Corsair H60 question

You should definitely find a fan which has high static pressure as the air will be going into a radiator, which offers high resistance.

Also, just because it makes no sound when unobstructed doesn't mean it'll be as quiet when against the radiator: the fan itself doesn't make almost any noise, it's the air moving that does.

What's the fan you have?

Hello, theorically it should fit and work fine.
But your case fan is probably not as fast as the H60 one (in terms of RPM I mean), so the cooling may not be as good (the difference shouldn't be too much anyway).

You can also replace the stock corsair fan of the H60 by one of these : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181025 which are very quiet and nice

Regards

To be completely honest with you, there's no better solution than trying it out.

Get the cooler and try your fan: if it's too noisy I assume you can live with the jet engine for a few days while you get a new fan.

On my single-fan watercooler I have a Corsair SP120 PWM, so that it doesn't run full-power when I'm browsing some videos, but it kicks in when it is necesssary. If your fan turns out to be too noisy, I absolutely recommend these fans.

These are the fans I recommended also SP120 Quiet

I wouldn't go for the quiet, I'd get the PWM version. With PWM you can either make it spin as fast as a Quiet or as fast as a High Performance, so that it's quiet when you're doing nothing but more powerful when intensively working: basically giving you full control.

A) Right now you should let it like it is. When it is being used as the CPU Cooler fan you should search in the BIOS for some sort of smart control (in my BIOS it's called Smart Fan Control), which will allow you to configure PWM. When in the OS you can use programs such as SmartFan to further customise.

B) It should be pulling air from the cooler and throwing it outside, there have been tests (which I can't really search for right now) showing it's more efficient to pull than to push air through the cooler.

My motherboard for example has two CPU ports, one which is PWM and the other isn't (PWM has 4 pins), so just make sure to plug it in the CPU port with PWM if there is one without.

And like I told you before, you can get lots of fans and if you try them when they're not pulling/pushing air from the radiator they're really quiet: it's the air moving through the pipes that makes the noise. Since your fan doesn't have *any* obstruction, it's basically soundless. Once you try it out in the radiator you'll see it'll make some noise, but with PWM you can customize that.

Unless the fan itself is making a noise (clicking for example), I really doubt any PWM fan will have a better performance/sound ratio than any other unless it's spinning faster than the other can.

However the kind of fan matters, for heatsinks you need Static Pressure of around 3.0 or higher, whereas in Exhaust fans you'll want higher CFM because there's no need for pressure (pressure is good to send air into obstructions).

Only in non-PWM fans do you have to be more careful because they'll always be at full power: if you get a 4000 RPM fan, it'll be at 4000 RPM and sounding like an airplane all the time.

2.7 will be enough, don't worry about it. I only mentioned 3.0 because it's the usual, all the radiator fans I see are from 2.5 to 3.5, that's why.

And aircooling is still really good, as long as you find a good cooler! The Hyper 212 EVO is good, although it won't allow you to achieve high overclocks, but you should be able to get some OC'ing. Don't know much about the H60 to compare.

Static pressure is mainly in the blades: the larger they are the better.

Static pressure affects, basically, how much air manages to get back through the fan after it hits an object. The bigger the blades, the harder it is for the air to get back because there's a much bigger obstruction that won't let it. This if in push (where it matters the most).

If in pull, it affects how strongly is it pulling the air, if I'm not mistaken, and it's noticeable when using smoke to watch the airflow. You'll see that air isn't entering from the opposite side where the fan is: it's coming in sideways near the fan ( I saw that being shown on a fan with 0.6 or around that).

And about temps, it's the load temp that matters. The idle temp is usually room temperature plus a few degrees, doesn't vary much. Load temperature however relies on how fast can the cooler dissipate the heat to keep the CPU fresh when it's burning hot.

Since you'll have access to both fans, why not test which one sounds better? No need to worry about which one is the quietest if you'll have access to both for free and can test. You will NOT see a difference bigger than 1ºC, I'm absolutely sure of that, so just rely on the sound.

The Hyper 212 EVO is great, won't allow you to reach ridiculously high overclocks but you'll be able to get a neat overclock, while taking full advantage of good airflow in a case.

Best of luck, feel free to post here (or make a new post) if any new situations arise.

The h60 will also consume some time installing, not as easy as it sounds.

Also, I'd get thermal paste (instead of using the one that comes pre-placed). Never used corsair coolers, but other cooling companies use medium-quality pastes. If you get good paste (Artic Silver 5 for example) you can lower temperature by a few extra degrees.

It won't be a HUGE difference, but it'd be a shame to get a great cooler and not use a great thermal paste, don't you think? After all, watercooling IS to shave off those few degrees!

I think there are guides here at tomshardware to apply thermal paste. I use the rice method, basically put a bit of thermal paste, a little bit larger than a grain of rice, in the middle. Then screw the cooler in. When screwing, ALWAYS do it in an X pattern. So you screw in top left corner a bit, then bottom right a bit, then bottom left, then top right, then top left again, so on so on.

It takes some time but it means the thermal paste won't get all in one side.

And one last thing: right after you apply the paste don't get all crazy because of the temperatures. There's a period in which the thermal paste will adapt to the cooler and the CPU's surface (like it's melting), so it takes some time before it reaches the best temperature. For Artic Silver 5, it's 200 hours. After those 200 hours the benchmarks should get you the best temperatures. If you don't like them, take the cooler out, re-apply paste, try again.

A small tube (3g or so) is enough for about 10 attempts, so don't worry about messing up the first tries. If you mess up, clean it up and try again.

PS: Don't use the credit card method. Sure some people say it works great, but if it forms any sort of air bubble (which you will NOT see), performance will be degraded. The only way to see if it formed bubbles would be to take the heatsink out, but if you do that you can't reapply it with the same thermal paste because you'll create even more bubbles.

PS PS: Don't get scared because of all the "how to apply thermal paste" things! It's incredibly easy, just giving you some tips to make it even easier to do and harder to mess up.