cooler and the benefits of better cooling, the bottom line is this;
The stock cooler can be used just fine in most cases, but a better cooling solution is recommended to get the most performance and stability out of your Ryzen 7 3700x CPU.
We’ve considered almost every price point and made recommendations we feel are the best options for the money.
If you are planning a 3700x build from scratch you should have a look at the 5 best motherboards for the Ryzen 7 3700x.
James Cosgrove
James Cosgrove has been the lead writer at GizmoFusion since 2019. He has a huge passion for the latest technology and gadgets. He loves to talk and write about this interest. He hopes that visitors to the website will find his reports informative and helpful when it comes to making the best choices for their needs.
3700x Temp Issues | Overclock.net
Hey all,
I just got a used 3700x off of eBay (it was marked «used» and not «for parts or repair») to replace my 1600. However, the temps are not what I expected. I’m getting 40-45 C at idle with it boosting to 70-75 C while running [email protected] or Prime95. This is for a chip that’s supposedly the same TDP as my old one. I’ve already checked my BIOS and disabled PBO as well as Core Performance Boost, and set the voltage at 1.
32v manually. I’ve also reinstalled the cooler twice thinking it was a thermal paste spread issue, but no dice there either.
Below are full specs:
- Ryzen 3700x used from an eBay seller
- Crosshair VI, tested with BIOS versions 7704 and 7901
- Wraith Prism cooler (the stock one that usually comes with the 3700x — bought it separately months ago)
- PBO setting disabled
- Core Performance Boost disabled
- Voltage set at 1.32v on manual mode
- VDDSOC voltage is 1.125v manual mode
- LLC is Auto
- PBO Max Temp is enabled at 65 C (work around until I fix these issues)
Right now, I think I’m just making a noob mistake coming from first gen. I had a p-state OC on first gen that got it to boost to 3.
8 GHz at around 63-65 C full load, so those were the max temps I was expecting for stock (since this is a stronger chip). (I also read around the internet a bit that 7nm can run hot because of the chiplet layout, but shouldn’t the IHS take care of that?) For the moment, I enabled the thermal throttle cap at 65 C so I can use my computer, but I’m definately looking for a way to use the actual stock configuration of this chip.
Let me know some thoughts, ideas, and prayers (if applicable).
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Overview of AMD Wraith Prism
CPU cooler Description
We didn’t find technical specifications on the official page of AMD Wraith Prism cooler. AMD is known to bundle AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processors with this cooler, whose «heat dissipation value» is 105W. This cooler belongs to the new line of AMD coolers, which includes five representatives, we reviewed the previous line in the article «Standard coolers for AMD processors in 2016». AMD Wraith Prism appeared a little later than the other four, and, apparently, it differs from the similar Wraith Max in terms of direct contact heat pipes, a reshaped heatsink fins (improving the compatibility of the cooler with motherboards and memory modules), as well as a more advanced version of the multi-color and multi-zone illumination.
The AMD Wraith Prism CPU cooler came packaged in a nondescript corrugated cardboard box.
The heatsink consists of a sole made of a thick copper plate, four heat copper pipes and fins made of nickel-plated aluminum connected in a single structure.
Tubes and soles do not have a protective/decorative coating. The ribs to the tubes and the sole, as well as the tubes to the sole, are soldered. The quality of the soldering is low, in some places the fins do not have contact with the sole and heat pipes.
This, of course, somewhat worsens the actual characteristics of the cooler. Tube diameter 6 mm, sole length 77 mm, width 58 mm, with a thickness of 3 mm at the edges and 5 mm closer to the center. The parts of the tubes running along the bottom of the sole are flattened. The bottom of the sole and the plane of the tubes are ground, but not polished. The sole is slightly, 0.1-0.2 mm, convex along the tubes and slightly concave across the tubes. The ground planes of the tubes have visible, but practically imperceptible, if you run a fingernail, surface defects.
The thickness of the ribs is 0.4 mm. The height of the heatsink from the bottom plane of the sole to the top of the ribs is 61 mm, and to the cutout for the memory strips — 29 mm.
The thermal interface of this cooler is applied in a thin layer on the sole at the factory.
It is protected by a figured overlay made of rigid transparent plastic. Let’s take a look at the distribution of thermal paste after testing this cooler (in this case, after the second test using MasterGel Maker thermal paste). On processor:
And on the heat sink base:
It can be seen that on most of the area of contact between the sole and the processor, the layer of thermal paste is very thin, and its excess is squeezed out to the edges.
The fan is mounted in a shroud that snaps onto the top of the heatsink. A fan from Cooler Master is used — most likely, the cooler itself was produced by the same company.
