Only reason I’d do AIO is if I got an enormous one like a 360, or if i had some tiny mini itx case that needed a 120 which would be better than some of the ultra low pro air coolers
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The three heat pipes kill the H7, even my 8600k would spike like crazy on it. I eventually replaced it with a Noctua u12s which handled it much better. The H7 got moved to the Ryzen 2600x and I went with a U12A on my OC 9700k. But for it’s time you could not ask for an easier HS to install with a fan that performed and stayed silent without Noctua/ Be Quiet prices.
The Quad Lumi is a tiny bit of an upgrade over the standard H7; it has 4 heat pipes.
It actually works well (under 85 max load, realbench, cbr20, etc.) with my 8700k at 5ghz 1.37v.
The interesting thing is, i never actually intended to OC. I picked this up for looks alone, and was pretty happy with how it’s held up.
Delidding was because…bored?
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lol this is what i had paired with my 2600k, in a push pull setup, was completely overkill but i guess also allowed me to go over 1.4vcore.
Since you’re talking about cases, I have a question for everyone. For context: I’ve worked in the corporate/enterprise side of things for a long time but never had cause to play with benchmarks and some of these little tweaks you guys do. Now that I’ve started, of course one thing has led to another and here I am… 
My case has 1 CPU fan and 3 case fans - two in front and one in the rear (case has mesh in front and on top). Board is ASRock B450 Pro4 and the BIOS has options to set the fan on Silent, Standard, Performance and Full.
At purchase, CPU fan was set to Silent and case fans were all at Standard. My CPU (Ryzen 5 3600) would reach temperatures of around 80-83 under load (especially when in WoW) and be mostly in the high 40s-60s while working/playing. By setting ALL the fans to performance my top CPU temp has been around 77-78 with no appreciable difference in noise. My question is, is it worth doing this? Is the life of the fan impacted by running it harder? Does that difference in temp warrant the change?
Also, the case fans are all set to use MB temp not CPU temp - is this optimal? How do you guys and gals have your fans configured (speed, CPU vs MB, etc.)?
While I’m at it, related to temp and fans - my 2070 is listed as having a Max Temp of 89. The card, by default is set with Target Temp of 81 max. It is a blower GPU so it doesn’t really impact case temperature much. I’ve got an OC on the card and I can set the Temp Target to 79 (or any other number) so the fan is a bit more aggressive - again no appreciable noise difference - again, does this make a difference?
Overall, this system runs much hotter than my i5-4440 and 1050ti (which had external power and an aggressive OC) - but from what I’ve read my temps are normal. Is there any advantage or disadvantage to these fan settings I’ve been playing with? Am I better off just setting it back to what it was and leaving it alone?
Thanks for any advice and feedback! 
What are you using to monitor the CPU temps? Programs like HWmonitor are not accurate and will read a higher temp as it takes the temp from a different location (forgot the name but can link a video). You should use ryzen master (if not already) to monitor temps.
edit - there is almost a 10c difference when i look at HWmonitor vs ryzen master
As for running the fans at a higher speed, unless they are defective you wont really notice a difference in life. In fast I am willing to bet the fans would outlast your current build by a few years.
Since I have a AIO for my CPU i kinda set the fans aggressive and they tend to ramp up to 100% (push/pull) at 75c. Kinda the same with my gpu (5700 xt) as i have it to really ramp up at around 75c.
For myself, I hate fan noise so either I set my fans to a constant RPM or I set them to CPU temp not MB temp.
To answer your questions;
1- depends
2- yes and no. The quality of the fan (and it’s bearings) would have a greater impact but obliviously running fans 24/7 at max RPM decreases their life but it’s the cheap sleeve bearing fans that tend to kick the bucket early.
3- not really in my opinion. Running my Noctua fans at max rpm only lowers temps around 2-3c, not worth the noise.
You said your case has mesh on the top? Maybe grab another exhaust fan and place it top rear position to help with those CPU temps.
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Only thing I’ll add is exhaust is incredibly important.
So I cancelled my Meshify C order and D15 order. I just don’t like the geometry on it and I don’t want to swap around RAM yet.
Ended up going with the Corsair 275R Airflow and a pack of DEEPCOOL RF120M 5-in-1 RGB fans.
Yeah, at this point it mostly for looks. Sue me, lol.
It SHOULD give some better airflow than the S340, since it has slots literally everywhere up in the front panel.
