Re: W11 support?

On Sat, 9/6/2025 2:00 PM, T wrote:
> On 9/6/25 10:37 AM, Paul wrote:
>> On Sat, 9/6/2025 11:43 AM, T wrote:
>>> Can anyone tell me if this cpu support Windows 11's weird
>>> hardware requirements?
>>>
>>> https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236783/intel-core-i7-processor-14700k-33m-cache-up-to-5-60-ghz/specifications.html?wapkw=i7-14700K
>>>
>>>
>>
>> What is a weird hardware requirement ?
>>
>> That thing will smoke Windows 11.
>> Pin it to the ground.
>> Make it say "Uncle".
>>
>> About 50% down this page.
>>
>>     https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-supported-intel-processors
>>
>> Make sure you have sufficient cooler. For one of my projects, I shrugged
>> off the suggestion to use water cooling. But now, when I see articles
>> like this, I would not be sticking some 160W air cooler on a thing like this.
>> They make a few 250W air coolers, and there is a Chinese vapor chamber cooler
>> (can't be bought here) that is better than a Dark Rock (for air coolers).
>>
>>     https://www.xda-developers.com/intel-core-i7-14700k-review/
>>
>> So while hunting for permission to install Win11 is part of the
>> mission, examining what the cooler shall be is also part
>> of the project. I don't actively track cooler developments, except
>> to take note of claims about some of them. If I didn't have
>> one of the coolers in the room, I would not have believed there
>> was anything better than a Noctua out there. But there are
>> better things, and they're using turbulent circulation as
>> the air goes through the cooler.
>>
>> A hard part of cooling, is after your cooler makes light
>> work of the 14700K, the air coming off the cooler,
>> must go right out the back of the tower. If you have
>> to augment the VCore cooling, that conflicts with passing
>> the VCore out the back of the machine. The airflows for
>> that are at 90 degrees to each other. One of the reasons for
>> buying the Phanteks, is a fan "above" VCore provides some
>> cooling for it, and now all the airflow is downwards, and
>> placing an exhaust fan across from the blob of a cooler,
>> pulls the warm air out of the case (a bit better). However,
>> other aspects of the Phantek (initially my PSU overheating
>> because of airflow), make the Phanteks not the best. I
>> would have to redo the case with Circuittest 37.5mm deep
>> fans, to try to do a better job. The PC stays off most
>> of the time, as it is TOO LOUD :-)
>>
>> Also, if doing a build, remember that the mass of some of the
>> items, tends to bend and torque shit. Which will have you
>> seriously considering a horizontal casing, rather than
>> a vertical casing. I really wanted to add vertical supports
>> to my cooler in the Phanteks case, but the places I need
>> to reach to do that, are offset from one another, and
>> the vertical support I need to build, is an "odd shape".
>> Which is why I haven't done it. Yet.
>>
>> The Test Machine has some plastic legs made out of recycled
>> plastic plumbing pipe, and that is to take some of the
>> twisting force off the cooler (and socket area).
>>
>> Even pint-sized video cards now (inoffensive things), they
>> are twisting in the PCIe slot. Sad really. Nothing has
>> broken yet, but it does not look nice.
>>
>> Don't forget to update the BIOS right away. It has the
>> newer microcode to protect the CPU. The CPU has *per instruction type*
>> voltage boost encoded in the microcode, and that needs to be
>> tuned via a new BIOS. The 13 and 14 series had an "aging issue"
>> caused by excessive voltage. Think how agile VCore has to be,
>> to do that. Your new BIOS will help patch UEFI issues, plus
>> take some of the pressure off the CPU on voltage spikes.
>>
>> She's going to smoke, the way only an Intel can smoke :-)
>>
>> DDR4 is going/is gone out of production, so your mobo
>> should be a DDR5 one (in any case).
>>
>>     Paul
> 
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> What do you think of this cooler?
> 
>  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L7UZMAK
>         Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2X NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans

