CPU Air Coolers

I used to have a water cooling system with my pump and radiator outside my case, I put the radiator in my window to blow the hot air outside. Worked great, but I had to downgrade to make a more portable system to take to college

 

pertty much every AIO (all in one like corsair H110i or others) have a pump that is louder than a good air cooler, have similar cooling capacity (in term of watts) and are more expensive and are less reliable.

they advertize them as being better at cooling and that is false.

but in theory ofcourse you can install any size radiator and pump for watercooling and you can attach a car carburator and a house size pump and cool anything but the point is that for a regular 45 watt to 90 watt cpu (which almost all of home and small office use) they cool the same, but watercooling is louder (the most imporatnt thing for me) and less reliable and more expensive. only an idiot would choose watercooling unless they need a coolling capacity beyond 110 watts or have a particular problem with airflow where their computer is located._

this is my computer that im typing on right now. the cpu is overclocked to 4.4 Ghz it is at 32 degrees and it is quiet and it is half the price of the shitty f'ing corsair.



i was using it as a source the other day

 

I tend to stay away from watercooling, it even scares me seeing even the most competent tech youtubers have their watercool'd systems leak on them.

I'm currently running a Noctua NH12S for my CPU, and plan to get the all-black version when that one comes out.


Jayz2cents recently did a shootout with a beefy watercooler vs the beefy noctua air cooler. Performance pretty similar between the two approaches. The big takeaway was that the thermal spreader is the botleneck for intel cpus.

 

The main reason I bought that first AIO 7 years ago was looks. Yep. At the time I was more interested in how my PC looked than how loud or reliable it was. Why did I buy the h100i when my h100 worked perfectly fine? It looked better. Now I'm more interested in my PC being quiet than looking good. Both are perfectly valid reasons to buy something as long as you know what you're getting.

 

Yes that was a great video. Jay is a good dude. And yeah, seeing Kyle's Hotline PC leak pretty much scared me off open loops for good.

 

Been running open loops for 20 years and I haven't leaked once; outside pump-only leak-tests anyway, thats what they're for, to find out when I've been a goober and did something wrong.

I don't do fancy hard-line tubing, use fittings that rotate, or use polycarbonate blocks, and that takes out 99.99% of possible causes.

My servers are air-cooled though, with whatever the biggest noctua that fits in the case is, and some noctua case fans.

You have to drain and clean enemy a dye-free loop every couple of years, so I only do that on machines that get upgraded that often anyway.

Closed loops have a 4-5yr life (the coolant evaporates) so those are out too for machines that are expected to just work for a decade.

Anyway, so long as you're fine with hearing your rig when it's working hard, and you're not doing crazy heat densities, aircooling is great.

 

I'm not too much of a fan of those closed AIO-coolers unless you have space constraints to work within, performance is typically on par with the best high-end air coolers but the price is usually slightly higher. Then there is sometimes pump noise and the fact that they tend to die after 3-5 years is a serious bummer.

If you're going to do watercooling best to go all the way with an open custom loop, that way you have full control over the system and can replace and service parts as needed. For max performance a custom loop built by someone who knows what they're doing still can't be beat. Well... there are ways but let's not go there.

Personally though I'm more than happy with air these days, I run my 8700k (D15) with a progressive OC up to 4.7GHz. That is to say it's not locked at 4.7GHz but scales all the way from 800Hz to 4700GHz using speed step and all the fancy stuff. So that gives me 12 threads working at up to 4.7GHz... plenty fast enough for me. Stable +100 fps in Far Cry 5 with a 1080ti.

I could go watercooling and very likely push it up beyond 5GHz.... but to get it stable I would likely have to lock the multiplier, so no speed step and the cpu running 100% all the time... not so fun. And I would get what... 3 fps more in Far Cry 5? Lol, no thank you.

As it's running right now cpu is at 800Hz with a ~15W power draw, so it's no room heater under low load. And also dead silent with a D15. So, basically.. real water cooling is good and nice... and it does give you max performance. But you have to be an enthusiast and I think you have to want to tinker with it for it to be worth it.

If you love fiddling and finding that last 10% of performance then by all means go all out on a open loop, I've been there and it can be fun. Otherwise high-end air is very good these days, just don't forget about the case airflow. it's all about the case airflow.

 

Ah, I speedstep mine too.

All that I'm getting from mine is that while gaming, I can't hear the cooling*. If I had a mechanical drive it would be the loudest thing in the case by far.

That's where the difference is for me really, any good air cooler in a properly setup case is below the noise floor at idle with modern stuff.

So if you're not locked overclocking and you don't have your rig running 100% for hours from games or video rendering or whatnot, or you work/game with closed cans, air cooling is just as good as water, but much cheaper and more convenient.**

* 7x 140mm radiator dimension = fans don't even spin up from idle.

** you want to be just as careful if you ever need to move it though, as 500g+ of metal hanging off your cpu socket is no laughing matter if you drop it too hard onto the desk or floor.

 

@Taverius

I'm guessing you've watercooled your gpu too? Otherwise that will for sure be the biggest noise source.

But yeah, there is that. Mine is dead silent under low load and then it's carefully tweaked with air flow and noise dampening so high-load it's just a whooshing sound more than anything. And I'm playing with headphones anyway so I can't hear it. Biggest noise source is the air cooled gpu for me, I'm actually running it at 80% power envelope in a lot of games... crazy but it's powerful enough and that makes it cool and quiet.

 

I've been using a H100i on a stock 4770K for a few years and don't have any complaints. I know it's overkill, I don't care. I recently switched my GPU from a 7950 to a 1080 and now I don't hear my rig from a few feet away, while playing Overwatch or doing anything else.

 

These are the fans I have in my case now. Very quiet but move lots of air. Good static pressure for overcoming obstructions.

Kinda. I got a 1070 before GPU prices went to shit, haven't done much with my system since then.

I suppose you also saw the video where he had to tear his system apart because he misplaced some thermal pads on his full coverage block? That's why I would never do water cooling; the amount of hassle to do basic maintenance would tilt me off the face of the earth.

 

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I ordered a NH D14, should be here tonight. After I install it and test I'll post an update.

 

@LetMeBeFrank when it comes to those, lay down your pc so that you're dropping the cooler on top of the CPU.

Lovely as they are, it's impossibru to mount it and not squeeze the thermal schmoo all to one side if the motherboard is upright

 

This sounds highly promising, but won't be anytime soon:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/tech/cooling/noctua-reveals-fifth-gen-nh-u12-cooler/1/

 

Well the install was super easy, mostly because I didn't have to take the motherboard out of the case thanks to the huge opening in the motherboard tray of the Define R6. The cooler works great, I have the fans (my 2x NF-F12 IPPC) turned pretty low. They are around 1000 rpm and I can't hear them. Going from the top-exhaust H100I to the NH-D14 with the top of the case closed off dropped about 18dB in ambient noise (according to my phone) at the same temps. I am very satisfied with this setup for sure.

 

would it be possible for you to post a picture? i want to see how much clearance you have on each side and ioveral hat it looks like. My thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme is actually perfect for AMD AM4 but i itching to get a d14 myself so i want to see whats up.

 

Sure thing. No lighting in the case other than the 1080ti so I had to use flash.

 

oh my dayyyum ..i forgot how huge it is. but i think that i have just enough space. gonna pick one up. thanks.

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OT: btw this is the origin of the term "og my dayyyum" in modern English vocabulary for people who are curious