If it turns out CPU gets hammered by new GPU heat, i’ll reassess CPU cooler then. I just really like the look of this Cryorig. LOL
Thanks! I had HWMonitor, HWInfo and Ryzen Master side-by-side just to compare the temps. I understand that the former are not said to be as accurate, but by comparing them you can see how much variation there is and account for it. It doesn’t appear that Ryzen Master will track high/low/avg (am I missing something?). I’m not running the fans on Full and from what I understand Performance just ramps them up more aggressively.
After you suggested this, as an experiment, I took a small floor fan I have and put it on top of the case to pull some air out. It appears to have lowered the temp several degrees. Thanks for this suggestion, I’ll look at adding a fan in the case. (Unless you would suggest just mounting it with some duct tape 
).
What about my overall temps? From what I’m reading they are within the ‘normal’ range for AMD with stock coolers…
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Don’t laugh, I recall years ago (like 12 at least) a user on the Tom’s forum duct taped a box fan to his PC case to lower temps!
I would say with the wraith cooler your gaming temps should be a few degrees cooler so I would say your CPU is running warm (but well within operating temps) but not hot to the point you need to take action. The extra fan obviously helps. Also there is a difference between spike temp and operating temp. My OC 9700K can spike to the high 60’s but overall tends to stay in the upper 50’s while gaming. Remember; more cores = more cache on the CPU + small die = more concentrated heat.
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So this is my recommendation:
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Get another 120mm fan and mount it in the exhaust position on the top. Exhaust is more important than intake. Although a lot of people like positive air pressure for the purposes of dust prevention, if you don’t have enough exhaust your system won’t be able to dump the heat effectively. This is why in cases that only come with one fan, it’s ALWAYS situated at the rear as exhaust. Your case has one rear exhaust and two intakes, in what appears to be a solid front panel that doesn’t appear to have much airflow. So that said, you have one exhaust fan doing all the work and two intake fans not really able to do their job. Alternatively, you can relocate one of the front fans to the rear top position as exhaust to see if that alleviates the problem.
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Get an aftermarket CPU cooler. Although AMD has included competent coolers, the quality of the OEM cooler in the third generation series took a serious dip. For one, they dropped the copper core on the heatsink for a fully aluminum core. Several media outlets investigated this and came to the same determination. A modest CPU cooler like even a Hyper 212, DEEPCOOL Gamaxx 400, or an Arctic Freezer 33/34esports Duo would improve your cooling capacity significantly over the nerfed Wraith Stealth cooler included with the Ryzen 5 3600, and even allow for some overclocking.
Note: Ryzen 3000 series’ boost frequency, from my understanding, is affected by temperature. It functions a lot like GPUs, and even though they may not “throttle” until 95c, they may still not boost as aggressively even at temperatures below throttle point. So for example, your stock Ryzen 5 3600 may boost higher at say 60c than it will at 85c.
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The NZXT was a fine case to build in and looked great but poorly designed for airflow and could suffer from hot zones. It had two major faults;
1- two small slits for air up front (virtually all small cases shared this same issue during this time). This made users run their fans at higher speeds trying to create a “positive” air flow but was counter productive to the GPU. These GPUs with double and triple fans pull plenty of cool air from the vented PCI slots. When you blast a lower fan at high RPM you are preventing the GPU from pulling in cool air from it’s rear fan.
2 - one roof top fan mount. This is not an issue back when you had metal side panels grilles to pull cool air in but with the glass panel craze those days are gone. Once again people don’t realize that front open roof mount is more important to air cooled CPU HSF then the front fan is if it’s choked by front air slits. The HSF pulls cool air directly in from the front roof space but NZXT closed that off permanently in the S340.
Basically the case was clearly designed for AIO and you needed heavy “negative” air flow to get temps down which is how it shipped (two exhaust fans) if i recall.
FYI, I’m not a big “positive” vs “negative” airflow person. cases are not sealed air tight. They have openings virtually everywhere (front, back, top, and bottom) Just have a clear path of cool air coming in and a clear path of hot air leaving. Don’t stick fans in every direction so air paths fight each other and create hot zones.
Its not that they are inaccurate, its just the way amd set up the thermal sensors is different. So HWmonitor and others like it read it differently compared to Ryzen master. You can use HWmonitor no problem but just keep in mind that it will usually read 10-15c hotter than what ryzen master will say.
quick lil info
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At the time when I built it, I was buying locally and Fry’s actually had some decent cases. I chose the S340 based on aesthetics alone, and I kinda have been paying for it since.