That's likely the older model.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/noctua-nh-d15-g2-cpu-cooler/10.html

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/be-quiet-dark-rock-elite-cpu-air-cooler/7.html

I've got an AK620 on the AMD processor (~200W), the NH-D15 first generation
is on the 4930K at around 156W or so (12V @ 13A feeding VCore). The AK620
is smaller than the Noctua. I have an NH-C14S blow-down cooler (as I've used
a lot of blow-down coolers in the past), and that couldn't handle the 200W
processor, and the airflow was so poor, it didn't help cool VCore either.
But it isn't wasted, because that replaced the Wraith Stealth in-box cooler
on my daily driver -- I wasn't going to leave it just sitting in a box
doing nothing.

I think you need to look around a bit more, just in case you
miss a good one. There is no question the Noctua is a quality product,
but some of the others are slightly better on performance, and they
may not weigh quite as much.

One thing to note, the NH-D15 I only installed the center fan,
because the front fan made it impossible to access the RAM. The
RAM near the I/O plate area, I use a wooden stick to "home" the
RAM and close the lock latch. No room to fit hand in there, or
get fingers where needed. That's a disadvantage of the huge heatsinks
(the 4930K uses eight sticks of RAM, four on each side, and it
is a relative pain in the ass to work on the RAM).

A water cooler may have a higher power rating, but I just
don't like water mixed with electronics. Even though water has
advanced a lot from the old days, and you hardly hear leak-stories
any more :-)

But cooling makes or breaks these projects. The big machine here,
I don't run it all that often because of noise, and I can feel the
exhaust from it on this side of the room. It would look good in
a server room with the door locked, at a guess. But, with iterative
build, we figure these things out, as the build goes along.

While the second article above equated performance with beating the
100C throttle temperature, I would be aiming for better than that
when finding a cooler. I'd want to see a 70C temperature instead,
and it's going to take some hunting to find an air cooler to do that.
Especially when the room ambient goes up in summer.

You can see in the "OC Blender" table here, it takes some
of the water cooled radiators to beat the large metal blob
air coolers.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/deepcool-ak620-dual-tower-cpu-cooler/7.html

Some of those water coolers, aren't going to fit in a pint-sized Corsair,
so you have to measure carefully on the water coolers, to ensure a fit.
And if you go for too large a computer case, it's impossible to get the
hot air out of the case (I left the house while memtest(!) was running,
and the power supply was overheating when I got home). That's why today,
I can feel the exhaust air from that computer, on the other side of the
room :-) It's just a build that got out-of-hand, due to the case
being too big. Still a nice case though, no sharp edges
to cut yourself on. To try to fix the airflow, a number of vents
on that case got the foil HVAC tape applied to them, so the air
would flow through the more useful holes. There is still some
taping to go (subject to more hardware going into the case when
it is available).

Maybe some day, the fans I've got will come out, and some
CircuitTest 37.5mm thick fans will go in their place. And each
will need a speed adjuster (they're not PWM and they need a
rheobus to control them). The fan in question has a metal blade,
rather than a plastic one. Rated 12V @ 1A or so (if run flat out).
They spin a bit slower, which helps reduce the "obvious" noise
the current fans make.

It's just hard to tweak this stuff and make something useful.
The 4930K started out a bit on the loud side, but I replaced
the exhaust fan with a quieter one, and placed a blower next
to VCore, and it's stayed like that for eleven years. The noise
level on it is "tolerable" so it gets to stay on a bit longer.
One of the reasons "the case is too big" on the big machine,
is because that provides room for a fan to blow on VCore. The fan
is above VCore, and I couldn't do that with the Antec Sonata case
(the blower has to blow horizontal, and there's just no path
for the air to flow, with all the other crap inside the case).

It's a three dimensional zoo, building these things now, and
my rule of thumb is "I don't want to touch anything in
a computer and burn myself". That's what happened on the 4930K
while testing the first day.

   Paul