On the side plane of the casing there are two connectors, closed with rubber plugs, and an inconspicuous engine. About the connectors — below, and the engine switches the fan operation mode — reduced (L) or increased (H) rotation speed.
The fan impeller is made of transparent plastic and slightly frosted on the outside. There are four RGB LEDs on the fan stator that illuminate the impeller from the inside.
The shroud has a strip of translucent plastic that wraps around the fan and has a white AMD logo in the gap, also translucent. The stripe and logo are illuminated by multiple RGB LEDs. If the cooler is simply connected to a four (three) pin connector on the motherboard, then with a sufficient supply voltage, the backlight will work in the default mode, as in the video below:
The use of not quite typical miniature connectors, instead of the usual four-pin for RGB lighting and, for example, Mini-USB, should be considered as a disadvantage. The cooler comes with two cables with mating connectors.
The 4-pin cable can be connected to a standard RGB header on the system board or to a third party controller. In this case, only the illumination of the impeller can be controlled, the strip smoothly changes the color of the glow, and the logo glows white statically.
There is more variety if you connect the cable with a three-pin connector to the internal USB connector on the motherboard and use Cooler Master’s Wraith Prism software.
At startup, the software will check the firmware version of the cooler controller and offer to update it if a fresh version is found.
The tabs in the right half of the main window allow you to switch between stripe, impeller and logo illumination settings. The strip lighting has the most static and dynamic options, as it is illuminated by several independently controlled RGB LEDs.
There is even a variant with the transmission of the entered phrase in Morse code.
In the case of illumination of the impeller and logo, it is proposed to choose between one static and two dynamic options.
The video below demonstrates several variants of the cooler illumination when controlled from the specified software:
Testing
In the summary table below, we present the results of measuring a number of parameters.
| Height, mm | 93 |
|---|---|
| Width, mm | 105 |
| Depth, mm | 108 |
| Coolant weight, g | 582 |
| Thickness of radiator fins, mm (approx.) | 0.4 |
| Fin height, mm | 61 |
| Fan cable length, mm | 221 |
| Backlight cable length, mm | 600 |
| USB cable length, mm | 600 |
The cable from the fan is encased in slippery braid, the lighting cables are round PVC sheathed.
A full description of the testing methodology is given in the corresponding article «Testing methodology for processor coolers (coolers) of the 2017 sample». In this test, we used the Stress FPU test from the AIDA64 package as a program that loads the processor. Fan operating modes — low (L) or high (H) speed — tested separately.
Step 1.
Determine how cooler fan speed depends on PWM duty cycle and/or supply voltage
The adjustment range is wide — from 10% -15% to 100% with a smooth and non-linear increase in rotational speed, and when the duty cycle (SC) drops to 3%, the fan stops. This may be of value if the user wants to create a hybrid cooling system that operates fully or partially in passive mode at low load.
The adjustment range is also wide. The fan stops when the voltage drops to 2.1/2.7 V and starts from 2.2/2.9 V (H/L modes).
Stage 2. Determine the dependence of the processor temperature at full load on the speed of the cooler fan
In this test, the processor overheats at 30% short circuit in the case of H mode and at 40% short circuit when L mode is enabled.
Stage 3. Definition noise level depending on the fan speed of the cooler
Depends, of course, on individual characteristics and other factors, but in the case of coolers somewhere from 40 dBA and above, the noise, from our point of view, is very high for a desktop system, from 35 to 40 dBA the noise level is tolerable, below 35 dBA the noise from the cooling system will not stand out much against the background of typical quiet PC components — case fans, on the power supply, on the video card, as well as hard drives, and somewhere below 25 dBA the cooler can be called conditionally silent.
In this case, the entire range is covered, but in general the cooler is rather noisy.
Stage 4. Building the dependence of the noise level on the temperature of the processor at full load
Let’s try to get away from the test bench conditions to more realistic scenarios. Let’s say that the air temperature inside the case can rise to 44 °C, but the temperature of the processor under maximum load does not want to increase above 80°C. Restricting ourselves to these conditions, we construct the dependence of the real maximum power consumed by the processor on the noise level:
Taking 25 dBA as a criterion for conditional noiselessness, we find that the approximate maximum power of a processor corresponding to this level is about 85 W. Let us clarify once again that in harsh conditions of blowing the radiator with air heated to 44 degrees, when the air temperature drops, the indicated power limits for silent operation and maximum power increase. Hypothetically, if you do not pay attention to the noise level, the power limit can be increased to somewhere up to 110 watts.