My original goals were a lot different when I first purchased everything than what they became shortly thereafter. Been fixing it over time, but this is the last part.
I went back and forth on multiple different cases yesterday. Started with the Cooler Master NR600 (well reviewed), but I ultimately did not like the overall size and build quality in videos seemed a bit on the lower side, but understandable given the price. Then I went to the Meshify C, which I just did not like the front panel appearance. It has shiny black plastic, which I just can’t get behind. I’m a matte kind of guy when it comes to black. Then I investigated the Corsair 220T, but that is on the smaller side and didn’t accommodate larger coolers and GPUs. FInally, I came to this, the Corsair 275R Airflow.
The Corsair 275R Airflow Edition addresses several things from the S340 that I dislike:
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Airflow: Ventilated front panel - I am not really sure how good this is, and am a bit dubious overall since it has both a filter and only a slotted front panel, not mesh. That said, it does appear to be much better than the solid chunk of metal in front of my S340. I haven’t found any legit reviews on it specifically, but it does look better than what I currently have. Larger vented ceiling - Allows for up to 2 dual 140mm fans and has a filter (which maybe not needed for exhaust, but does prevent large bits from falling in) and I feel this alone may be of great benefit. The S340 only has a single 120mm exhaust ceiling mount.
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Internally, the case can accommodate GPUs up to 370mm and CPU cooler height up to 170mm vs the S340’s 334mm GPU and 161mm CPU height. This mostly opens up the options for CPU coolers, as a lot of the good air tower coolers are over 165mm.
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The tempered glass window is a major aesthetic improvement over the rounded corner acrylic window that I have already scratched from day 1 on the S340.
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The cable management system looks better. The S340 has that bar that just hides cables, but the 275R Airflow has two rubber grommets which are much easier to work with.
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I like the drive management system better. It accommodates up to four 2.5" drives and two 3.5" drives, all out of sight.
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Since the top, front, and side are all slotted/vented, all the RGB can be seen.
Really, the Corsair 275R Airflow just seems like a better NZXT S340.
The S340 is not a bad case. It’s well built, looks great and makes a fine basic gaming PC case (stock settings low thermals) or a fantastic office/home PC case.
It’s a vast improvement over the old 275R and a fine case. I’m glad brands are going back to the open front panel be it mesh or slotted.
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Yeah, it’s so weird how I justified my purchases and how I ended up changing pretty much everything about my mindset. Previously, I had a low profile mini-ITX case that was very very conservatively styled. I wanted something flashy and pretty.
Originally, having not been much of an overclocker, my thought process was:
- I’ll grab the 8700k and maybe just turn on MCE.
- I want this part and that for looks specifically, such as the Cryorig Quad Lumi RGB and my Corsair Vengeance LED RAM.
- I just want a cool looking PC.
Fast forward two months: I WILL OVERCLOCK EVERYTHING
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Sal, I think you need to justify a purchase of the new Cryorig R5 cooler and their RGB Crono fans (announced yesterday, check out their web site)…mainly so you can review the products for me 
I just looked at this. I’m a bit dubious about the claim for 200w TDP cooling capacity.
The R5 states it has a 580g heatsink, but the Quad Lumi is 585 and only claims 160w TDP cooling capacity. The R5 does have 50% more heatpipes and another higher CFM fan (2x76CFM fans vs the single 59CFM on the QL) which may account for that extra claimed headroom…but I am gonna have to wait for a review for this one.
If I replace my Quad Lumi, it will be for one of the big boys and I will swap out my other two systems that have LPX ram.
Heatpipes can vary between 20-40 TDP depending on surface area and the heatsink fin density. If the Quad Lumi is 160w TDP, I can see the R5 being 200 TDP with the extra two heatpipes.
I’m just dubious overall about TDP in general.
I think mass is important, and I think it’s lacking in that regard compared to the other alternatives. It seems like it’s definitely a compromise for RAM clearance.
That doesn’t make it a bad product, in fact it makes a lot of sense. If it is an RGB-centric cooler that allows for view of other RGB RAM…it fills a need that is presently lacking in the market.
There aren’t many high-power air coolers that feature RGB from reputable manufacturers, and usually RGB ends up in the realm of AIOs.