Looking for a cooling upgrade for the i9-9900K?
Looking for a cooling upgrade for the i9-9900K?
Hello, your i9-9900K is running at 5GHz with a voltage of 1.356V. The Cinebench results show temperatures around 93°C during load and 40–52°C when idle—this is typical for the package under normal use. You’re considering direct die cooling or upgrading to a larger AIO like the 360mm. Pushing it to 5.2 or 5.3 GHz is also feasible, but you’ll need to ensure your cooler and case support it. It’s a good idea to monitor temperatures closely before committing to a bigger cooler.
Increasing the fan speed makes it seem like a jet is taking off. You have noctua fans, so you might want to consider a custom loop with 2x 280mm rads. It could be a good investment rather than a waste.
I might have just landed in the silicon drawing but have you considered lowering the voltage slightly and checking stability? I’m using a 9900K F@H and Prime 95 stable at 5.1 all cores with a -0.1 AVX offset, running at only 1.3V on the BIOS (1.225V full load in CPUZ or AIDA64). My setup runs a custom open loop, but temperatures are currently handling both CPU and GPU as they merge in the room. With my current setup it’s hard to push the CPU temperature beyond 20.5°C, while the water loop reads 30.3°C, and the GPU sits at 45°C. The issue seems to be that the cooling system can’t keep up with the heat output. Even when I include the GPU in the same loop, the poor thermal transfer from the CPU chip to the water is limiting performance. I can push the chip up to 5.2 all cores, but I need the voltage settings you mentioned and am very close to matching those temperatures. You could try reducing the voltage further as a regular adjustment. Another option is swapping the standard thermal paste for liquid metal if you haven’t done so already—it would help the cooler do its job and bring the CPU down a few degrees.
I’m likely to crash the CPU since my current settings use an AVX offset of 3 and a medium LCC setting.