Noctua NH-U9 TR4-SP3: Keeping Threadripper Running Happy With Air Cooling
Patches for supporting the Ryzen/Threadripper/Epyc CPU temperature reporting under Linux were only made public days ago. So when first getting this heatsink and previously using the closed-loop water cooling system, I wasn't able to grab any CPU temperatures.
Though with the patches now available and can be found in hwmon-next, I did run some benchmarks of the Threadripper 1950X system with this patched Linux 4.14 kernel. The 4U chassis used was the SilverStone CS350.
That's a look at the Threadripper 1950X with Noctua NH-U9 TR4-SP3 under a variety of different workloads. The average temperature was 44.9°C with a peak of 66.25°C. That's not bad for air cooling with a 180 Watt CPU. Though some Linux users have said the k10temp Zen CPU temperature reporting is lower than what is found from the BIOS or under Windows. But anyhow, I haven't run into any thermal throttling or any thermal-related issues in the few weeks of using the NH-U9 TR4-SP3 heatsink.
During OpenMP workloads and parallel code compilation is obviously when the Threadripper was getting the warmest.
While during single-threaded workloads, the temperature was quick to recede.
The dual 92mm fans are relatively quiet, the NH-U9 TR4-SP3 squeezes into 4U height requirements, and it's all-around been working out well on my Threadripper Linux system. The NH-U9 TR4-SP3 is currently priced at $69 USD from the likes of Amazon and NewEgg.
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