Hardware stub

Ask GN 26: Planar vs. FinFET, Power Draw vs. Better Cooling

Posted on August 22, 2016

This week's Ask GN episode answers viewer questions about FinFET vs. Planar, the impact of cooling on power consumption, CPU load for 120Hz / 144Hz displays, liquid cooler testing, and a few extras. We spend most the time talking liquid coolers and cooler testing – a fitting topic, having done multiple “Hybrid” video card builds lately.

The full list of questions with their timestamps can be found below the video. Thanks to our viewers for the questions and, as always, post more in the video comments on YouTube for inclusion in next week's episode.

Timestamps

00:52 Svarthofde: "What is the difference between 14nm Planar and 14nm FinFET??"

02:43 ikjadoon: "can you talk about if it's true that 120Hz and 144Hz are actually CPU-intensive?"

03:44 Teemo4Life: "What's binned?"

06:26 Jordan Cave: "hi Steve, Love the work you guys are doing. My question is: Does watercooling reduce cpu/gpu power consumption for the same sustained base and turbo clocks , when compared to standard air cooling??"

08:26 Chris Hsu: "QUESTION:

How long do you guys test your AIOs, if GN does CPU cooler benchmarking?

I don't trust test data from many websites because water in an AIO system takes a long time to heat up due to the high specific heat. AIO coolers have two stages of heat flux, simplified as CPU -- coolant and coolant -- environment. From a random forum post, I pulled CPU: 29-31 H100i coolant: 28.7 and CPU: 64-66C H100i: 33.1. Over a 35C increase in CPU temperature, the coolant temperature increased 4.4C. Maybe the coolant temperature hasn't reached peak yet and might take some time?

Also, do you think that the heat transfer seems to be limited by mostly the thermal resistance of the contact between the die-IHS and IHS-coldplate? It might be that since coolant temperature target is <40C on the h100i, and people can't overclock too much or their intel CPUs will get past 80C, the temperature difference between the die and (stable) coolant is nearly constant across different wattages, like say 65C cpu (nonOC, 70W) | 33C coolant and 85C CPU (OC, 120W) | 40C coolant. Those two examples would have a temperature difference of 32C and 45C, a minor 30% increase, but the wattage dissipated rises 70W. This might be the reason why delidding is supposedly even better on water cooling.?"

10:53 IceBergs.: "Hi GN. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS Platinum on a old FX 8320 MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard. I use my Sound Blaster every day and destroys my on board audio quality by far. I want to upgrade to a new CPU/MOBO combo but still want to use my SB 2ZS for mini studio work. Can I use one of these without any problems outside of the case? Or within the case mounted under possibly a Micro ATX board? Have you ever used a riser like this and would it work good enough to provide good audio I have come to love. (PCI-E Express X1 to dual PCI riser)"

12:58 Himanshu Ghadigaonkar (The Iron Man): "Hey gamer nexus.. How can I get long hair like yours??"

Host: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke
Video: Andrew “ColossalCake” Coleman